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The benefits of such an approach can be seen from the recent experience of the Northern Ireland government who decided to make use of the Future Search method to develop an initial GI policy agenda for Northern Ireland. According to its inventors, Future Search is 'a unique planning meeting that is used world wide by hundreds of communities and organisations. It meets two goals at the same time, 1) helping large diverse groups discover values, purposes and projects they hold in common, and 2) enabling people to create a desired future together and start working towards it right away (Weissbord and Janoff 2000).' It typically involves a group of 60 to 70 people with many different perspectives that is small enough to engage in a dialogue at every stage in the process. The optimal length for a Future Search meeting is two and a half days with a minimum of four half-day sessions.
With this mind the organisers invited over 50 people and organisations to participate in a GI policy future search on the island of Lusty Beg in the province of Fermanagh in February 2002. The participants included representatives from all the main stakeholders in Northern Ireland together with a number of invited participants from British and European organisations. They were divided into six more or less equal groups: GI industry (technical), GI industry (systems and data), culture arts leisure and tourism, agriculture and environment, emergency services, health and transport, and land property and networks.
One of the most interesting features of the Future Search from the standpoint of coalition formation is the way in which it avoids conflicts and focuses attention on the evolution of a shared agenda. This is done by treating 'problems and conflicts as information rather actions items while searching for common ground and desirable futures.' In essence it is a highly structured process that enables diverse groups of stakeholders to work alongside each other to find common ground. An important feature of this process is the extent to which those involved feel that they have created the desirable futures and have had the opportunity to commit themselves and their organisations to participate in the action plans that concern them most.
The outcomes of this process are clearly reflected in the consultation paper published later by Ordnance Survey Northern Ireland (OSNI 2002). The framework that is proposed sets up steering groups for each key sector with an immediate interest in better coordination. All these sectors were represented at Lusty Beg and it is intended that ownership for these groups be placed with the sector concerned under an overarching coordinating group that will provide a focal point for GI in Northern Ireland.
Another interesting example of coalition formation is the I-Team (or implementation team) initiative that was been set up in America to tackle the problems of upgrading and maintaining the seven framework data layers in the NSDI. It 'aims to offer a coherent set of institutional and financial incentives to make it easier for all levels of government and the private sector to collaborate in the building of the next generation of framework data. By aligning participant needs and resources, the I-Team Initiative will help all levels of government and the private sector to save money, migrate from existing legacy systems, make better user of existing resources, and develop the business case for additional public and private resources (www.fdgc.gov).'
The distinctive feature of this initiative lies in the way that it tries to promote the creation of self organising and self authorising geographic information coalitions at the sub national level. In essence I-teams are ' voluntary, open, flexible and adaptive collaborations for shared capital planning, building, using and financing spatial data. They optimise and align the interdependencies allowing institutions and citizens to rely on and share quality data from other trusted sources.' By March 2004, most of the 50 US states were actively involved in the I-team process and 10 I-teams had already submitted their I-plans.
The potential of the I-team initiative can best be seen from one of the states that have already submitted their I-plans. The work of the Maryland State Geographic Information Committee (MSGIC) in Maryland is a good example of the impact of the I-Team initiative in practice. Maryland's I-team has 64 members. These reflect the wide spread of stakeholder groups: 13 from Maryland state government departments, 6 from US Federal Government agencies, 15 from Maryland County governments, 2 from the Maryland National Capital Park and Planning Commission, 3 from municipalities, 17 from the private sector, 3 from the academic sector, 1 from the utilities, 1 from an NGO, and 1 private citizen (MSGIC 2002).
Institutional development
The next strategic step beyond coalition formation is institutional development. Although professional and scientific associations have an important role to play in SDI development there is also a need for the creation of some form of multi disciplinary, multi sector bodies that are independent from government to represent the interests of the GIS community as a while in SDI development. Given the long term nature of NSDI implementation it is important that this should be a permanent body.
A good example of an umbrella organisation of this kind is the European Umbrella Organisation for Geographic Information (EUROGI) which was set up with initial support from the European Commission in 1993. From the outset EUROGI was seen as an organisation that would not 'replace existing organisations but … catalyse effective cooperation between existing national, international, and discipline oriented bodies to bring added value in the areas of Strategy, Coordination, and Services (Burrough et al 1993).'
EUROGI is an independent not for profit non-governmental organisation (NGO) that seeks to develop a European approach towards the use of geographic information technologies. Its mission is to maximise the use of GI for the benefit of citizens, good governance and commerce. With this in mind it promotes, stimulates, encourages and supports the development and use of geographic information and technology and also acts as the voice of the wider European geographic information community (www.eurogi.org). Its membership is consists mainly of national GI associations (umbrella organisations in themselves at the national level). Overall, these organisations represent more than 6000 member organisations. EUROGI is a 'stichting' under Dutch law that supports a small secretariat based in Apeldoorn in the Netherlands (Masser, Borrero and Holland 2003).
A consultation paper entitled 'Towards a strategy for geographic information in Europe' (EUROGI 2000) sets out EUROGI's five strategic objectives:
- Encouraging greater use of geographic information in Europe: this is the overarching goal as it is vital to ensure that GI is used as widely as possible in both the public and private sectors as well as by individual citizens in the interests of open government.
- Raising awareness of GI and its associated technologies: there is a continuing need to raise awareness in the community as a whole regarding the importance of recent advances in technology and their potential for an increasing range of applications.
- Promoting the development of strong national GI associations: an important element of EUROGI's strategy is to create the institutional capacity to take a lead in SDI formulation and implementation.
- Improving the European spatial data infrastructure: Although many of the main elements of a European infrastructure are already in place in different countries there is still a lack of effective mechanisms at the European level to promote greater harmonisation and interoperability between countries in this respect.
- Representing European interests in the global spatial infrastructure debate: In an era of increasing globalisation it is essential that Europe does not evolve in isolation.
Another interesting example of institutional development is the establishment of a Global Spatial Data Infrastructure Association in February 2004 (www.gasdiassociation.org). Since the first GSDI conference in 1996 it has been increasingly recognised that something more than a conference organisation is required at the global level to promote SDI development (Holland and Borrero 2003). To make this possible a GSDI Association was formally incorporated in the State of Virginia in mid 2002 and a provisional set of byelaws was approved by its interim Council in early 2003. Some 32 organisations had responded positively to the call to join the Association as founder members by February 2004. These formed the initial Council of the Association who elected its first Board of Directors.
The GSDI Association aims to be an inclusive organisation and this is clearly reflected in its subscription levels. Differential rates are levied on public, private, academic and not for profit bodies as well as for bodies from countries with high, medium, low and very low per capita incomes. The founder members of the GSDI Association include umbrella organisations such as EUROGI together with a wide range of other organisations from government, industry, academia and the not for profit sectors from all parts of the world. In this respect it can already be regarded as a multi disciplinary, multi sector not for profit body that is independent of government.
The mission of the GSDI Association is
- to serve as a point of contact and effective voice for those in the global community involved in developing , implementing and advancing SDI concepts
- to foster SDIs that support sustainable social, economic and environmental systems integrated from local to global scales
- to promote the informed and responsible use of geographic information and spatial technologies for the benefit of society.
Its goals are set out in its draft Strategic Plan in the following terms:
- to promote and develop awareness and exchanges on infrastructure issues for all relevant levels from local to global.
- to promote and facilitate standards-based data access/discovery through the Internet.
- to actively promote, encourage, support, and conduct capacity building.
- to promote and conduct SDI development research.
- to establish and support active fund raising programs to conduct the above activities.
Summary and conclusions
This paper has discussed some issues relating to capacity building for SDI development. In the process it has examined the nature of the SDI phenomenon itself with reference to some of the main landmarks in its development and described some of the main features underlying the evolution of SDIs from a first to a second generation. With this in mind some of the challenges that SDI development and implementation poses for capacity building have been explored with particular reference to two key strategic areas in SDI development: coalition formation and institutional development.
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