Anne Marie Carstens
Consultant
Ministry of the Environment
Denmark

Biography
Anne Marie Carstens is senior project manager and consultant with a special knowledge on strategic management, value chain work, business cases, and decision-making in the public sector. At the Danish Geodata Agency, Anne Marie Carstens especially works on the development of a good and fruitful partnership with the private sector, bridging the gap between business and technique, and making sensible use of the open geodata.

Abstract
Accessibility - or, On the Importance of Beeing User Friendly

By January 1st 2013 the Danish Geodata Agency (the Ministry of the Environment) joined the world wide open data trend by providing free access for all users, public and private, to a golden chest of geographic basic data. This could be the happy ending of a beautiful story of empowering the people, offering transparency and insight and thus paving the road to efficiency and growth in society. However, setting data free (of payment and open to the public) does not necessarily equal accessibility to data. In spite of the penetration into everyday life for most of us by the extremely wide spread use of location based services and digital maps and geospatial visualisations making sense of geodata is still for the special gifted professionals. This contribution focusses on how the Danish Geodata Agency works together with private sector geo-professional for the common good of making good and smart use of the free data, by looking through the spectacles of the user. Monetary businesses e.g. insurance and real estate business are amongst our new "third party costumers". Bridging the boundary between the geospatial and other worlds is amongst the new tasks of the Geodata Agency as open data owner.