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January 2004 |
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India surges ahead…
The section has a series of interviews from the government, academia and industry. An opinion is coming out strongly on the need of indigenous GIS, not only for the Indian market but also for the global market. Academicians insist on more compatible interface between industry and academia and tend to do away the present scenario where industry retrains the professionals to suit their needs. However, there is a concern not to end up in producing technicians rather than experts. If there is a realization that the line between IT and GIS is getting blurred, the introduction of GIS course as a major field still has to go a long way in most of the institutions.
There are certain issues which have assumed a sense of permanency figured again such as unreasonable restrictions on the maps and digital data, availability of accurate and up-to-date spatial data in standard format, affordability of technology, lack of trained and skilled manpower, capacity building, etc. However, issues pertaining to data ownership and need of adequate regulations to check data pilferage and piracy have also come into focus.
Despite all, there is a change and that is a significant one. The Government of India starts speaking a language that is digital: the Survey of India claims to digitize all the 1:50,000 scale maps and enters in partnerships with private sector; the Department of Space wants to touch the moon; the Geological Survey of India initiates the process to build up an organizational network infrastructure and enterprise cum information portal; the Forest Survey of India says that it uses state of the art techniques in
forest cover assessment; the National Informatic Center moves from developing standalone systems to providing web based GIS solutions...
And it is said that an Indian NSDI is on the anvil!
Sounds like a surge?
Bal Krishna
Bal.Krishna@gisdevelopment.net
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