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International | Geographic Information Infrastructure
Advancing the concept National Geospatial Data Infrastructure: Reflections on the "bottom line" Richard Groot and Yola Georgiadou Introduction At the most senior levels of government, high expectations have been expressed about the beneficial effects of the 'information society' or 'information economy', for example, for the delivery of healthcare, transportation management, life-long learning, sustainable development , etc. The role of the private sector in providing the communications infrastructure and the so-called 'value-added' information services is emphasised strongly. Recognising that government itself is a very large source as well as user of such data, efficient and easy access to these sources becomes a high priority. These expressions of policy signal that facilitating access to government owned data results in increasing positive externalities by reducing transaction costs to society as whole. These expectations have been articulated in, for example, EC (1994), Executive Order 12906 (1994), and in EC (1998). The vision presented in these policies emphasizes the benefits of a private publishing sector using access to government held data sets for those "value added" products and services. However, the evidence is that this sector is slow coming off the ground. See for example Lawrence (1998) or Longhorn (1998). More immediate benefits seem to be possible if governments would focus their efforts on increasing efficiency and effectiveness of its own information and data use. This can be done by means of promoting sharing of data and information through appropriate domain and enterprise Geospatial Data Infrastructures (GDI) between ministries and departments/agencies of government. The idea being that if government has its own geospatial data development, supply and access in order it would, by example, encourage the usefulness and efficiencies of accepting related national GDI standardisation by other sectors in the economy. This paper explores the concept of Geospatial Data Infrastructure in this context, discusses the limiting factors in the development and implementation of (national) data standards, reflects on the process of developing the NGDI and draws some conclusions about what will likely drive the development of NGDI in most countries. What is GDI? The notion of the sharing of existing data through Information Infrastructures emerges as a significant matter of efficiency, and as a generator of positive externalities. See for example Branscomb (1982). We will use the term Geospatial Data Infrastructure (GDI), as opposed to the terms Geographic Information Infrastructure or Spatial Information Infrastructure. Furthermore we like to follow Groot and McLaughlin (2000), introducing the related concept of a Geospatial Data Service Centre (GDSC), for enterprise-wide or domain-oriented activities. The same authors define the purpose of GDI as: to facilitate access to and responsible use of geospatial data at affordable prices. National Geospatial Data Infrastructure, Regional Geospatial Data Infrastructure, and Global Geospatial Data Infrastructure are special cases to be defined in terms of what gives the GDI its regional, national or global character. GDI is seen in this respect as a generalised concept, which can be implemented at the enterprise level, the level of broad application domains such as coastal zone management, urban management or physical planning, or in the national or regional context. Geospatial Data Infrastructure encompasses the networked geospatial databases and data handling facilities, the complex of institutional, organizational, technological, human, and economic resources which interact with one another and underpin the design, implementation and maintenance of mechanisms facilitating the sharing, access to, and responsible use of geospatial data at an affordable cost for a specific application domain or enterprise. Fig. 1 shows the idea of GDI for the environment and physical planning department (as example) in a major municipality. This forms then the application domain Environment and Physical Planning. On the right hand side are the individual applications within the domain with their GIS systems, which all need routine supply of directly applicable data. This stream of requirements is being met through a Geospatial Data Service Centre (GDSC). The GSDC harmonises / standardises all data for its application domain. It ensures they are described in a (national) meta data standard to facilitate the sharing of these resources in the domain and amongst other potential users. 
Fig. 1: The foundation data for the GDI in relation to the Geospatial Data Service Centre. The GDSC also enforces the information policies that control access, use and pricing, in keeping with legislation and overall government policy or enterprise regulations. It is fully accountable for the total integrity of the infrastructure. It is staffed by a cross section of technical, administrative, legal professionals as well as specialists in Geoinformatics who understand the language and content of the application domain. The latter are essential for the data model and standards development in a manner, which promotes the broadest possible use, and thus sharing, of data resources within the domain. There is no a priori theoretical classification of Application Domains. Usually the manager of this Environment and Physical Planning department sees the need to apply Information and Communication Technology, such as GIS, to improve operational efficiency and effectiveness. GI Systems are acquired and a number of GIS applications are implemented, typically independently of each other. Next the manager begins to discover that these applications draw heavily on the budget and cost effectiveness remains low. Further investigation by the manager indicates that in all likelihood low cost effectiveness is, in large part, caused by the excessive proportion of time being spent trying to find or develop data and information relative to its actual operational use. Studies in the oil and gas sector carried out in Western Canada in the late 1980s and early 1990s indicate that exploration geologists and - geophysicists spent on the whole more than 60 % of their time searching for data and only about 20 % doing something useful with that. The major oil and gas companies in Western Canada jointly created the Canadian Oil and Gas GIS (Canoggis) in the early 1990s to address this problem. Canoggis is an enterprise or domain Geospatial Data Infrastructure for the Western Canadian Oil and Gas industry along the lines described in Fig. 1.
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