Lunchtime presentation

Achieving effective co-operation through commercialisation, based on a fund of accumulated knowledge and experience

Professor Bas Kok, Director Ravi - Netherlands Council for Geographic Information

There are some complicated schemes and theories about for setting prices and promoting commercialisation. I have no intention of bothering you with them during this lunchtime presentation.

What I am going to do is show how commercialisation can be a means of arriving at a better infrastructure and better service provision for the public and the business community. And that commercialisation leads to the building up and exchange of knowledge. We can use this knowledge to exchange experiences and solve our common problems.

Everyone has a different idea about what it means.

Let me give you some examples of opinions we came across in our research and discussions on commercialisation in the Netherlands.

1. Governments act commercially when they charge more than costs of dissemination. This can be the opinion of the government official who has to buy information from another government at more than dissemination costs.

2. Governments act commercially when they charge more than the integral costs. This is rare in the Netherlands, although our Meteorological office and our Land Registry have experimented with profit-making prices. Neither is allowed to do this anymore.

3. Commercialisation is when companies develop information products based on low-priced government data. This is referred to as the American model and it is favoured by big information users like the research community and value adding companies.

4. Commercialisation means that governments develop information products and services in competition with the private sector. In the last two years this issue has been a major one in Dutch government. Associations in the private sector have accused government organisations of unfair competition and subsidising commercial activities by cross financing.

When we talk about commercialisation, different perceptions and misunderstandings immediately come into people's minds. There are differences in perception for example between the USA and Europe.

We can see the differences immediately if we look at the constitutions and the extent to which and how government carries out its tasks. These are differences in culture, technological development, and the division of roles between the government and the business community.

But in fact what it comes down to, is that commercialisation of the exploitation of ICT with good geo-data constitutes a drive towards a good spatial data infrastructure, an adequate service provision, and a sound knowledge economy. These are not serious differences; both approaches can lead to opportunities with a positive economic effect. We see that there are differences between the United States and Europe with regard to the initiative-taking role in the commercialisation process, although it has to be said that these differences are now becoming blurred.

First I’d like to focus on the commercialisation issue in the US. And especially the opportunities as a result of this approach.

The private sector in the United States has been smart in picking up the commercialisation of geo-information quickly and becoming actively involved in the opportunities they can identify. Good additional data and value added information products are being developed. A better provision of service is coming about. This results in more knowledge through new high-tech small enterprises.

Some examples of good value added data, better service provision and more knowledge products. These are commercial applications of government information.

1. How private sector optimised access to FEMA maps for the citizens, who can check their home’s risks. The FEMA data have been designed to support flood plain management, hazard analysis and risk assessment activities.

FEMA's earthquake mapping enables people to display seismic events on top of local street maps and the GDT street database provided by private sector.

FEMA’s floodrisk mapping helps identify whether a specific location falls in or near a special flood hazard area. It’s the national standard on which flood plain management and insurance requirement of the National Flood Insurance Program are based.

2. City of Ontario. In South California municipalities have joint Internet web pages for several cities which provide cadastral information: these are known as Land use databases. These Land Registry data give information about property, the status of current developments in the city and city utilities. The user can zoom in on an area and then identify a parcel. Users can also search for potential sites for new developments or relocation of business. Private sector played a stimulating role in this development

3. Realtor. This is a 'brokerage' example of added value, based on government information: Realtor enables consumers to find a home via Internet. First you select an area, and then search the thousands of houses which are listed for sale. Private sector provided the street database GDT, the databases for schools, churches and sports facilities. So, the users have a complete overview of the facilities in certain areas. There are one million hits a day.

The opinion of the role of public sector in theory is changing and there are new public sector initiatives to set up structural relationships with private sector.

There are trends in theory and practice which indicate that the role of government and the private sector in the commercialisation of government information is changing. Professor Jerry Mechling is director of strategic computing and telecommunications in the public sector of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at the Harvard University. He recently stated that one of the effects of electronic government will be that governments have to find other sources of income than taxes.

One of the sources can be the selling of information or tariffs for periodic use of government data. Expert systems already exist for the selling of data.

Mechling favours co-operation between government and the private sector for the commercialisation of government data sets.

Things are also changing in practice where this is deemed necessary. We can say, for example, that the government is playing a more active part in terms of service provision.

First, the US Clearinghouse for GI with 88 registered server nodes. So, the geospatial data clearinghouse is a collection of data servers that have digital geographic data primarily for use in GIS image processing systems.

The FGDC has actively taken on board the freedom of information principle through the National Clearing house: more services are being provided for other government institutions and the scientific and business communities.

The co-operation between the FGDC and the Open GIS consortium is a good example of public-private co-operation.

Some other examples of US State initiatives to co-operate with the private sector: In North Carolina, the State has already been working for ten years at attracting new companies by investing in the state’s information infrastructure. This has led to economic successes. This is a good example of joint efforts of state, universities, medical institutes, and the commercial sector to implement a consistent policy for open access to the Internet and stimulating distance learning.

Another positive example is the State of New Jersey. The GIS centre in Trenton provides information without costs to the citizens and private sector of the Brownfield area. In that way people can have an insight in the contaminated conditions of the soil for their future business activities.

In Europe commercialisation can be seen as an impetus for government

I would now like to show how commercialisation in Europe has led to new opportunities. Government authorities have become more creative. The situation in Europe is varied, but there is a general trend for governments to have a more all-embracing role in Europe than the US government does. The initiative taker's role in the acquisition and processing of data lies largely with the government.

The expenditure cuts made in the 1980s have forced government authorities to work more efficiently internally, and as a result they have had to improve their service provision. They have therefore been obliged to take high value technology on board.

The Netherlands Land Registry (Kadaster) has, for example, successfully undergone a change process, and was privatised in May 1994. This resulted in an independent agency, with more information products, a higher productivity, better services, greater sensitivity for user needs and a lowering of tariffs.

One of the results of new strategic management is the positive impact on tariffs.

Since 1995 there were four sharp tariff reductions for the citizens: one in 1995, another at the end of that year, one in 1997 and finally a strong reduction of 25% last month.

Another positive result is the strong growth in productivity of 25% compared to 1994.

Another successful example of privatisation is the Dutch government's Computer Centre. This centre, which is now called Roccade, is one of the biggest and most successful IT companies in the Netherlands. It will be going to the stock market soon.

As you can see the turnover increased. They broadened their market. The turnover in the financial market and the market in local government has been doubled.

As you can see the amount of employees increased, the productivity increased and it is a market driven organisation now with high-developed technology.

The Danish Datacentralen and Kommunedata are going through a similar transformation process.

In a large part of Europe, knowledge and service provision concerning GI and the accessibility of GI are more matters for the government than for the business community. This has been made clear by a recent investigation carried out by the EUROGI on behalf of the European Commission. There are, of course, considerable policy differences between the European countries. Three examples:

1 In the UK, the use of the copyright principle by agencies under the Trade Funding regime plays an important part, while at the same time the Blair government has developed a general information policy. One is left wondering what sort of co-operation and harmonisation there can be between these two policy lines.

2 In France a need for general freedom of information is felt. There are fundamental discussions going on about the roles played by the public and private sectors. It is not clear whether, or to what extent, the politicians are making serious efforts to give the private sector the opportunity to develop an information market. The costs the authorities charge for GI are high, because in practice all data is considered to be value added data and not raw data.

The quality of government data in France is very high and IGN uses very advanced innovative techniques. They have a very strong international position based on knowledge.

3 A new policy in the Netherlands concerning the accessibility of government information, and the roles the government and the business community play in that. Since last June there has been new government policy in the Netherlands. In principle, making government information more widely available is the task of the business community, and not of the government. This principle lies in the development of the new government policy that government institutions may not undertake any market activities which might disturb competition in the private sector. The Minister can decide which are the areas where this private market has not yet been developed, so that the government will then take on the opening up of information. A good balance has been found here.

Just as in the United States, the line drawn between what the government does and what the private sector does is not static. We can see movement in it. We can see how the European Commission stimulates public-private partnerships. The European Commission's draft GI2000 document lists actions for strengthening the involvement of the private sector in the development of our European SDI and for guaranteeing this involvement in the future.

The Dutch government has invested two billion guilders in the setting up of a sound knowledge infrastructure in the Netherlands. The Ravi is participating in the development of this knowledge infrastructure for offering geo-information commercially, with advanced techniques. Ravi defined a project programme in co-operation with business community, contributing to some large-scale Dutch infrastructure projects. Some important projects:

Schiphol Airport - The future of Dutch aviation is high on the political agenda: The expansion of Schiphol Airport is a hot political issue because of the noise and pollution of the planes and safety risks. The rapid growth in the number of air movements have led Schiphol Airport to commission a study into three possible mainport systems. Information and knowledge is important to take the right decisions.

High-Speed train Link - The High-Speed train Link can be an alternative for domestic flights within Europe. Fast comfortable trains between Amsterdam and Paris, as part of the European high-speed network is necessary.

Some key figures:

- the length of the railway route is: 90 kilometres (57 miles)

- the maximum speed: amounts 300 km/h (almost 200 miles/h)

- the completion will be in 2005.

Information is important for participative democracy and 3D registration and simulation systems.

Delta works and in the line with this: the coastal and water management - The Netherlands is one of the main deltas of Europe and 50% of it is situated below sea level. A number of weirs and storm flood barriers were built. The last project was finalised short time ago. Knowledge of water quality and water quantity is very important here. Two weeks ago new projects were introduced because of the serious floods we recently had.

Dutch main ecological structure - In our spatial planning we try to give animals and plants space and corridors to live and move. This main ecological structure is a network of natural areas focussed on the preservation, recovery and development of important ecosystems Easy access to different information systems is a key issue to set up and stimulate sound new ecosystems in the Netherlands where 419 people live per square kilometre. That’s the highest population density in the western world.

Several important indicators in the GI field for the solution of common problems have arisen from discussions about commercialisation in the Ravi and also in international circles. These indicators are sufficient knowledge about standards; making data available; and other issues that are of importance for the infrastructure.

This commercialisation is an important drive to develop knowledge. This knowledge is the strength in developing the GSDI.

But it is of no importance whether the money required comes from the government or from the private sector, as long as it leads to increased knowledge and level of developments. Sometimes this is financed by government; sometimes it is financed by the private sector. More and more government organisations and companies are contributing their efforts to achieve their goals in developing their national spatial data infrastructures.

We need to create more public/private partnerships to exploit our knowledge.

In the building up of our NSDIs all over the world, we are building up a knowledge base to attempt to meet the need for knowledge of GI. A lot of research and development has been carried out to improve standards, to improve access, to achieve open systems. We have developed our own mechanisms to store and to disseminate our knowledge. We have stimulated the GI community to implement new techniques and develop instruments to gain the skills that are necessary to adapt and elaborate new knowledge. Our scientific and educational community is involved in the exchange of knowledge. Together, we have built up a substantial body of knowledge. This knowledge must be exploited to take the GSDI debate to a successful conclusion. We have a lot of knowledge in our environment, but a lot of this knowledge is invisible, not transparent and implicit.

So how do we bring our knowledge to value, manage our professionals and create a knowledge-supporting organisation to generate meaningful knowledge in the global environment?

We can do that by managing our knowledge. How is this management being developed in our GSDI forum? At the strategic management level we have done quite well. We are holding our third GSDI conference, we have brought together a group of high level GI representatives who are responsible for the NSDI in their country or continent.

In the area of market and strategy we know what issues need to be supported by a GSDI at a global level. The UN, G7, agenda 21 have, for example, given us the agenda.

What is lacking is the operational management of our knowledge. We have not mapped our knowledge sufficiently. We have not made the strengths of our GI community clear enough. We have not undertaken actions to use our knowledge base to generate meaningful knowledge by action.

We only can exploit the potential of our knowledge base by action.

1. We have to map this knowledge base. Make it visible.

2. We need actions to be fruitful.

We have reached the phase for defining these actions by using our knowledge to implement projects that support solutions to global issues. A nice way to do this can be found in the demonstration projects. In the US demonstration projects also play a successful role in solving pressing societal problems, such as crime. Successful examples: the new smart growth initiatives to expand the use of geographic information technologies in communities announced last September by Al Gore.

So, we should start a demonstration project on global level, to show the community what our strength is!!!

You can see that we are all, in our own way, working on commercialisation and that concrete lines are being drawn which in a great many cases result in co-operation between government and the business community. These forms of co-operation result in knowledge that we can do something with, together.

This knowledge can be exploited. This leads to new opportunities.

This, in turn, can lead to GI being moved higher up on the political agenda.

It is now time that we represent this knowledge in order to be able to demonstrate it to those around us. In this way, GI can fulfil a pilot role for IT and the provision of information in general. This knowledge can be deployed in the G7 projects, and in the Agenda 21 and UN activities.

Some examples of issues for demonstration projects.

- The support of developing countries in coping with environmental problems. The decisions taken at Rio, agenda 21 and programmes designed by the WHO are the documents to look at.

- Some issues which were brought up at the G7 conference in 1995:

Interesting G7 projects for the GSDI environment are the environmental and natural resource management project, the project on global emergency management and the government on line-project.

These issues will dominate the global agenda in the coming years

We have seen that in a number of countries ICT and GI are higher on the political agenda than was the case in the past. In the USA, ICT is high on the political agenda; this can also be seen in a number of states. In Europe we will have a formal infrastructure soon. That’s also the case in other countries and continents as in the UK, Canada and Australia.

In our new Dutch government's coalition agreement ICT was put higher on the political agenda. Reason for this is that political management was inspired by experiences in other countries. For that reason a government delegation visited North Carolina this year.

The Netherlands is a small country with openness to experiences in other countries. Therefore I would like to invite you to exchange thoughts with Dutch politicians and top managers at the GSDI 4 conference in the Netherlands about the opportunities ICT offers.

During that conference we can work out a common operational plan how we can exploit our knowledge commonly for important global issues.