Technology
Is there a way out?
Most government sector agencies do not understand the value of their data, and either do not release it or do not know how to price it because they do not understand the market.
No data, no maps, no policy… Even if they exist, they are not accessible. If you want to generate your own data or maps, then there are legal hassles. The saga of agony of GIS industry in India is long. It is more pitiable, as the rest of the world, particularly the developed one, is taking a number of initiatives to harness the potential of spatial data and mapping technologies for their development. The problems are not at technological level but are more on policy front. There is a woeful absence of a conducive atmosphere for the growth of GIS industry and worse, not much initiatives on the anvil.
GI in India - the status
In fact, in India there is no dearth of data in India. It is a different story that these data are not accessible. As in any other part of the world, in India also, the Government is the biggest generator and consumer of geographic information (GI). To understand the data dissemination of GI, let’s have a look at table 1, which is an attempt to make some sense of the present policy/practice of some important GI generators/stakeholders in the country.
The following inferences may be drawn from the table 1.
Good Institutional Infrastructure
We have a good institutional structure to collect data. Thanks to vision of India’s first Prime Minster Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru, India has a network research institutes which collect and maintain data on every conceivable socially and scientifically relevant subject on the earth. We have institutes on sugarcane, buffaloes, goats, rice and any other geographically relevant subject one can imagine.
Working for themselves
Published data is available mostly with agencies that have been producing it since British rule. Most of the new research institutes/agencies formed after independence failed to develop newer data dissemination strategies. Agriculture and health sector may be an exception, where steps were taken to take scientific research to the masses. But the numerous laboratories established under the aegis of Council of Scientific and Industrial Research and Department of Science and Technology are doing a commendable job in terms of data collection in their respective fields. But there is hardly any policy of these agencies to even develop intra-laboratory data documentation and dissemination systems. Scientific laboratories are more research/ paper publication oriented (and now the tendency to become patent oriented), rather than people oriented.
Still Analogue
Lack of digital data products shows how badly these agencies are out of tune with new technology and time.
E-illiteracy
Few GI stakeholders have a web site. And fewer of them put any worthwhile information on their sites. This displays the poor understanding of these organisations about the importance of information dissemination and global competitiveness. Many of them still do not have an email address!
Who Consumes data?
Interestingly, the government, which prefers to hold data to itself, happens to be the biggest consumers. For example the revenue generated by NRSA during 1998-99 (up to Feb 99) is Rs. 1430 lakhs from various segments of users (figure 1). 83% of the revenue is generated from none but the various government departments (figure 2). Unfortunately, there has never been any investigation on the question which geographic data have been sold to whom at what price. NRSA figures for three years also show that private sector (which presumably are NGOs and private sector) is growing at a fast rate (figure 1).
Some other conclusions we can safely draw from the table are:
- Information about geospatial datasets are difficult to obtain.
- The information available varies greatly in quality between organisations.
- Valuable data sets are held, especially by government bodies, and are not currently available for many reasons.
- Existing datasets have been collected for different specifications so it is not easy to integrate data safely from multiple sources.
- There are presently few services based on data combinations and extraction of added value.
- Most government funded agencies do not understand the value of their data, and either do not release it or do not know how to price it because they do not understand the market.
- Very often, the agencies collect and utilise their own data as part of their institutional mandate and therefore they are less concerned with issues of access to other people’s data unless they provide data to other major players such as the case of mapping agencies
- Most of these agencies do not have the mandate for data dissemination. This results in ad hoc arrangements that benefit neither the public sector as a whole nor the private sector which operates in a climate of extreme uncertainty and variability
Information Scenario in USA, UK and India: A comparison
It is worthwhile to compare the information scenario of India vis-à-vis US and UK (Table 2). In US and UK both the primary sources for spatial databases are government and the private sector. In UK government sector is allowed to copyright the information sources, little is available in public domain. The relevant information available to public domain is generally outdated as it comes to public domain after the expiry of copyright but to the contrary in US where government doesn’t assert its copyright on databases and hence, these data automatically becomes public domain resources (figure 2 and 3).
Both of the US and UK systems have their advantages and disadvantages. The UK set up, although produces high quality public data products, results in dwindling supply of public domain data. In US on the other hand, data are available at decreased end-user costs and offers easy market entry for small innovators but the same set up has the limitation of recovering development costs and leads to unregulated re-dissemination of data.
Since growth of GIS is linked with the availability of affordable spatial data, one can visualise that, as compared to UK, US is better positioned for the growth of GIS industry. As far as India is concerned, it has to go long way. In India, most of the available data have government copyright. There is scarcity of data in the public domain and far more scarcity of commercially copyright databases (figure 4 and 5).
Page 1 of 3
| Next |