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The impact of culture on National Spatial Data Clearinghouses
Joep Crompvoets and Harm Kossen
Wageningen UR, Centre for Geo-Information
P.O. Box 47, 6700 AA, Wageningen, The Netherlands
Tel. (+31) 317 474399 Fax. (+31) 317-474567
Email: Joep.Crompvoets@Staff.GIRS.WAU.nl,
harm.kossen@student@girs.wau
Abstract
The main topic of this poster is to present an approach to analyse the impact of national culture on
National Spatial Data Clearinghouses. The empirical methodology applied is based on the cultural
dimensions as described by Hofstede (1980, 1997) and several clearinghouse characteristics. From this
research, it can not be concluded that culture has a profound impact on the quality of implemented
clearinghouses. However, dimension Masculinity/Femininity has a slight impact on the quality
(visibility) of National Spatial clearinghouses.
Introduction
Designing and implementing a National Spatial Data Infrastructure has become a high priority for
many nations. A Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) can be considered as a mechanism, which is able to
reduce time, money and effort in assessing national spatial core datasets and to avoid unnecessary
duplication in the harmonisation and standardisation of required datasets by promoting the sharing of
available data. This is a national strategic implementation project because it could have potentially a
very significant contributor to economic wealth in the emerging age of electronic commerce.
Implementing a NSDI requires political leaders to make key decisions on its structure and
management. Their decisions often reflect the cultural values held by the country. One of the key
components of a National SDI is the national spatial data clearinghouse (besides Standards,
Institutional frameworks, Network architectures, Clearinghouses, Policy, Legislation and Human
Resources). The subject of this poster is mainly focused on the impact of national culture on the
quality of clearinghouses. Spatial data clearinghouses can be defined as a system of software and
institutions to facilitate the discovery, evaluation, and downloading of digital spatial data, which
usually consists of a number of servers on the Internet that contain information about available digital
spatial data known as meta-data.
Implementations of clearinghouses on national level do not spread equally rapidly across countries,
and this can not be attributed to wealth only. Countries react differently to the implementation of new
technologies, for example GIS and clearinghouses, and cultural differences could be a base for this. It
is believed that cultural conditions primarily determine the desirability to accept information
technologies. The cultural desirability specifically relates to the functionality of GIS: communication
and information sharing, strategic planning, operational planning and management, and monitoring
and evaluation (Toorn en de Man, 2000). Clearinghouses will address communication and information
sharing and here differences in culture could be especially obvious since it is these clearinghouses that
will provide for a lot of openness and “visibility” not always desired by cultures. Although “non-technical”
issues have been recognised as having influence on the implementation of new
technologies, there is little literature that treats what can be done in advance to assess the social system
of a country and its implications for the implementation of new technologies (Toorn en de Man, 2000).
The implementation of clearinghouse has only just begun (first implementation 1994), and therefor it
will be interesting to see what the influence of culture is on this implementation. Although there have
been a growing number of successes in clearinghouse implementations, there is also a considerable
record of failures. In some cases, the reasons can be traced to under-estimation of the cultural factors
in the organisations, which affect the implementation. With cultural differences in mind, it could be
helpful in setting up action plans for the creation and improvement of new clearinghouses. For this
purpose, it is important to observe differences in culture by describing them with operational variables
(or dimensions) in culture.
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