Jurnal Alam Bina, Jilid 09, No: 01, 2007.

CAPACITY BUILDING FOR SPATIAL DATA INFRASTRUCTURE DEVELOPMENT (SDI) Ian Masser Email: [email protected] Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA), University College London, London UK

ABSTRACT An important objective for governments throughout the world is to create national spatial data infrastructures to maximise the use that is made of national geographic information assets. More than 120 countries are already considering projects of this kind. From the outset it has been recognised that building a SDI is far more than just a technical task. Their effective implementation also often requires fundamental changes in the institutional context that governs the collection and dissemination of geographical information in each of the countries involved. More recently it has also been argued that such developments will require a prolonged programme of capacity building to ensure that the most effective use is made by all of the different kinds of stakeholders that are involved of the resources provided by the creation of a SDI. For this reason it is increasingly becoming apparent that the full impacts of SDI will not be realised for decades rather than years. With these considerations in mind this paper initially examines the nature of the SDI phenomenon and then considers the needs for capacity building with particular reference to two core strategic areas in SDI development: coalition formation and institutional development for SDI implementation. Keywords: Capacity building, national spatial data infrastructures, coalition formation, institutional development. Introduction

An important objective for governments throughout the world is to create national spatial data infrastructures (SDI) to maximise the use that is made of national geographic information assets. More than 120 countries are already considering projects of this kind (Crompvoets, 2002). This means in effect that over half the nations in the world are participating in what has come to be known as the National Spatial

Data

Infrastructure

(NSDI)

phenomenon

(Masser,

2003).

These

developments have already spawned a hierarchy of SDIs both above and below the national level. Particularly interesting in this respect, given the global nature of the phenomenon, are the efforts of the Global Spatial Data Infrastructure Association to foster SDI development through the world.

CAPACITY BUILDING FOR SPATIAL DATA INFRASTRUCTURE DEVELOPMENT

From the outset it has been recognised that building a SDI is far more than just a technical task (see, for example, National Research Council, 1993). Their effective implementation also requires often fundamental changes in the institutional context that governs the collection and dissemination of geographical information in each of the countries involved (see, for example, Rhind, 1996). More recently it has also been argued that such developments will require a prolonged programme of capacity building to ensure that the most effective use is made by all the stakeholders of the resources provided by the creation of a SDI (see, for example, Masser, 2001). With these considerations in mind this paper initially examines the nature of the SDI phenomenon and then considers the needs for capacity building with particular reference to two core strategic areas in SDI development: coalition formation and institutional development for SDI implementation.

The NSDI Phenomenon

Some of the main milestones in the emergence of the NSDI phenomenon are set out in Table 1. From this it can be seen that its origins date back almost twenty years to the establishment of the Australian Land Information Council (ALIC) in January 1986 as a result of an agreement between the Australian Prime Minister and the heads of the state governments to coordinate the collection and transfer of land related information between the different levels of government and to promote the use of that information in decision making (ANZLIC, 1992, p.1).

Table 1: Some NSDI milestones _____________________________________________________________________ 1986 Australian Land Information Council set up to coordinate the collection and transfer of land related information between the different levels of government 1990 US Federal Geographic Data Committee set up to coordinate the development, use, sharing and dissemination of surveying mapping and related spatial data 1993 US Mapping Science Committee report on 'Toward a coordinated spatial data infrastructure for the nation' 1994 Executive Order 12906 'Coordinating geographic data acquisition and access: the National Spatial Data Infrastructure' 1996 First Global Spatial Data Infrastructure conference in Bonn, Germany

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1998 First generation of NSDIs paper identifies 11 initiatives from all parts of the world. 1998-2000 54 countries respond to GSDI survey 2002 Crompvoets claims that 120 countries are considering NSDI development _____________________________________________________________________

The second milestone occurs in 1990 when the United States Office of Management and Budget (OMB) established an interagency Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) to coordinate the 'development, use, sharing, and dissemination of surveying, mapping, and related spatial data (OMB, 1990).' Up to this point the term 'National Spatial Data Infrastructure' was not in general use although a paper was presented by John McLaughlin (1991) at the Canadian Conference on Geographic Information Systems in Ottawa entitled 'Toward National Spatial Data Infrastructure.' Many of the ideas contained in this paper were subsequently developed and extended by the United States National Research Council's Mapping Science Committee in their report on 'Toward a coordinated spatial data infrastructure for the nation' (National Research Council, 1993). This argued that effective national policies, strategies, and organisational structures need to be established at the federal level for the integration of national spatial data collection, use and distribution. To realise this goal it proposed that the powers of the FGDC should be strengthened to define common standards for spatial data management and to create incentives to foster data sharing particularly among federal agencies.

The turning point in the evolution of the NSDI phenomenon came in the following year in the United States with the publication of an Executive Order 12906 signed by President Clinton on 11th April 1994 entitled “Coordinating Geographic Data Acquisition and Access: the National Spatial Data Infrastructure.”(Executive Office of the President, 1994) The Executive Order set out in some detail the main tasks to be carried out and defined time limits for each of the initial stages of the National Spatial Data Infrastructure. Apart from the core task of inter-agency coordination through the FGDC, these included the establishment of a National Geospatial Data Clearing House and the creation of a National Digital Geospatial Data Framework. The Executive Order also gave the FGDC the task of coordinating the Federal government’s development of the National Spatial Data Infrastructure and required .

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that each member agency of that committee held a policy level position in their organisation. In this way it significantly raised the political visibility of geospatial data collection, management and use not only among Federal agencies but also nationally and internationally.

This document had an immediate impact on thinking in the European Union where a meeting of key people representing geographic information interests in each of the member states was organised by Directorate General XIII (now DG Information Society) in Luxembourg in February 1995. The main task of this meeting was to develop the ideas set out in the first of what became a series of draft documents on 'GI 2000: toward a European geographic information infrastructure' (CEC, 1995). One of the outcomes of this debate in Europe was the decision to hold the first of what subsequently became a regular series of Global Spatial Data Infrastructure conferences at Bonn in Germany in September 1996. This conference brought together representatives from the public and private sectors and academia for the first time to discuss matters relating to NSDIs at the global level.

After the second GSDI conference in Chapel Hill, North Carolina in 1997 the author carried out a survey of the first generation of NSDIs (Masser, 1999). This showed that at least eleven NSDIs were already in operation in various parts of the world by the end of 1996. What distinguished these from other GI policy initiatives was that they were all explicitly national in scope and their titles all referred to geographic information, geospatial data or land information and included the term 'infrastructure', 'system' or 'framework'. This first generation included relatively wealthy countries such as the United States and Australia as well as relatively poor countries such as Indonesia and Malaysia.

The rapid rate of NSDI diffusion after 1996 is highlighted by the findings of a survey carried for the GSDI by Onsrud (www.gsdi.org). This shows that 54 countries responded positively to his questionnaire between 1998 and 2000: 21 of these came from the Americas, 14 from Europe, 13 from Asia and the Pacific and 6 from Africa. The number of positive responses to this survey is nearly five times the number of first generation NSDI countries identified up to the end of 1996 while data collected

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by Crompvoets (2002) suggests that as many as 120 countries may be considering projects of this kind. Given these circumstances it is felt that the term 'NSDI phenomenon' is a reasonable description of what has happened in this field over the last ten years.

The Nature of a NSDI The extent of the NSDI phenomenon is all the more surprising, as there is no clear concensus about what constitutes an NSDI. Many NSDI's have a strong project dimension which focuses on concrete goals such as the completion of the national topographical database. Others are much more process oriented and focus mainly on strategic issues such as capacity building and the modernisation of government. This is partly due to the different interpretations that can be given to the notion of infrastructure. To some people infrastructure means tangible physical assets like roads and railway networks. To others it is a strategic process of policy formulation and implementation carried out by governments to ensure that their geographic information assets are managed in the interests of the nation as a whole (Barr and Masser, 1997). This includes not only the tangible assets but also the individuals and institutions that are needed to make it a functional reality.

The definition put forward by the Global Spatial Data Infrastructure Association conveys some of the complexity of the issues involved. It defines a global (and implicitly a national) SDI as follows:

'A (National) Spatial Data Infrastructure supports ready access to geographic information. This is achieved through the co-ordinated actions of nations and organisations that promote awareness and implementation of complimentary policies, common standards and effective mechanisms for the development and availability of interoperable digital geographic data and technologies to support decision making at all scales for multiple purposes. These actions encompass the policies, organisational remits, data, technologies, standards, delivery mechanisms, and financial and human resources necessary to ensure that those working at the .

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CAPACITY BUILDING FOR SPATIAL DATA INFRASTRUCTURE DEVELOPMENT

(national) and regional scale are not impeded in meeting their objectives (www.gsdi.org).' (Author's underlining)

The underlined sections of this comprehensive but complex definition show that there are four key concepts underlying NSDIs. The first of these states their overriding objective is to promote ready access to the geographic information assets that are held by a wide range of stakeholders in both the public and the private sector with a view to maximising their overall usage. The second concerns the need for coordinated action on the part of governments to ensure that the overriding objective is achieved. The next part of this sentence gives some examples of the kind of actions that are required from governments. The third key element stresses the extent to which NSDIs must be user driven. Their primary purpose is to support decision making for many different purposes and it must be recognised that many potential users may be unaware of the original purposes for which the data was collected. Finally the last sentence illustrates the wide range of activities that must be undertaken to ensure the effective implementation of an NSDI. These include not only technical matters such as data, technologies, standards and delivery mechanisms but also institutional matters related to organisational responsibilities and overall national information policies as well as questions relating to the availability of the financial and human resources needed for this task.

The Evolution of the NSDI Concept

It is useful to distinguish two stages in the evolution of the NSDI concept; a first generation consisting of a relatively small number of countries and a much larger second generation. The origins of the first generation go back to the 1980's while the starting point for the second generation is around the year 2000. There are important differences in approach between the two generations and there is also a growing emphasis on implementation in the latter. In addition the second generation has to take account of the role of NSDIs within the local to global hierarchy of spatial data infrastructures.

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The findings of the first generation study (Masser, 1999) showed that NSDIs came in all shapes and sizes. They included initiatives from Australia, Canada, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Portugal, Qatar, the United Kingdom and the United States. They included some recent initiatives that had little to show as yet other than good intentions (in 1996) as well as some more established initiatives that had already achieved a great deal. They mixed together some very small countries with some very large ones, some relatively wealthy countries with relatively poor ones, as well as countries with and without federal systems of government.

The primary objectives of these NSDIs were to promote economic development, to stimulate better government and to foster environmental sustainability. The notion of better government is interpreted in several different ways in them. In some countries it also means better strategic planning and resource development. This is particularly the case in developing countries such as Indonesia and Malaysia. Planning, in the sense of a better state of readiness to deal with emergencies brought about by natural hazards, was also an important driving force in the establishment of the Japanese NSDI while the National Geographic Information System in Portugal was also seen as an instrument for modernising central, regional and local administration.

Participation in the majority of first generation NSDIs was limited to the public sector and most of these involved only central or federal government activities. Although essentially public sector in scope the Australia New Zealand Land Information Council (ANZLIC) was unusual in that it was centrally concerned with the interface between different levels of government. A notable exception to this rule was the Canadian Geospatial Data Infrastructure which brought together representatives from all levels of government together with the private sector and academia.

The development of the Internet and the World Wide Web had a profound impact on the transition from the first to the second generation of NSDIs. This was recognised by the US Mapping Sciences Committee in their report on Distributed Geolibraries (National Research Council 1999). In their view 'the WWW has added a new and radically different dimension to its earlier conception of the NSDI, one that is much more user oriented, much more effective in maximising the added value of the .

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CAPACITY BUILDING FOR SPATIAL DATA INFRASTRUCTURE DEVELOPMENT

nation's geoinformation assets, and much more cost effective as a data dissemination mechanism.'

Given these and other related developments Rajabifard et al (2003) argue that the development of the second generation of NSDIs began around 2000. The second generation consists of two distinct groups: first generation NSDIs that are evolving from a product to a process model, and a substantial number of new entrants from all parts of the world. These entrants have benefited substantially from the growing body of materials that is available on the WWW and elsewhere on the experiences of the first generation. An important factor in the dissemination process has been the creation of the NSDI Cookbook, which was launched at the GSDI 4 conference at Capetown in 2000 and is regularly updated on the GSDI web site (www.gsdi.org).

Notwithstanding the technological innovations that have taken place during the last decade the distinctive feature of the second generation of NSDIs is the shift that is taking place from the product model that characterised most of the first generation to a process model of an NSDI. With this in mind Rajabifard et al (2003) argue that database creation was to a very large extent the key driver of the first generation and that, as a result, most of these initiatives tended to be data producer, and national mapping agency, led. The shift from the product to the process model is essentially a shift in emphasis from the concerns of data producers to those of data users. The main driving forces behind the data process model are data sharing and reusing data collected by a wide range of agencies for a great diversity of purposes at various times. Also associated with this change in emphasis is a shift from the centralised structures that characterised most of the first generation of NSDIs to the decentralised and distributed networks that are a basic feature of the WWW.

These shifts in emphasis are reflected in the typology developed by the Spatial Applications Division of the Catholic University of Leuven as a result of their study of NSDIs in 29 European and three other countries (SAD, 2003). This is based largely on the nature of NSDI coordination in different countries as it is felt that this is a major success factor for each NSDI. A basic distinction is made between countries where a national data producer such as a mapping agency has an implicit mandate to set up

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an NSDI and countries where NSDI development has been driven by a council of Ministries, a GI association or partnership of data users. The findings of this study suggest that Denmark, Finland and Sweden fall into the former category that is regarded as the most basic model of a NSDI. Britain, France and Germany fall into the latter category whose fundamental characteristic is that the participants are willing to share spatial data with one another.

Some other implications of this change in emphasis can also be seen in a study comparing Australian, Canadian and US experiences with respect to NSDI implementation (Masser, 2003). The findings of this study suggest that leadership involves a great deal more than coordination. Whereas coordination implies to some extent a reactive mode of operation within well established structures leadership implies a more proactive mode in situations where it may be necessary to create new forms of organisation. This is evident in some of the different partnership structures that have emerged in all three countries to facilitate NSDI implementation. The study also highlights the extent to which effective NSDI implementation involves the active participation of many different agencies at the sub national as well as the national level. In each of the three countries the lead agency in NSDI formulation is the national/federal government However its effective implementation lies to a considerable extent in the hands of the state and local government agencies who act as lead agencies at the sub national level. The findings of the analysis suggest that there is both a top down and a bottom up dimension to the relationships between the different levels involved in the NSDI development process. National SDI strategies drive state wide SDI strategies and state wide SDI strategies drive local level SDI strategies. As most of the detailed database maintenance and updating tasks are carried out at the local level the input of local government also has a considerable influence on the process of SDI implementation at the state and national levels. The outcomes of such processes from the standpoint of the national SDI are likely to be that the detail of SDI implementation will vary considerably from one sub national agency to another. Consequently the NSDI that emerges from this process will be a collage of similar but often quite distinctive components that reflect the commitments and aspirations of the different sub national governmental agencies.

.

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CAPACITY BUILDING FOR SPATIAL DATA INFRASTRUCTURE DEVELOPMENT

Evaluation

It is clear from this brief over of the SDI phenomenon that the old adage that Rome wasn’t built in a day is equally applicable to NSDIs. The creation of NSDIs is a long term task that may take years or even decades before they are fully operational. This process is likely to be an evolving one that will also reflect the extent to which the organisations that are involved are changing themselves over time. It is also dependent to some extent on the extent to which the main elements of the institutional context that are needed to facilitate NSDI implementation are already in place. Because of the particular institutional context that has emerged in Australia, for example, where key administrative duties for geographic information are lie with the states, the task should be much simpler and take less time than will be the case in the United States. However it should also be borne in mind that the existing institutional context can create barriers to implementation that hinder effective implementation in some countries and that the rate of progress may be faster in some less developed countries where there are fewer obstacles of this kind to be overcome. The rate of progress is also likely to be influenced by the scale of the capacity building efforts that are required to ensure that the maximum use is made of NSDI efforts.

Major changes in the form and content of NSDIs can also be expected over time. A good example of this is the changes that have taken place with respect to Britain's National Geospatial Data Framework that was launched in 1996. Its original web site (www.ngdf.org.uk) is no longer operational and enquirers are informed that all the relevant information has been transferred to the GIgateway web site that is funded by the Government through its National Interest Mapping Services Agreement with Ordnance Survey and administered by the Association for Geographic Information. Alongside these developments, however, is the recent emergence of SDIs for some of the regions within the United Kingdom that has been stimulated by the devolution of some powers to elected regional assemblies in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

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Capacity Building

From the above analysis it can be seen that the implementation of a SDI is also a process of organisational change management. Despite this the need for capacity building initiatives to be developed in parallel to the processes of NSDI implementation is often underestimated (Masser 2001). This is partly due the confusion that exists about the meaning of capacity building itself. With this mind the following section of this article considers the nature of capacity building from the standpoint of SDI development and then examines some examples of the main types of capacity building that are occurring in two key strategic areas of SDI implementation: coalition formation and institutional development.

What is Capacity Building?

The results of a Google search on the word 'capacity building' highlight the wide variety of interpretations of the term. These include human resource development, organisational change and societal transformation (see, for example, National Research Council, 2002 and Pauknerova et al 2003). Nevertheless to some people it means essentially the training of SDI technicians and managers although this definition is often extended to include the education of politicians and the general public outside the geographic information industry (see, for example, Dale, quoted in Hopkins, 2004).

To others, including those involved in SDI development, it is necessary to take a much broader view of capacity building. For example, the Changelinks website maintained by the Department of Natural Resources Management at Massey University defines capacity building for environmental management in the following terms

'The contemporary view of capacity building goes beyond the conventional perception of training. The central concerns of environmental management - to manage change, to resolve conflict, to manage institutional pluralism, to enhance coordination, to foster communication, and to ensure that data .

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CAPACITY BUILDING FOR SPATIAL DATA INFRASTRUCTURE DEVELOPMENT

and information are shared - require a broad and holistic view of capacity building (http://nrm.massey.ac.nz/changelinks/capacity.html).'

If the term ' environmental management' is replaced by 'SDI development' this can be seen as a useful definition of some of the key strategic capacity building tasks involved in SDI implementation.

It can be argued that such a view is synonymous with organisational learning (Rickett, nd). This standpoint is reflected in the African Capacity Building Foundation's approach which argues that 'capacity building should not only involve the creation of new human and institutional capacity, but also the effective utilisation of existing capacity as well as the retrieval and regeneration of hitherto lost or decaying capacity (www.abfc-pact.org).'

However, it is also important to bear in mind that capacity building activities, particularly at the trans national level, can have a negative as well as a positive impact in less developed countries. Fukuda-Parr et al (2002), for example, have shown how technical cooperation programmes can adversely affect the development of local organisations as a result of two mistaken assumptions:

'The first is that it is possible simply to ignore existing capacities in developing countries and replace them with knowledge and systems elsewhere - a form of development as displacement rather than development as transformation. The second assumption concerns the asymmetric donor recipient relationship - the belief that it is possible ultimately for donors to control the process and yet consider the recipients to be equal partners.'

Coalition Formation

The effective implementation of SDIs is very much dependent on the extent to which they reflect the capabilities and the aspirations of all the stakeholders that are involved. This is particularly important in the early stages of SDI development when it

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is desirable to involve as many of the stakeholders as possible to participate in the process to form coalitions to formulate SDIs.

The benefits of such an approach can be seen from the recent experience of the Northern Ireland government who decided to make use of the Future Search method to develop an initial GI policy agenda for Northern Ireland. According to its inventors, Future Search is 'a unique planning meeting that is used world wide by hundreds of communities and organisations. It meets two goals at the same time, 1) helping large diverse groups discover values, purposes and projects they hold in common, and 2) enabling people to create a desired future together and start working towards it right away (Weissbord and Janoff, 2000).' It typically involves a group of 60 to 70 people with many different perspectives that is small enough to engage in a dialogue at every stage in the process. The optimal length for a Future Search meeting is two and a half days with a minimum of four half-day sessions.

With this mind the organisers invited over 50 people and organisations to participate in a GI policy future search on the island of Lusty Beg in the province of Fermanagh in February 2002. The participants included representatives from all the main stakeholders in Northern Ireland together with a number of invited participants from British and European organisations. They were divided into six more or less equal groups: GI industry (technical), GI industry (systems and data), culture arts leisure and tourism, agriculture and environment, emergency services, health and transport, and land property and networks.

One of the most interesting features of the Future Search from the standpoint of coalition formation is the way in which it avoids conflicts and focuses attention on the evolution of a shared agenda. This is done by treating 'problems and conflicts as information rather actions items while searching for common ground and desirable futures.' In essence it is a highly structured process that enables diverse groups of stakeholders to work alongside each other to find common ground. An important feature of this process is the extent to which those involved feel that they have created the desirable futures and have had the opportunity to commit themselves and their organisations to participate in the action plans that concern them most. .

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The outcomes of this process are clearly reflected in the consultation paper published later by Ordnance Survey Northern Ireland (OSNI 2002). The framework that is proposed sets up steering groups for each key sector with an immediate interest in better coordination. All these sectors were represented at Lusty Beg and it is intended that ownership for these groups be placed with the sector concerned under an overarching coordinating group that will provide a focal point for GI in Northern Ireland.

Another interesting example of coalition formation is the I-Team (or implementation team) initiative that was been set up in America to tackle the problems of upgrading and maintaining the seven framework data layers in the NSDI. It 'aims to offer a coherent set of institutional and financial incentives to make it easier for all levels of government and the private sector to collaborate in the building of the next generation of framework data. By aligning participant needs and resources, the I-Team Initiative will help all levels of government and the private sector to save money, migrate from existing legacy systems, make better user of existing resources, and develop the business case for additional public and private resources (www.fdgc.gov).'

The distinctive feature of this initiative lies in the way that it tries to promote the creation of self organising and self authorising geographic information coalitions at the sub national level. In essence I-teams are ' voluntary, open, flexible and adaptive collaborations for shared capital planning, building, using and financing spatial data. They optimise and align the interdependencies allowing institutions and citizens to rely on and share quality data from other trusted sources.' By March 2004, most of the 50 US states were actively involved in the I-team process and 10 I-teams had already submitted their I-plans.

The potential of the I-team initiative can best be seen from one of the states that have already submitted their I-plans. The work of the Maryland State Geographic Information Committee (MSGIC) in Maryland is a good example of the impact of the ITeam initiative in practice. Maryland's I-team has 64 members. These reflect the wide spread of stakeholder groups: 13 from Maryland state government departments, 6

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from US Federal Government agencies, 15 from Maryland County governments, 2 from the Maryland National Capital Park and Planning Commission, 3 from municipalities, 17 from the private sector, 3 from the academic sector, 1 from the utilities, 1 from an NGO, and 1 private citizen (MSGIC 2002).

Institutional Development

The next strategic step beyond coalition formation is institutional development. Although professional and scientific associations have an important role to play in SDI development there is also a need for the creation of some form of multi disciplinary, multi sector bodies that are independent from government to represent the interests of the GIS community as a while in SDI development. Given the long term nature of NSDI implementation it is important that this should be a permanent body.

A good example of an umbrella organisation of this kind is the European Umbrella Organisation for Geographic Information (EUROGI) which was set up with initial support from the European Commission in 1993. From the outset EUROGI was seen as an organisation that would not 'replace existing organisations but catalyse effective cooperation between existing national, international, and discipline oriented bodies to bring added value in the areas of Strategy, Coordination, and Services (Burrough et al 1993).'

EUROGI is an independent not for profit non-governmental organisation (NGO) that seeks to develop a European approach towards the use of geographic information technologies. Its mission is to maximise the use of GI for the benefit of citizens, good governance and commerce. With this in mind it promotes, stimulates, encourages and supports the development and use of geographic information and technology and also acts as the voice of the wider European geographic information community (www.eurogi.org). Its membership is consists mainly of national GI associations (umbrella organisations in themselves at the national level). Overall, these organisations represent more than 6000 member organisations. EUROGI is a .

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'stichting' under Dutch law that supports a small secretariat based in Apeldoorn in the Netherlands (Masser, Borrero and Holland 2003).

A consultation paper entitled 'Towards a strategy for geographic information in Europe' (EUROGI 2000) sets out EUROGI's five strategic objectives: •

Encouraging greater use of geographic information in Europe: this is the overarching goal as it is vital to ensure that GI is used as widely as possible in both the public and private sectors as well as by individual citizens in the interests of open government.

•

Raising awareness of GI and its associated technologies: there is a continuing need to raise awareness in the community as a whole regarding the importance of recent advances in technology and their potential for an increasing range of applications.

•

Promoting the development of strong national GI associations: an important element of EUROGI's strategy is to create the institutional capacity to take a lead in SDI formulation and implementation.

•

Improving the European spatial data infrastructure: Although many of the main elements of a European infrastructure are already in place in different countries there is still a lack of effective mechanisms at the European level to promote greater harmonisation and interoperability between countries in this respect.

•

Representing European interests in the global spatial infrastructure debate: In an era of increasing globalisation it is essential that Europe does not evolve in isolation.

Another interesting example of institutional development is the establishment of a Global

Spatial

Data

Infrastructure

Association

in

February

2004

(www.gasdiassociation.org). Since the first GSDI conference in 1996 it has been

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increasingly recognised that something more than a conference organisation is required at the global level to promote SDI development (Holland and Borrero 2003). To make this possible a GSDI Association was formally incorporated in the State of Virginia in mid 2002 and a provisional set of byelaws was approved by its interim Council in early 2003. Some 32 organisations had responded positively to the call to join the Association as founder members by February 2004. These formed the initial Council of the Association who elected its first Board of Directors.

The GSDI Association aims to be an inclusive organisation and this is clearly reflected in its subscription levels. Differential rates are levied on public, private, academic and not for profit bodies as well as for bodies from countries with high, medium, low and very low per capita incomes. The founder members of the GSDI Association include umbrella organisations such as EUROGI together with a wide range of other organisations from government, industry, academia and the not for profit sectors from all parts of the world. In this respect it can already be regarded as a multi disciplinary, multi sector not for profit body that is independent of government.

The mission of the GSDI Association is •

to serve as a point of contact and effective voice for those in the global community involved in developing , implementing and advancing SDI concepts

•

to foster SDIs that support sustainable social, economic and environmental systems integrated from local to global scales

•

to promote the informed and responsible use of geographic information and spatial technologies for the benefit of society.

Its goals are set out in its draft Strategic Plan in the following terms: •

to promote and develop awareness and exchanges on infrastructure issues for all relevant levels from local to global.

•

to promote and facilitate standards-based data access/discovery through the Internet.

•

to actively promote, encourage, support, and conduct capacity building. .

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CAPACITY BUILDING FOR SPATIAL DATA INFRASTRUCTURE DEVELOPMENT

•

to promote and conduct SDI development research.

•

to establish and support active fund raising programs to conduct the above activities.

Summary and Conclusions

This article has discussed some issues relating to capacity building for SDI development. In the process it has examined the nature of the SDI phenomenon itself with reference to some of the main landmarks in its development and described some of the main features underlying the evolution of SDIs from a first to a second generation. With this in mind some of the challenges that SDI development and implementation poses for capacity building have been explored with particular reference to two key strategic areas in SDI development: coalition formation and institutional development.

References Australia New Zealand Land Information Council (ANZLIC) (1992). Land information management in Australasia 1990-1992, Canberra: Australia Government Publishing Service. Barr, R. and I. Masser (1997). Geographic information: a resource, a commodity, an asset or an infrastructure? in Kemp, Z. (ed.) Innovations in GIS 4, London: Taylor and Francis, pp. 234248. Burrough P. A., M, Craglia, Masser I. and D. Rhind (1997). Decision makers’ perspectives on European geographic information policy issues, Transactions in GIS, 3, 61-71. Burrough P., M. Brand, F. Salge and K. Schueller (1993). The EUROGI vision, GIS Europe 2 (3), 30-31. Commission of the European Communities (1995). GI 2000: towards a European geographic information infrastructure, Directorate General XIII, Luxembourg. Crompvoets, J. (2002). Global developments of national spatial data clearinghouses, Proceedings of the 6th Global Spatial Data Infrastructure Conference, Budapest, Hungary. Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure (2002). A geographic information strategy for Northern Ireland: a consultation document, Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure, Belfast. European Umbrella Organisation for Geographic Information (EUROGI) (2000). Towards a strategy for geographic information in Europe: a consultation paper, EUROGI, Apeldoorn.

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