Hi, currently the administrative division of Venezuela is a complex and complicated topic. Currently there is no official website or “public accessible” documentation that talks about our administrative divisions. Almost everything we have mapped regarding the topic has been through our “local knowledge” that each user has of their respective regions of origin, or from other platforms such as Wikipedia or amateur publications, which were written by unofficial people.

In summary, regarding OSM, our biggest problems are precisely two:

Our main government cartographic institution (https://igvsb.gob.ve) exposes clauses that prohibit us from importing official databases within OSM. Legally we must request authorization for each "official data" that we place on our map

I explained in detail in this post on our forums:

- https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/sobre-la-legalidad-de-osm-en-venezuela/104049

In each official cartographic material published by our government institution, you can find in a lower corner a text that says:

“Prohibida su reproducción total o parcial por cualquier medio, sin previa autorización del IGVSB”

What translated it would be:

“Total or partial reproduction is prohibited without government authorization”

You can check it by viewing some of these official materials:

- https://igvsb.gob.ve/adminigvsb/archivos/servicios/9/servicedoc_220630062428.pdf

- https://igvsb.gob.ve/servicio/8


So, in theory, we cannot add the official shapes in OSM, at least not so explicitly, for being incompatible with the licenses required by our platform

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Another big problem is the source from which to obtain official shapes, because our government institute only has published incomplete shapes of our administrative division.

Until now, we have been using a data set of dubious origin, imported 10 years ago by Venezuelan users at that time. Therefore, we cannot warrant compatibility with OSM licenses. 

In addition, the quality of the official borders (shapes) are of very low quality and leave much to be desired.

Therefore, this last year I have been dedicated to re-drawing all the borders of our administrative divisions, by hand and from scratch, in JOSM. Using as a guide the different laws and official documents that describe the borders in detail, such as these:


- http://www.cleb.gob.ve/pdf/2004/LEY%20DIIVISI%C3%93N%20TERRITORIAL.pdf

- http://www.ine.gob.ve/documentos/AspectosFisicos/DivisionpoliticoTerritorial/pdf/DPTconFinesEstadisticosOperativa2013.pdf

- https://igvsb.gob.ve/adminigvsb/archivos/documentacion/documento_220518061809.pdf

I am also guided by the official shapes, which you can see in black-color in these images:

- https://i.imgur.com/1suEh6C.png
- https://i.imgur.com/vFIMc9M.png
- https://i.imgur.com/nvyjLNu.png
- https://i.imgur.com/V7Swp9W.png
- https://i.imgur.com/E9LOGmS.png
