Welcome to ITC Drs. Sjaak Beerens Director of External Affairs ITC on behalf of Prof. Martien Molenaar, Rector ITC Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen, Colleagues, Friends, Welcome On behalf of the Directorate of ITC I like to welcome you at our Institute for the Sixth GISDECO Seminar. It is particularly heartening to see so many of our alumni and partners in joint development initiatives from across the world. We at ITC are extremely honoured and pleased to host this sixth prestigious seminar of the GISDECO network, a network that is characterised by personal initiative and commitment of its members. ITC aims to host some two to three of this type of conferences annually to enable staff, students and alumni to network, to present their research results as well as to gain new knowledge from others scientists. This seminar focuses on contributions that geographic information technology can make to improving governance in the context of development, in particular in developing countries The Comprehensive Development Framework of the World Bank makes a distinction between physical, institutional and human prerequisites for development. Physical prerequisites relates among others to the use of scarce resources, including space and the effect of resource use on environment. Institutional prerequisites relate to organisations, security, legal and financial aspects, all dealing with governance. Human prerequisites deal with human resources and capability and the institutions to provide capability. Government, Civil Society and Private Sector are considered the primary actors and partners in development in this Framework Civil society relates to government by seeking concessions, benefits, policy changes, relief, redress and accountability. In the current ICT era, government, civil society and private sector will not be able to assume responsibility for and contribute to finding solutions for physical problems unless they have the necessary technical, organisational and human capacity and capability within an appropriate institutional setting New developments in geo – information and communication technology, or GEO-ICT in short make it possible for government, civil society and private sector alike to more easily and more timely gather, process and analyse geographical data and develop or derive the information products and services for both decision making and monitoring It makes governance more transparent, government decisions more credible with civil society at large in a position to gauge relevance and appropriateness of government decisions. That brings me to the role of ITC because it is precisely that, what ITC has been supporting since its founding in 1950 by Willem Schermerhorn Foremost in our efforts in this respect throughout these years has been the building of capacity and capability by educating and training professionals from the developing world in geographic information technology, although named differently in the early years of our existence. In these early years emphasis was placed on technical solutions. As times changed and demand developed our programmes evolved to include organisational issues while considerable effort was made to support both professional and educationa! organisations. The results of ITC’s efforts can be found all over the developing world. As the world changes continuously, so does demand for our products and services. In short, ladies and gentlemen, it’s never a dull moment at ITC. Over the years we had to expand our agenda to include application domains that have become of more outspoken relevance, such as disaster management. Another interesting development has been the trend in geospatial data and information handling. from static inventories to modelling the dynamic processes of the environment. More recently the issue of geo-information management and geo-spatial data infrastructure have become apparent, reasons for ITC to adapt. In this respect I like to refer to our Strategic I lan covering the period 2001-2004, which was recently published. One of the components in that Strategic Plan is our new research programme that pays specific attention to governance in one of the five spearheads of that programme, entitled Geo-information Provision for Strengthening Civil Society. We recognize the urgency to strengthen government, the supply side of good governance as well as civil society, the demand side for good governance, so that they can both become good partners in development, in terms of assuming responsibility and accountability for their actions We have the impression that organisations responsible for the provision and development of geo-spatial data and information are not yet able to assert and develop their role as fundamental data providers. We also assume that civil society-government-private sector relationships are as yet not streamhlined for optimal benefit to all parties Our educational programmes address those issues. Another component of our strategic plan that confirms our commitment to strengthening governance processes is the decentralisation of our educational programmes to the home countries of our course participants through ]oint educational programmes in which course participants spent part of their ITC education in their home country and spend a much shorter period at ITC. The strategy recognizes that mid-career professionals in government, civil society and private sector have increasingly more difficulties to leave home (both work and family) for an extended period This strategy simultaneously recognizes the capabilities and capacity that have been developed all over the world, also as part of international education. This is reconfirmed by the presentations and posters put forward at this seminar, to which I am looking forward to with considerable interest. Ladies and gentlemen, I like to finalise my word of welcome by wishing you a very successful, useful and fruitful seminar. Thank you very much.