Land Sales and GIS

Here's an article from the Imperial Republican I found of interest (the hook was an academic moving from ND to NE):

" The biggest factor was Nebraska’s full disclosure of ag land sales data. Shultz told participants at the Holdrege Water Conference in early February that in North Dakota, only county assessors have access to sale details.
Nebraska assessors must send detailed reports, including land prices and equipment sales, to a database for all sales that aren’t family to family. That data is used by UNO researchers to create Geographic Information Systems computer models that can sort and compare many variables.
One project involves mapping Republican Basin ag land sales and analyzing the value of water. Shultz said a goal is to identify the premium payments required to get landowners to retire parcels from irrigation."

My bureaucratic mind says there ought to be convergence of GIS layers and owners--why is everyone reinventing the wheel. But one obstacle is always the concept of private data. Until we get some community standards for what is acceptable use, the convergence can't happen.