3 The evolving role of national mapping organisations
There are a range of external drivers and forces for change that are directly affecting NMOs worldwide. These can be summarised as follows:

1. Changing models of government: governments across the world are looking carefully at how they can formulate and enforce policies and deliver services in more integrated ways. Many governments are adopting aggressive targets for online service delivery, while voters are increasingly looking for more transparency and accountability within the provision of these services. Options to deregulate, privatise or outsource traditionally public sector activities are continually being reviewed.
2. Technology: the advent of mobile communications, the Internet, spatial databases, cheap computing power and fast networks have irrevocably changed the world. Technology allows traditional mapping organisations to realise efficiencies, but it also allows reduces former barriers to competitors entering the market.
3. Globalisation: global production, global trade and flows of both resources and capital have intensified competition and are forcing businesses to broaden their strategic horizons. Put simply, you have to focus on your core competences or risk being outflanked. The global marketplace also renders obsolete proprietary or parochial solutions; international standards and interoperability are vital.
4. Changing customer needs: customers expect better value and better fitness for purpose and increasingly they are able to directly compare alternative offerings through e-commerce. Furthermore, procurement processes within organisations are tending to be far more rigorous in demonstrating good value. GI accordingly needs to be absolutely focused on customer needs, and drive improvement programmes accordingly.

NMOs will continue to be highly relevant so long as they can anticipate and respond to the world around them. In order to underpin better governance and better services to customers, we can observe that:

• cartography is merely one expression of the spatial database;
• geometry is no longer enough: topology, attribution and metadata are assuming greater importance; and
• better maintenance and currency of data is essential

Underlying all of these lies an implicit set of assertions; that geography continues to matter; that geographical interpretation and analysis can increasingly be automated; that there is compelling value in providing an authoritative and robust means for disparate databases and sources of information to integrate and interoperate.