By: Valrie Grant, Managing Director GeoTechVision
This is the third in a series of articles Geographic Information Systems – Bringing it all together. In the last article we looked at what is SDI and some of the requirements for establishing a National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI). This article will focus on how a well-established NSDI can be the backbone for the integration of organizational work processes facilitating seamless planning and coordination of work activities across government entities and private businesses.
Critical factors affecting
economic development
Apart from the lack of financial resources, some of the other major factors impacting sustaine d economic development are:
* Inefficient use of scarce resources
* Poor planning and coordination of economic activi
ties across stakeholders
* Rework or stalling of projects because of poor inte
gration
* A siloed mind-set or hidden information that does
not allow all stakeholders to fully participate
* Duplication of activities leading to double spending.
While these factors may be influenced by other unavoidable situations, a well-developed NSDI facilitates planning, coordination and resource usage in a more efficient way. It must be noted that NSDI requires supporting components to yield the expected result – the regulatory and legal framework, training and human capacity development, financial resources for maintaining the infrastructure and investing in new technologies, an open data framework – among others. The thought is that once a commitment is made to developing a NSDI, then there will be concomitant posture to ensure it remains in place.
To achieve this the proper framework and governing structure must be established. The suggestion is to have a National Geospatial Advisory Council which is responsible for organizing the development and maintenance of a NSDI. Such a council could be supported by a secretariat to implement the directives of the council. The secretariat would be responsible for and would have the responsibility for coordinating, implementing and managing the National Spatial Data Infrastructure as well as National GIS programmes and projects.
How does a NSDI help in fostering
sustained economic development?
Let us illustrate. With a well-developed NSDI supported by the necessary regulatory and legal framework, data collected by state agencies should all have the same reference system and would have the same base data. Base data is that which forms the foundation on which to build complex data model geared towards specific uses. It would be the responsibility of the council to ensure that all stakeholders participate in ensuring that the referenced base data is kept up to date at all times. For example, if the ministry of land has the responsibility of knowing who owns and for what purpose every square metre of land is being used for at any given time – then if agriculture land use should change, which would be the portfolio of the ministry of agriculture, a submission must be made to the ministry of land automatically (electronically in the requisite format and with associated data). Better yet the submission could be part of the approval process. Once approved the land use base data is automatically updated. A similar procedure could accompany land ownership change.
Modifications to structures or building on land could have a similar permitting process and the local authority given responsibilities to ensure that any such land use change in residential and commercial district is lodged appropriately.
The ministry of housing has the responsibility of ensuring all residential development is properly regulated and also to provide housing for the country’s citizens. The ministry of housing must therefore provide all housing data to the agency that has land use as its portfolio. The permitting process should again include a submission, which on approval for development automatically update the relevant base data.
The ministry of health, through its public health arm, needs data on residential living to do monitoring of living conditions, monitoring and tracking the spread of communicable diseases and also for clinic placements and resource utilization. Public health workers are used to do physical visits to homes and they can be used to verify data and provide updates on living conditions. Health inspectors do a similar job for businesses and need to know where all business activities are conducted across a country particularly those involved in food handling. These thematic datasets will all feed into the NSDI.
Often, a new road infrastructure is announced with great fanfare and delivered to a community. Within weeks or months, utility company can be seen excavating the same road surface that was laid a few months ago. Even when repaired, the road surface is never the same as when initially laid. While one can understand emergency repairs, what if a platform existed where all utilities are required to submit with advanced planning their infrastructure upgrade plans and areas affected so that the public infrastructure ministry can assist utility companies in better coordinating their activities. What if this was mandatory? Better coordination and timely execution of public and private projects with less need for rework would be the result.
One can readily see the benefits that working on a common platform can yield in efficient use of resources, provision of up-to-date information, integration of activities of various agencies and a platform for better planning and coordination of economic activities is born. That is what a well-developed NSDI provides. Multiply this kind of process integration across all government ministries and agencies in education, transport, business development, security, etc., and the benefits of a NSDI increases exponentially.
All ministries and their agencies have a need to provide data updates because they utilise the same in their daily activities. This need drives the process for keeping data current once the process facilitating this is in place. This means that a data vetting and verification mechanism must also be in place.
The same concept can be applied to private business and institutions that interfaces with governments and are involved in the economic activities. Some basic government policy which states that any activity which involves an agency which either creates or uses spatial data must comply with a certain procedure or process. Business which interfaces with its agencies and ministries that are involved in activities which creates or modifies spatial information must also follow some defined processes. Also a policy which speaks to any land based structures with some permanence must go through a permitting process which involves the submission of the requisite spatial data – location, boundaries architectural drawings etc. This would all form part of the regulatory process of government and at the same time ensure up to date spatial information is provided or collected.
With this kind of organizational process and infrastructure, the framework for developing and overlaying demographics information with all kinds of data can provide a multi-dimension model of economic activities and forms the basis for analytics and economic intelligence thus facilitating timely and effective decision making.
Data privacy and confidentiality
Not to be excluded, is the issue of data privacy and confidentiality. This aspect of data/information can be built into a NSDI framework via a data classification framework that would see access to certain data being provided only to those who have a need for it. Current database management systems have the capability of providing encryption and access to a very granular level. So if and when required, a data classification framework can be used to provide the necessary data privacy and confidentiality at a very granular level.
Spatial Data Infrastructures are all about improving critical business processes. Governments that implement NSDI enhances their operations and inevitably experience greater efficiencies. Various departments and agencies usually have the necessary tools for quantitative analysis and visualization which helps these organizations to systematically model, measure, and visualize issues with planning and engineering and various customer interactions. The result is an improved public experience, informed decision making and better governance.
