Is a "State Knowledge Common" a Real Common? The Base Adresse Nationale Case Study

• In Event: Commoning Knowledge: Regeneration Through S&T

Abstract

Base Adresse National Nationale (BAN) is a digital database that aims to reference all addresses of the French territory and their geographic coordinates for both public and private uses. Launched in 2015 by a member of OpenStreetMap France, it is today an official French state database and one of the first examples of collaboratively produced digital resources involving public organizations, private and voluntary actors. Classical literature on knowledge commons (Hess, Oström 2005) considers commons as a third way « beyond market and state » (Bollier, Helfrich 2012). On this paper, we will defend that the database BAN, despite its public dimension, can be defined as a knowledge common. But its « official » status entails specific technical, security, knowledge production and governance problems in comparison with other non-public knowledge commons (Frischmann, Madison, and Strandburg, 2014). We will contribute to the literature by analyzing the characteristics of what we will call a « state knowledge common », the new collective and public action problems it raises and the way actors try to solve them in a sociology of innovation perspective (Akrich, Latour and Callon 1988).

Our methodology combines a thematic analysis of 20 semi-directive transcripted interviews with members of BAN community, OpenstreetMap and French administration (National Institute of Geographic Information and Etalab, a public agency in charge of Opendata policies) and grey literature, observations in situ of work meetings and a socio-technical analysis of the digital resource architecture and knowledge production. This research is part of a Ph.D thesis requirement.

Author

• Sebastien Shulz, Université Paris-Est Marne-la-vallée