Conference Proceedings: National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI)

NSDI Stakeholders and Participation
The stakeholders in the NSDI will be, on one hand, the Government agencies or the spatial information generators and, on the other hand, the users of such spatial information – government, private or the public.

These are many and varied stakeholders to the NSDI and would include:

Government at local, state, national levels (as both users and data collectors/owners)
Non Government Organizations (NGOs)
Community groups
Aid/development organizations
Educational organizations and Academia
Science and environmental community
Private sector information/providers (including the value-added service providers) and end-users
Public sector agencies
Private citizens

Broadly, let us see how different stakeholder groups would participate in the NSDI:

Government, the major enabler, has to play the most important role for NSDI to come into existence. Aiming at transparency in Governance and conducive with the “Right to Information” tenet, Government will have to position policies and implement strategies at various levels. Government agencies will have to take the first step by enabling the NSDI Nodes to come into existence. Government will also be a major user of the NSDI – mainly for its multi-farious developmental activities and administration.
Private Sector, the other major Partner, will have a major role to play in contributing to the design, implementation and operations of NSDI. Not only as task-contracts for implementing NSDI and software development, the private sector will have to rise to the challenge of “pooling resources” to make NSDI a reality. Private sector will also be major benefactors of NSDI for their own contribution to development and growth of business and also by generating information commerce.
NGOs, the outreach agencies, will be a major user community for ensuring that NSDI reaches the different rungs of Society and people access NSDI as an important information service. NGOs will also be users of NSDI for their community development programmes and societal development at grass-root levels.
Academia and research community, providing the research and technology development backbone for NSDI, will be yet another community participating in NSDI. Academia will also be major users of NSDI for imparting their education and training programmes and undertaking scientific research programmes.
Individuals will be the largest group of users of NSDI – satiating their need for accurate spatial information and also for obtaining necessary services for their activities.

NSDI Organisation
As a result the NSDI structure should aspire to:

be inclusive of all stakeholders
add value
build on, facilitate and support existing initiatives
command respect and authority
support sustainable development
be flexible and adaptable to change
facilitate new initiatives especially those relating to the use and sharing of data
be as simple, transparent, open and democratic as possible
enhance decision making processes
engender partnerships

The vital enabling of the NSDI has to be done by the Government.

Figure – 5.1 shows the broad organizational framework for NSDI, involving the various stakeholders.

Figure 5.1 : NSDI - Organisation
The Government – clearly stating the possible benefits and role of different players, must adopt a NSDI Act – the broad statement of intent for the NSDI. The NSDI Act will also lay down guidelines for commitment by different spatial information generating agencies and cover issues of the Organizational framework, custodianship guidelines and liabilities for use etc.

As NSDI will involve various stakeholders. Considering that NSDI will be national endeavor towards transparency and e-governance, a high-level focus is essential for the NSDI activity. A National Spatial Data Commission (NSDC) with a senior Cabinet Minister as Chairperson, Secretaries/Senior Representatives of all committing Ministries/Departments as Members, Representatives of different stakeholder groups and a senior Government official/eminent expert as Member Secretary be established to oversee and coordinate the inter-agency (within and outside Government) aspects of NSDI and also regulate NSDI actions within different Stakeholder groups. The NSDC will also address NSDI Policy issues and pave way for policy/guidelines positioning for NSDI to become a reality.

A NSDI Executive Committee (EC) is proposed - composed of participating Government agencies that generate spatial data and would include other stakeholder representatives. The NSDI-EC would be charged with coordinating the development of the NSDI and will be the overall technical body to oversee the implementation of the NSDI. The NSDI-EC would set up special sub-committees to address technical issues of NSDI Standard, NSDI Metadata, NSDI Intranet and so on. Government may identify a Senior Government Official/Expert to Chair the NSDI-EC.

An NSDI-Nodal Agency (NA) will have to be identified for the NSDI – mainly to coordinate the activities and also serve the NSDI-NGDC and NSDI-EC. The NSDI-NA would draw authority from the NSDI-Act and serve as a technical-secretariat for the NSDI, charged with the responsibility of overall coordination and operations. The NSDI-NA could be a small group of about 25 technical persons (with adequate support groups). While many national organizations like SOI, NRSA, GSI and others merit consideration to be the NSDI-NA, it is felt that the interests of the national endeavors of NSDI would be best served if none of the “participating” agency is solely burdened with the role of the NSDI-NA. The NSDI-NA will have to have the flexibility of “authority” and must be a dynamic and IT savvy entity – having expertise in GIS and spatial data; IT and Networks; web-engines and networks and also be able to “steer” necessary policies, guidelines, standards, operations of electronic clearinghouse activities, operational procedures for NSDI stakeholders to benefit from. In view of the fact that the Department of Science and Technology has the mandate to coordinate all scientific and technological activities – especially those requiring inter-ministerial/departmental coordination, it is recommended that the DST have the nodal responsibility for NSDI. DST would establish an independent entity as the NSDI-NA. The NSDI-NA could draw experts from various stakeholders and emerge as the prime human-resource group for NSDI coordination, technologies and applications.

Each participating central agency, committing a NSDI Node, will have its own high-level NSDI Node High Powered Committee to address all technical and management aspects of NSDI implementation within the agency. A nodal person will be identified by the agency for the NSDI Node. Each agency will adopt its own internal finance and schedule procedures for its NSDI Node to be operational. The agency will coordinate its theme Content Standard, its NSDI Node development and NSDI Node Access rules and procedures.

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