[electricblue]

GIS Manager here. The reason silos happen in the GIS world is because of trust. Every organization has different priorities and standards when it comes to data. The accuracy you need for your building footprints might be (and probably is) unusable for someone else. Data sharing between entities is common but even then oftentimes a great deal of finesse is needed to make another organization's data work in your dataset. In the government sector there is mistrust of data requests from those who would use data for commercial interests so the default option is to charge for it or just make it unavailable.

[knz]

Another challenge has been that GIS data is historically expensive to acquire. As consumer grade spatial applications have become more popular there has been a noticeable shift to release data for the common good rather than trying to recover the cost of acquisition. Of course there are still plenty of silos out there. The push towards regional datasets for public infrastructure also seems to be gaining momentum but these projects often go nowhere unless they are mandated by a Federal or State agency.