My Republica - Good governance is one of the most important features of open data

"The US Department of State in partnership with Kathmandu Living Lab is helping to create a robust Open Street Map (OSM) data of Kathmandu and Pokhara cities and develop a community that is able to update, maintain and make effective use of the collected data. As part of the project, local people, community and various government and non-government organizations are engaged voluntarily in the mapping activities, helping them understand various mapping tools which can be of use for various purposes including in disaster response.  Lee R Shwartz, The Geographer at the US Department of State, and Melinda Laituri, professor of geography at Colorado State University who is also the principal investigator of the project, were recently in Kathmandu to participate in the State of the Map Asia (SotM-Asia) annual regional conference OpenStreetMap (OSM) organized by OSM communities in Asia. Republica’s Sagar Ghimire talked with them about the concept of open data and importance of open street mapping. Excerpts: "