Introduction
Government plays an important role in facilitating the development of a national spatial information infrastructure. With the growing use of the Internet, the Web, and wireless computing, commercial and non-profit organizations are surpassing government as users of spatial data. The private sector is playing a dominant role in this transformation through the delivery and use of spatial data and content services. Activities such as GIS, location-base services, logistics, navigation systems, and business intelligence -- all require various forms of value-added spatial content. Moreover, as the use of commercial spatial information extends to ever more sectors of a nation’s economy, the emergence of a spatial information marketplace begins to emerge. These transformations raise important policy questions for government providers and their role in this evolving spatial information marketplace. The manner in which government disseminates its spatial information resources to the private sector, the academic community and non-profit organizations will have impacts on growth of a spatial information marketplace.

This paper highlights alternative dissemination approaches taken by government agencies and illustrates their potential impact in marketplace dynamics. The paper does not promote one information dissemination approach over another, but rather suggests that irregardless of dissemination practices, the promotion of spatial information markets should be an important criteria, along with access to academic, scientific and non-profit organizations. The paper builds on earlier research investigating how comparative dissemination policies affected innovation-driven activities in the scientific and commercial sector (Lopez, 1996).

Alternative Spatial Data Dissmination Approaches
Whether implicit or explicit, pre-existing national priorities have a large influence on national information policies. In particular, the influence of revenue generation mandates, privatization goals, intellectual property rights, deficit reduction, and constitutional constraints are relevant factors to be considered. Increasingly, the role of government in promoting domestic commercial information industries has become another priority. These priorities are combined and embedded in a complex political and legal framework that can result in different spatial information dissemination policies.