GISdevelopment.net --> Proceedings --> GISDECO --> 2004
Abstract
In support of formulating future training, educational and capacity building strategies for Geospatial Data Infrastructure (GDI), this paper describes the results of an ex post evaluation of the various training and education experiences of ITC in this subject. ITC have conducted a number of courses in GDI in recent years, varying in length, scope, participants, participants’ professional or academic background, objectives and purpose. These include modules in regular GI Management and Geoinformatics programmes, refresher courses on GDI for ITC alumni in South Africa (2002) and Ethiopia (2003), and modules for Dutch University students, amongst others. For all these courses data have been collected through ex ante expectation and ex post evaluation questionnaires, through monitoring GDI training requests, interviews with selected participants, regular communication with various national GDI coordinating committees and managers in Africa and Asia, by module and course coordinators evaluation reports, and through an analysis of future GDI requirements in literature.
From these empirical data, a number of conclusions are derived concerning:
From these conclusions a number of recommendations are derived how to develop and improve GDI courses for developing countries in the future.
Introduction.
The concepts of Geospatial Data infrastructure (GDI) have been around since the early nineties of the last century (Coleman and McLaughlin, 1997; Groot and McLaughlin, 2000; Masser, 1998), although some already made mention of the issue in the eighties (Branscomb, 1982). From within the “Geoinformation (GI) world” various initiatives and international bodies are now actively promoting a GDI, such as the GSDI association, CODI-Geo in Africa, Permanent Committees of the United Nations (PCGIAP, PC IDEA), etc. Furthermore, the agenda / topics included in the GI oriented / related conferences of 2004 show a clear interest in the topic of GDI, such as:
This paper describes the evaluations of the various training and education experiences of ITC in this subject. GDI has many components, stakeholders, many sorts of participants with all different interests. ITC have conducted a number of courses on the topic of GDI in recent years, varying in length, scope, participants, participants’ professional or academic background, objectives and purpose. These include modules in regular GI Management and Geoinformatics programmes, short courses (3 months) on GDI and core GI providers and development of organizations in a GDI environment, refresher courses on GDI for ITC alumni in South Africa (2002) and Ethiopia (2003), and modules for Dutch University students, amongst others. Yet, the challenge with any training and education in GDI remains how to develop a content of a curriculum that is comprehensive and that can lead to sustainable capacity building. This challenge is made more complex because:
As a result, formulating future training, educational and capacity building strategies for GDI seems complex, and will therefore need to be brought to a higher level based on past experiences. For all ITC courses related to the GDI topic, data have been collected through ex ante expectation and ex post evaluation questionnaires, through monitoring GDI training requests, interviews with selected participants, regular communication with various national GDI coordinating committees and managers in Africa and Asia, by module and course coordinators evaluation reports, and an analysis of future GDI requirements in literature. This paper provides a summary and analysis of these evaluations.
Statistics of ITC courses, course participants and course requests.
There have been and still are regular requests for short courses or support for training in the GDI in particular. One could categorize such requests as follows:
Although most of such requests would require tailor-made training and/or structural education development, such is not always possible or feasible. It does indicate however, an increasing structural need to include GDI (related) topics in regular curricula, and, on another level, to customize training efforts to specific events.
The following recent courses were given on GDI:
On the relation of participants to actual development of GDI it can be concluded that after the training /education, most participants returned to daily work. Only some 15 % of all participants have become or are becoming actively involved in national or sub national GDI development.
It must also be said that the age groups and years of experience are quite different for each of the courses. For the UT minor for example the age of the participants was between 20 and 23. Comparing this to the refresher courses for ITC alumni, one could find participants having studied at ITC as far back as in 1980, and thus having become senior staff at their respective organizations. In the first case the emphasis is on putting technical -often IT or engineering related- knowledge in a broader, or even societal, context, whereas for the alumni it is sometimes the opposite, i.e. relating the societal context to newly arising opportunities in technology. Both are however in a state of flux, and transferring knowledge will this require continuous adaptation. It shows however also that GDI awareness exists mainly among GI or GI related scientists and professionals, and not so much in public administration, or other infrastructure providers (ICT, Telecom, planning, etc.).
Common for all courses is still that the ‘GDI knowledge container’ is still relatively small to provide a full long-term (longer than 3-6 months) course on the topic. For most participants it is either a ‘small’ topic as part of a larger topic GI(S), or an extension of the knowledge and application of GI(S). It is thus not feasible to create and offer a full degree programme on developing and maintaining a GDI including all the components for the near future. The approach of continuous professional training, such as the refresher courses or tailor-made courses seems therefore still the best solution for the time being.
Participants’ expectations, evaluations, needs and requests.
The evaluation of the quality of the courses depends on the type of course. For regular programmes only ex post evaluations are possible, with the aim to verify whether the objectives of the course were met, and whether the knowledge and skills offered were at the appropriate entry and quality level. Comparing the evaluations thus provide an insight in how much GDI fits within other courses which focus mainly on technology and/or organizational improvement (assuming the quality of the educational delivery remains the same). For clarity the objectives of the regular courses are first:
A summary of the responses and comments :
It must be said also that the issue of geoinformation management (in contrast to geoinformation technology, or application) can be incorporated in all levels of (public and/or private) organizations. It has emerged as a particular topic of interest in organizations producing and providing mostly large volume datasets. In these organizations there is an increasing need to provide flexible products in a 24-hour economy. This requires new information management techniques. Many of these can be applied to develop increase data sharing and exchange, and this provide more relevant tools for the development and maintenance of the GDI. As GDI is in essence transorganizational, inter-organizational and intra-organizational, it is not surprising that within the evaluations of the GIM course participants practical development and management strategies are considered important.
A critical challenge is however still a good consistent theoretical framework to have all elements of GDI fit well. The variety of topics offered – ranging from very technical to legal, economic and organizational – still makes the GDI concept appear to encompass basically everything in society. There is no consistent theory, logic or reasoning from which participants can derive conclusions on how to manage and develop a GDI. As result, most participants remain confused on the relation between the topics, and are ambiguous in their answers on which topic to keep included and which to omit.
For the tailor made courses it is easier to make ex ante evaluations, or an assessment of expectations. The expectations of participants again obviously differ per course, and per degree of familiarity with GDI and need for specific knowledge on GDI. In fact, there is some degree of overlap between the expectations and the familiarity with GDI topics. Therefore, comparing the results of these evaluations of two different – in time- delivered courses – assuming the course topics have roughly remained the same - provides an insight in how much the familiarity has increased over the years. Such evaluations were carried out during two refresher courses on the issue of GDI. The summarized results are given below:
Requests and suggestions for follow up include:
Content shift What has been addressed on the issue of GDI has varied throughout the years. In the 90’s the issue was usually approached from two major angles, i.e. the technical angle (mainly focusing on standards and integrating databases), and the institutional angle (mainly focusing on data policies and –lack of / need for – institutional cooperation.
When each of these angles were addressed in more detail, the content of the GDI courses evolved to become very eclectic, i.e. addressing the various issues involved with GDI, such as:
This eclectic approach seems to be particularly useful when the participants are either in the awareness phase with GDI or at the first stages of GDI development. At this time, ‘technologists’ face the constraints of regulations or budgets, while policy and legislation makers are confronted with new technologies. GDI, in analogy to many other multisectoral topics, such as planning, decision-support systems, etc., must than be offered as a container of broad spectrum of inter-related topics. Main objective at this stage is awareness and exploration.
A logical follow up to this is to focus on:
Summarizing and analysing the above, the following can be observed:
There is no blueprint for course in GDI, given the variety of participants in courses on GDI. Where originally GDI was treated as a minor concept, it has evolved in a full topic now addressed in specific modules and courses at ITC. It is clear that the interest in the topic has increased, but there is also the danger that most of the issues resorting under the GDI topic have too much a conceptual focus, and are not enough related to practice and implementation. Whilst the focus is on concepts, these concepts of GDI still lack a certain degree of scientific grounded theory. There are no normative guidelines, which are tested and/or proved appropriate. Technology is probably still driving most of the changes and directions, but there is an increasing awareness that this technology must be used in the most wanted and desirable direction. The ones that can determine this direction can only be the stakeholders. A stakeholder-centric approach seems therefore the most likely direction from which grounded GDI theories and methodologies can develop. Yet, whatever the content of this is, is part of the discussion on GDI. Training and education can play a vital role in providing and transferring the existing knowledge, theory and experiences to enable such discussions at a broader platform.
References
GDI Training in Practice: an Analysis Based on ITC’s Experiences
Walter T. de Vries
Urban and Regional Planning and Geoinformation Management (PGM)
International Institute for Geoinformation Science and Earth Observation (ITC)
Netherlands
Walter T. de Vries
Urban and Regional Planning and Geoinformation Management (PGM)
International Institute for Geoinformation Science and Earth Observation (ITC)
Netherlands
Abstract
In support of formulating future training, educational and capacity building strategies for Geospatial Data Infrastructure (GDI), this paper describes the results of an ex post evaluation of the various training and education experiences of ITC in this subject. ITC have conducted a number of courses in GDI in recent years, varying in length, scope, participants, participants’ professional or academic background, objectives and purpose. These include modules in regular GI Management and Geoinformatics programmes, refresher courses on GDI for ITC alumni in South Africa (2002) and Ethiopia (2003), and modules for Dutch University students, amongst others. For all these courses data have been collected through ex ante expectation and ex post evaluation questionnaires, through monitoring GDI training requests, interviews with selected participants, regular communication with various national GDI coordinating committees and managers in Africa and Asia, by module and course coordinators evaluation reports, and through an analysis of future GDI requirements in literature.
From these empirical data, a number of conclusions are derived concerning:
- The origin and type of organizations requesting training in GDI.
- Their expectations concerning content of such training.
- The relative percentage of trainees that actually starts working in GDI development after their training.
- The degree of GDI awareness among GI or GI related scientists and professionals.
- The entry requirements of participants to make a course in GDI successful.
- The degree to which GDI concepts and technology development are in sync with GDI reality and current GDI implementation strategies.
- The difference in courses that emphasize either management skills or technical skills.
- The degree to which one can rely on scientific paradigms for GDI courses.
From these conclusions a number of recommendations are derived how to develop and improve GDI courses for developing countries in the future.
Introduction.
The concepts of Geospatial Data infrastructure (GDI) have been around since the early nineties of the last century (Coleman and McLaughlin, 1997; Groot and McLaughlin, 2000; Masser, 1998), although some already made mention of the issue in the eighties (Branscomb, 1982). From within the “Geoinformation (GI) world” various initiatives and international bodies are now actively promoting a GDI, such as the GSDI association, CODI-Geo in Africa, Permanent Committees of the United Nations (PCGIAP, PC IDEA), etc. Furthermore, the agenda / topics included in the GI oriented / related conferences of 2004 show a clear interest in the topic of GDI, such as:
This paper describes the evaluations of the various training and education experiences of ITC in this subject. GDI has many components, stakeholders, many sorts of participants with all different interests. ITC have conducted a number of courses on the topic of GDI in recent years, varying in length, scope, participants, participants’ professional or academic background, objectives and purpose. These include modules in regular GI Management and Geoinformatics programmes, short courses (3 months) on GDI and core GI providers and development of organizations in a GDI environment, refresher courses on GDI for ITC alumni in South Africa (2002) and Ethiopia (2003), and modules for Dutch University students, amongst others. Yet, the challenge with any training and education in GDI remains how to develop a content of a curriculum that is comprehensive and that can lead to sustainable capacity building. This challenge is made more complex because:
- The background of those needing or those interested in GDI is increasingly heterogeneous, as a result of:
- Rapid changes in technology and technological applications acquired knowledge and skills are becoming sooner out of date; as a result, the value of an educational background is dependant on time of education.
- GDI requires knowledge and skills at all levels of organizations and organizational networks
- The theory of GDI seems multidisciplinary, based on assumed knowledge and experience with Geoinformatics and ICT technology, (information) management tools and science and/or public administration science and experience.
As a result, formulating future training, educational and capacity building strategies for GDI seems complex, and will therefore need to be brought to a higher level based on past experiences. For all ITC courses related to the GDI topic, data have been collected through ex ante expectation and ex post evaluation questionnaires, through monitoring GDI training requests, interviews with selected participants, regular communication with various national GDI coordinating committees and managers in Africa and Asia, by module and course coordinators evaluation reports, and an analysis of future GDI requirements in literature. This paper provides a summary and analysis of these evaluations.
Statistics of ITC courses, course participants and course requests.
There have been and still are regular requests for short courses or support for training in the GDI in particular. One could categorize such requests as follows:
- Originating from ITC alumni requesting for updating of knowledge, as part of (often voluntary) continuous professional development.
- Triggered by local developments in countries or regions where GDI committees or institutions are being developed. Currently there are many initiatives of national GDI developments around the world, but there seems to be a significant demand for capacity building in South Asia (India, Nepal, China for example), Southern Africa (SADC countries), Eastern Africa (IGAD countries), Latin America.
- Prompted by the opportunities to reach out to many participants during a conference. Such could be professional, domain-specific and/or academic conferences, or specific national GDI workshops.
- Initiated by multilateral conferences or meetings, often UN related (think of CODI-III)
- Generated by on-going projects dealing with institutional development and capacity building in geo-information systems and/or GI administration.
Although most of such requests would require tailor-made training and/or structural education development, such is not always possible or feasible. It does indicate however, an increasing structural need to include GDI (related) topics in regular curricula, and, on another level, to customize training efforts to specific events.
The following recent courses were given on GDI:
On the relation of participants to actual development of GDI it can be concluded that after the training /education, most participants returned to daily work. Only some 15 % of all participants have become or are becoming actively involved in national or sub national GDI development.
It must also be said that the age groups and years of experience are quite different for each of the courses. For the UT minor for example the age of the participants was between 20 and 23. Comparing this to the refresher courses for ITC alumni, one could find participants having studied at ITC as far back as in 1980, and thus having become senior staff at their respective organizations. In the first case the emphasis is on putting technical -often IT or engineering related- knowledge in a broader, or even societal, context, whereas for the alumni it is sometimes the opposite, i.e. relating the societal context to newly arising opportunities in technology. Both are however in a state of flux, and transferring knowledge will this require continuous adaptation. It shows however also that GDI awareness exists mainly among GI or GI related scientists and professionals, and not so much in public administration, or other infrastructure providers (ICT, Telecom, planning, etc.).
Common for all courses is still that the ‘GDI knowledge container’ is still relatively small to provide a full long-term (longer than 3-6 months) course on the topic. For most participants it is either a ‘small’ topic as part of a larger topic GI(S), or an extension of the knowledge and application of GI(S). It is thus not feasible to create and offer a full degree programme on developing and maintaining a GDI including all the components for the near future. The approach of continuous professional training, such as the refresher courses or tailor-made courses seems therefore still the best solution for the time being.
Participants’ expectations, evaluations, needs and requests.
The evaluation of the quality of the courses depends on the type of course. For regular programmes only ex post evaluations are possible, with the aim to verify whether the objectives of the course were met, and whether the knowledge and skills offered were at the appropriate entry and quality level. Comparing the evaluations thus provide an insight in how much GDI fits within other courses which focus mainly on technology and/or organizational improvement (assuming the quality of the educational delivery remains the same). For clarity the objectives of the regular courses are first:
| Objectives of more information management oriented courses on GDI (GI Management – GIM) | Objectives of more technically oriented courses on GDI (Geoinformatics – GFM) |
| - Develop and implement strategies to improve the performance of organisations with a mandate to provide large-volume spatial data sets - Develop and implement strategies to align the geo-information business of the organisation with geo-information technology - Manage the design, testing, implementation and maintenance of a geospatial data infrastructure structure and model data and operational processes in a way that allows organisations to respond to customers' information requests - Organise the information production process so that redundancy in data acquisition and storage are reduced; provision of geo-information is accurate, appropriate, in the right place and at the right time; and extraction/analysis of information from spatial data for particular purposes is possible at any given time by any given customer Identify performance indicators and implement performance measurement in organisations Recognise the institutional setting of organisations and the impact of this setting on performance, and develop proposals for improvement - Maximise data sharing and minimise data duplication - Develop the coordination machinery to implement a national geospatial data infrastructure |
-Identify objectives of GDI as an integrated enterprise networking GIS organizations to support access to data and services in each organizations -Identify the functional links of the contributing organizations in such GDI and the various options for services and service delivery; -Identify in a structural way the various aspects which blue prints the system architecture of GDI and influence its development and performance -Describe functional aspects of information system in own GI organization (system user, services and various options for services development and delivery, data flows and processes, information management in databases, technical and institutional constraints, performance assessment and improvement); -Use Internet facilities and associate tools to access a clearinghouse and download information hosted in various GI organizations -Identify the potential of tools to support system design and development; -Participate in similar activities in own countries. |
A summary of the responses and comments :
It must be said also that the issue of geoinformation management (in contrast to geoinformation technology, or application) can be incorporated in all levels of (public and/or private) organizations. It has emerged as a particular topic of interest in organizations producing and providing mostly large volume datasets. In these organizations there is an increasing need to provide flexible products in a 24-hour economy. This requires new information management techniques. Many of these can be applied to develop increase data sharing and exchange, and this provide more relevant tools for the development and maintenance of the GDI. As GDI is in essence transorganizational, inter-organizational and intra-organizational, it is not surprising that within the evaluations of the GIM course participants practical development and management strategies are considered important.
A critical challenge is however still a good consistent theoretical framework to have all elements of GDI fit well. The variety of topics offered – ranging from very technical to legal, economic and organizational – still makes the GDI concept appear to encompass basically everything in society. There is no consistent theory, logic or reasoning from which participants can derive conclusions on how to manage and develop a GDI. As result, most participants remain confused on the relation between the topics, and are ambiguous in their answers on which topic to keep included and which to omit.
For the tailor made courses it is easier to make ex ante evaluations, or an assessment of expectations. The expectations of participants again obviously differ per course, and per degree of familiarity with GDI and need for specific knowledge on GDI. In fact, there is some degree of overlap between the expectations and the familiarity with GDI topics. Therefore, comparing the results of these evaluations of two different – in time- delivered courses – assuming the course topics have roughly remained the same - provides an insight in how much the familiarity has increased over the years. Such evaluations were carried out during two refresher courses on the issue of GDI. The summarized results are given below:
- From learning the key concepts, people have become more interested in understanding the strategic benefits and advantages of GDI. This shows that participants have become aware through some means of the basic key concepts, but are now ready to evaluate these concepts in a broader perspective.
- Rather than a specific need for how to develop practical metadata, participants needed / expected a broader insight in data protocols and standards.
- From further training and education, most participants are now talking about capacity building. This shows that the need for GDI is being incorporated in more structural national or organizational needs, rather than skill and knowledge generation needs.
- The importance of regional networking is increasing in importance. Where most countries have started their GDI discussions at national level, certain parts of the GDI, in particular those domains dealing with cross-boundary phenomena, may well need regional approaches. A number of such regional for a are being established.
- The issue of economics was not so much favoured in the second course. This was somewhat surprising, because the GI pricing dilemmas were as prominent in southern as in eastern Africa. It may however have to do with the different public administration policies, which are developing in the different regions. Furthermore, it is also possible that most participants of the second course have realised that economics are more part of the strategic objectives of GDI.
Requests and suggestions for follow up include:
- regular, regional short courses on the latest developments in GDI, because the topic and the issues addressed under this topic are still changing constantly;
- provide different courses for mid career professionals than for school/college / university leavers; also differentiate between ‘hard-core’ technology (focusing on metadata, OpenGIS, interoperability, etc.) and technology / information management (focusing on improving cooperation, aligning business processes, etc.)
- include besides the traditional public administration agencies and private mapping firms more NGO’s and universities in the target groups for these kind of courses
- continuous, professional feedback, because in most countries in Africa the NSDI’s are now being discussed in a more organized way and this developed more consistently
Content shift What has been addressed on the issue of GDI has varied throughout the years. In the 90’s the issue was usually approached from two major angles, i.e. the technical angle (mainly focusing on standards and integrating databases), and the institutional angle (mainly focusing on data policies and –lack of / need for – institutional cooperation.
When each of these angles were addressed in more detail, the content of the GDI courses evolved to become very eclectic, i.e. addressing the various issues involved with GDI, such as:
- Concept of GDI
- How GDI supports public administration objectives and reform
- Institutional arrangements between spatial data producers
- Economic and funding aspects of GDI
- Legality of spatial data and legal instruments for spatial data production
- Sharing and exchange of spatial data through clearinghouses and standards
- How internet can support spatial data use and exchange
- GDI at local level
- How GDI can support dynamic map themes, include HIV prevalence, poverty maps, civil disturbances and food security.
This eclectic approach seems to be particularly useful when the participants are either in the awareness phase with GDI or at the first stages of GDI development. At this time, ‘technologists’ face the constraints of regulations or budgets, while policy and legislation makers are confronted with new technologies. GDI, in analogy to many other multisectoral topics, such as planning, decision-support systems, etc., must than be offered as a container of broad spectrum of inter-related topics. Main objective at this stage is awareness and exploration.
A logical follow up to this is to focus on:
- The integration of these issues, looking from a stakeholder’s point of view combining technical aspects, managerial / organizational aspects and policy / institutional aspects:
- The details of certain issues, i.e. technical portal development, legal bill / act development, managerial tool development, etc. In this case there is more targeted knowledge delivery, assuming also a targeted group of participants. Such delivery may be either through tailor-made short courses, or specific programmes. The major challenge in this case is the methodology of how to design a training programme that supports a specific strategic objective. As often these specific objectives for GDI are not yet developed, designing the training programme is also not really possible. The solution is here to develop the training in joint cooperation with the major developers and / or managers of the GDI.
Summarizing and analysing the above, the following can be observed:
There is no blueprint for course in GDI, given the variety of participants in courses on GDI. Where originally GDI was treated as a minor concept, it has evolved in a full topic now addressed in specific modules and courses at ITC. It is clear that the interest in the topic has increased, but there is also the danger that most of the issues resorting under the GDI topic have too much a conceptual focus, and are not enough related to practice and implementation. Whilst the focus is on concepts, these concepts of GDI still lack a certain degree of scientific grounded theory. There are no normative guidelines, which are tested and/or proved appropriate. Technology is probably still driving most of the changes and directions, but there is an increasing awareness that this technology must be used in the most wanted and desirable direction. The ones that can determine this direction can only be the stakeholders. A stakeholder-centric approach seems therefore the most likely direction from which grounded GDI theories and methodologies can develop. Yet, whatever the content of this is, is part of the discussion on GDI. Training and education can play a vital role in providing and transferring the existing knowledge, theory and experiences to enable such discussions at a broader platform.
References
- Branscomb, A., 1982. Beyond Deregulation: Designing the Information Infrastructure. The Information Society Journal, I: 67-90.
- Coleman, D.J. and McLaughlin, J., 1997. Defining Global Geospatial Data Infrastructure: , ,. Geomatica(52): 29-43.
- Georgiadou, Y. and Groot, R., 2002. Capacity building for geo-information provision: a public goods perspective, GISDECO 2002 - Governance and the use of GIS, Enschede, Netherlands, pp. 11-13.
- Georgiadou, Y. and Roy, P.S., 2004. Policy development and capacity building for the Indian NSDI initiative: an emerging research agenda, Global Spatial Data Infrastructure GSDI7, Bangalore, India.
- Groot, R. and McLaughlin, J., 2000. Geospatial data infrastructure : concepts, cases, and good practice / Richard Groot and John McLaughlin. Spatial information systems. Oxford University Press, Oxford, XXXII, 286 pp.
- Masser, I., 1998. The First Generation of National Geographic Information Strategies, GSDI.
- Reece, K., 2004. Defining and evaluating the criteria for effective implementation of a national geospatial clearinghouse in Jamaica. MSc Thesis, ITC, Enschede, 119 pp.
- Vries & Beerens, W.T.d.S., 2002. Economic and capacity implications of Geo-ICT. GIS@Development, March 2002.