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 Prof. Arup Dasgupta Honorary Managing Editor arup.dasgupta@gisdevelopment.net Common man is the ultimate client in a government. While governments in India provide policy guidelines and monitor implementation of services, it is a challenge to create a standardised dataset that meets the demands of various needs State governments in India have realised that needbased and value added services utilising geospatial technologies have the potential for aiding and augmenting governance. Remote sensing centres have been set up to utilise geospatial technologies for the generation, creation, organisation and management of geospatial databases on natural resources, infrastructure, demography, socio-economic aspects, etc. and to provide user specific decision support systems using these databases for the benefit of their clients. Clients are the functionaries who have to deliver services to the common man and in that sense, common man is the ultimate client. The State remote sensing centres are service institutes, concentrating on the adaption of technology for mass usability, developing applications relevant to the State and providing relevant information services and capacity building among State level functionaries. State governments provide the necessary policy guidelines and monitor the implementation of these services and their use by government functionaries. The range of clients can extend from administration to resource departments to natural resource managers to politicians. The challenge is to create a standardised dataset which can meet the demands of different clients. For this, any dataset has to satisfy four major hierarchies. At the administration level, the work requires data structured by the administrative hierarchy of State, district, taluka and village. On the other hand, resources are administered by circle, division, subdivision and sector. Natural resources follow natural segregation by theme and scale and finally political users require data by constituency and polling booths. This means that while the database is unified, the views have to be tailored to the requirement of specific group of users. Further, datasets have to cut across departments and provide a seamless view to the users. To meet these requirements, multipurpose, common geospatial databases have been created by several States based on initiatives like IMSD, NRIS and NRC programmes of the Department of Space and NRDMS programme of the Department of Science and Technology. The databases contain several thematic layers and the information is presented in views as desired by the user. This requires a management strategy which can take care of sensitivities at local and national levels. Thumb rules for success The first rule should be that ownership of data and projects using that data rests with the concerned user department. Thus, road data is owned by the Roads and Buildings department and they control access to the data. Data updating has to be authorised and approved by the department. Secondly, it should be recognised that domain knowledge rests with the user department. So, if a new road has to be planned, it is the concerned engineer from R&B who should sit with the geospatial engineers from the State centre to work out the best route. The key to the success for the use of database is collaboration and partnership. To make data usable by a wide section of the users, it has to be easily available. This can be achieved by not using restricted data. Finally, the service has to be on 24x7 basis, particularly during disasters or to serve time bound projects. ISO certification is a big help in this as it assures quality, confidentiality and security. At the technical level, great attention has to be paid to data standardisation to ensure that the system is multipurpose as well as multi-hierarchical. Access can be provided through a simple Web based interface that can be developed in-house which follows OGC guidelines and standards for interoperability.   The case of Gujarat An example of the typical use of the data is shown in figure 1. Here, infrastructure data (roads, schools and health facilities) is overlaid with salt pan locations and viewed at taluka (administrative unit) level to examine the educational and health facilities available to salt pan workers and their families. Salt pan workers are migrants, their work is hazardous and present severe health risks. By combining data from the departments of Roads, Education and Health with natural resources and viewing the composite data through administrative boundaries, the Department of Labour is able to get a better view of the facilities available and plan for shortfalls. As all development work is related to specific sites, it is necessary to be able to provide information down to the plot level. At this level, the available maps are the village cadastral maps which show ownership but little else. They are non-projected maps and therefore cannot be related to the standard map framework. The use of high resolution remotely sensed imagery provides an opportunity to link cadastral information to imagery and thus provide natural resources information at plot level. This has been done by many States in India. In Gujarat, this has been done for the whole State in collaboration with the Department of Revenue and Land Reforms. All the cadastral maps have been digitised and are available on the Land Bank website of the department. The co-registered data is available to all users in the State. This facilitates many applications like watershed development planning at field level, water harvesting planning at field level, wasteland reclamation, agriculture and horticulture, infrastructure planning (rail, road, pipelines, etc.) and monitoring of developmental activities, to name a few. At the grass root level, a system for the inventory of assets like check dams can be created using data from satellite imagery and field information from the concerned departments. The system should allow data collation and report generation at various levels of aggregation. It enables the location of assets down to survey plot number and helps in the selection of sites for new assets. This system can be made available at the panchayat level to enable peoples' participation in decision making and help the government in better distribution of resources. Figure 2 shows a screen shot of such a system. Similar efforts can be made for information in urban areas down to individual dwelling units and households. It is seen that the use of geospatial data can provide useful inputs to the planning process by way of helping to establish technical feasibility of a project, integrating socio-economic and environmental data and considering legal aspects, thereby bringing parity and transparency in the process. It is also helps to build capacity among the users to use this kind of systems in their work. Most State governments have found the experience of using geospatial data for governance a favourable one. Once the initial resistance is overcome, costs come down with multiple usages, ambiguities are reduced and complex situations are handled better. A sure sign of the success of the system is the steady increase in the number of user departments, demand for more and more detailed information and continued government support. Page 1 of 1
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