THE FIRST GENERATION OF NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION STRATEGIES

Ian Masser,
Division of Urban Planning and Management
International Institute for Aerospace Survey and Earth Sciences
P.O.Box 6
7500AA Enschede
Netherlands
Tel + 31-53-487-4455
Fax + 31-53-487-4399
Email masser@itc.nl

ABSTRACT

GIS technology has transformed spatial data handling capabilities and made it necessary for governments to re-examine their roles with respect to the supply and availability of geographic information. This paper reviews the experiences of eleven national initiatives which together constitute the first generation of national geographic information strategies and it also considers what lessons might be learnt for the next generation that will come into being over the next ten years. The presentation is divided into three sections. The first of these consists of a short profile of each of the eleven strategies for Australia, Canada, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Netherlands, Portugal, Qatar, United Kingdom and United States. These are evaluated in the second section in relation to the driving forces behind them and their main features in terms of status, scope, access, approach to implementation and resources. The last section considers what lessons might be learnt from this experience and discusses the changing context within which the next generation of national geographic information strategies are likely to be formulated. It concludes with some thoughts on which countries are most likely to be candidates for the next generation of national geographic information strategies.

1. INTRODUCTION

The advent of GIS technology has transformed spatial data handling capabilities and made it necessary for governments to re-examine their roles with respect to the supply and availability of geographic information (Masser 1998). This is because government agencies are not only the main external providers of geographic information for most operational applications of GIS but also because they exert a profound influence on national developments as a result of what Rhind (1996, 8) has called "a cocktail of laws, policies, conventions and precedents which determine the availability and price of spatial data".

Given these circumstances many governments throughout the world are beginning to think more strategically about information needs, collection and the resources needed to deliver information to a wider market. A substantial proportion of this information can be considered geographic information. Table 1 shows the titles of eleven different national geographic information initiatives that are underway at the present time. Although the terms used vary from country to country these titles have three elements in common:

• they are explicitly national in nature
• they refer either to geographic information, spatial data, geospatial data or in one case to land information
• they also refer to terms such as infrastructure, system or framework.

For this reason it can be argued that these initiatives form the first generation of national geographic information strategies. With these considerations in mind this paper reviews the experiences of these eleven strategies and considers what lessons might be learnt for the next generation of national geographic information strategies that will come into being over the next ten years.

The presentation is divided into three parts. Section 2 provides a short profile of each of the eleven strategies. Section 3 evaluates them with respect to the following questions:

• what are the driving forces behind them?
• what are their main features in terms of status, scope, access, approach to implementation and resources?

The final section of the paper considers what lessons might be learnt from this experience and discusses the changing context within which the next generation of national geographic information strategies are likely to formulated. It concludes with some thoughts as to which countries are most likely to be candidates for inclusion in the next generation.

It should be noted that the generic term national geographic information strategies is used throughout this paper to refer generally to these initiatives. This term is used to avoid potential confusions in terminology of the kind shown in Table 1.

2. THE FIRST GENERATION OF NGIS: AN OVERVIEW

The main features of the first generation of National Geographic Information Strategies in the eleven countries listed in Table 1 in alphabetical order are described below in chronological order.

2.1 Australia

The Australian Land Information Council was set up in 1986 by an agreement between the Australian Prime Minister and the Heads of State Governments to coordinate the collection and transfer of land related information between the different levels of government and to promote the use of that information in decision making (ANZLIC 1992, 1). In 1991 New Zealand became a full member of the Council which was renamed the Australia New Zealand Land Information Council (ANZLIC). ANZLIC is serviced by the Spatial Data Infrastructure Program of the Australian Surveying and Land Information Group.(AUSLIG).

During its lifetime the Council has produced a number of major reports on the status of land information in Australia as well as four versions of their national strategy for the management of land and geographic information in 1988, 1990, 1994 and 1997. In 1997 ANZLIC produced a discussion paper setting out its vision of an Australian spatial data infrastructure (ANZLIC 1997). It argued that most of the components of this infrastructure already exist in some form but there is nevertheless a need for the community to ‘more clearly define and describe the infrastructure as a coherent national identity’. ANZLIC’s role in this respect is ‘to lead the community in defining the components of the national spatial data infrastructure, the characteristics of those components, and provide a vehicle for the determination of national priorities and custodianship’ (p. 5).

2.2 United States

An inter-agency Federal Geographic Data Committee was set up in 1990 as a result of a revised Circular A-16 issued by the Office of Management and Budget to coordinate "the development, use, sharing and dissemination of surveying, mapping and related spatial data." (OMB 1990). Four years after the establishment of the FGDC President Clinton signed Executive Order 12906 entitled "Coordinating Geographic Data Acquisition and Access: The National Spatial Data Infrastructure" on the 11th April 1994 "to strengthen and enhance the general policies described in OMB Circular A-16" (Executive Office of the President 1994, Section 2A). The FGDC is based in the National Mapping Division of the US Geological Survey and is chaired by the Secretary of the Interior. Its members include representatives from all the major ministries who have an interest in geographic information together with a variety of other public agencies concerned with its collection and management.

The Executive Order also set out in some detail the main tasks to be carried out and defined time limits for each of the initial stages of the National Spatial Data Infrastructure. Apart from the core task of inter-agency coordination through the FGDC, these include the establishment of a National Geospatial Data Clearing House and the creation of a National Digital Geospatial Data Framework through a variety of partnerships between agencies at different levels of government and also between the public and private sectors.

2.3 Qatar

In 1988 the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Agriculture witnessed a demonstration of GIS technology in Canada and saw its potential to revolutionise the way information is managed in the small Gulf State of Qatar (Al Thani 1997). His vision led to a government wide user needs study which recommended "that a Digital mapping database be implemented for the entire country; that a comprehensive fully integrated nationwide GIS be created; and that a high level National GIS Steering Committee be established to set standards and oversee the implementation and development of GIS in Qatar". As a result of these recommendations a National Steering Committee was set up in 1990 and a National Centre for GIS was created to implement GIS in Qatar in an organised and systematic way.

One of the first tasks of the Centre was to implement a high resolution digital topographic database. This is used by all 16 national agencies involved in GIS through a single high speed fibre optic network. The public can also access GIS data through this network (Tosta 1997a).

2.4 Portugal

A National System for Geographic Information (SNIG) was created by the Portuguese government under the Decreto Lei No. 53/90 on the 13th February 1990. Under the same law the government set up a National Centre for Geographic Information (CNIG) "to coordinate the integration of data at different levels of public administration and thus develop a National System of Geographic Information" (Arnaud et. al 1995, 115). CNIG is a research centre of the Ministry of Planning and Territorial Administration (MEPAT) and obtains part of its funding from national and international agencies.

In addition to promoting the development of the GIS market in Portugal as a whole CNIG has supported the implementation of regional GIS nodes in the five regions of mainland Portugal and is coordinating two major projects funded by the European Commission to develop local nodes at the municipality level with particular reference to the needs of land use planning (Henriques 1996). The launch of the SNIG network on the Internet in May 1995 is regarded as a major step in the modernisation of Portuguese public administration. As a result Portugal can be regarded as ‘the first European country that has an operational national geographic information infrastructure, fully distributed, based on the most recent developments in information technology’ (Gouveia, et al 1997, 3).

2.5 The Netherlands

The Dutch Council for Real Estate Information (Ravi) is an independent non-profit organisation set up originally to advise the Minister for Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment on matters relating to the operations of the cadastre. In 1992 it was reconfigured as the National Council for Geographic Information. Its masterplan contained a vision that "the proper development of the National Information Infrastructure requires a well thought out policy, an adequate administrative organisation, and the intensive coordination of all the involved parties" (Ravi 1992, 7, author’s translation).

Ravi’s (1995) view of the National Geographic Information Infrastructure makes a basic distinction between core and thematic data. With this in mind it has played a leading role in the creation of digital core data sets for the Netherlands as a whole at the 1:10,000 scale and also at the larger scales required for the municipal administration and public utility management purposes. It has also initiated a National Geographic Information Clearing House project which builds upon the experience of a number of metadata initiatives by various agencies in the Netherlands.

2.6 Indonesia

An inter-agency working group was established in 1993 to identify the main land data users and producers with the objective of establishing a National Geographic Information System for planning purposes. This project is coordinated by the National Coordinating Agency for Surveying and Mapping (Bakosurtanal).

High priority is being given to the creation of a national framework to ensure that the information produced by different agencies has the same geographic referencing frame. Given that only 62% of the land area of Indonesia is covered by topographic base maps it was decided in 1993 to complete the coverage of the whole country using digital mapping methods (Godfrey et. al 1997, 19). A national GIS arrangement law is also under preparation and a number of GIS projects have been included in Indonesia’s Sixth five year plan (REPELITA VI). These include GIS training and awareness raising activities as well as technology transfer and digital database development (Suharto 1996).

2.7 Malaysia

Although the need for an effective land information system to assist planning and development in Malaysia has been felt since the early 1970s, the first steps towards setting up a national infrastructure were not taken until 1994 when the Ministry of Land and Cooperative Development appointed Renong Berhad to carry out a feasibility study. This study produced a comprehensive set of proposals setting out its vision of a National infrastructure for Land Information Systems which would "make it possible to access the entire range of information required for the planning and maintenance of expensive infrastructure systems and support the sustainable development of natural resources such as oil, gas, forests, water and soil" (Renong Berhad 1995, paragraph 1.5).

Following the publication of this report a task force was set up to make proposals for implementation at both the federal and state levels (NaLIS 1996). Work on a prototype has also begun in the Kuala Lumpur area (Tamin 1997) and in January 1997 the Prime Minister’s Department of the federal government issued its guidelines for the establishment of the national infrastructure for land information system.

2.8 Korea

A National Geographic Information System (NGIS) was set up in 1995 by the Korean government to stimulate the development of digital spatial databases and the standardisation of geographic information. The implementation of this programme is overseen by a steering committee of representatives from 11 ministries chaired by the Vice-Minister of the Ministry of Construction and Transportation. The budget allocated to NGIS is $360m over a five year period. It is expected that about 64% of these costs will be met by central and local government and that the remainder will come from the private sector (MOCT 1995, 2).

Phase 1 of this programme lasts from 1995 to 2002. It is primarily concerned with the creation of a digital topographic map base for the country as a whole at scales ranging from 1:1,000 in urban areas to 1:25,000 in mountain regions. Special attention is also being given to the digital mapping of underground facilities in this phase. It is assumed that, ‘although the development of databases including geographic information is largely controlled by the Korean government, the application of GIS will be carried out by private sectors and research institutes’ (MOCT 1995, 10).

2.9 Japan

The starting point for the Japanese National Spatial Data Infrastructure initiative was the government’s reaction to the Kobe earthquake of January 1995. This led to a major review of emergency management services and their related data needs. As part of these developments a Liaison Committee of Ministries and Agencies concerned with GIS was set up in September 1995 under the supervision of the Cabinet. This includes representatives from 21 government agencies including the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI). The Committee is serviced by the Cabinet Councillors Office of the Cabinet Secretariat with assistance from the National Mapping Agency and the National Land Agency.

In December 1996 the Liaison Committee published its plan of action up to the beginning of the 21st century. The first phase of this plan lasts until 1999 and includes the standardisation of metadata, clarifying the roles of government, local governments and the private sector and promoting the establishment of the NSDI (Godfrey et. al 1997, 25). A separate NSDI Promotion Association has been set up to support these activities. Its membership includes over 80 companies from the private sector (Yamaura 1996).

2.10 Canada

In 1995 the Canadian Council on Geomatics which represents the provincial geomatics agencies asked Geoplan to prepare proposals for an integrated spatial data model for Canada as a whole and to make recommendations on its implementation. Its report makes the case for "a cooperative development which builds on Canadian strengths and recognises the current restrictions under which Canadian public sector geomatics agencies must operate" (Geoplan 1996, 43). As a result the federal Inter-Agency Committee on Geomatics was asked in December 1996 by the Canadian Council on Geomatics to take a leading role in guiding federal and provincial governments and the private sector to create a Canadian Geospatial Data Infrastructure. The Inter-Agency Committee is chaired by the Assistant Deputy Minister of the Earth Science Sector in Natural Resources Canada.

Five basic themes have been identified for the Canadian Geospatial Data Infrastructure. These are to foster geospatial data access, to provide a foundation of framework data, to foster the harmonisation of geospatial standards, to encourage the establishment of data sharing partnerships and to create a supportive policy environment which facilitates the wider use of geospatial data (Corey 1998).

2.11 United Kingdom

The recommendation of the Chorley Committee on handling geographic information to set up an independent national centre for geographic information (Department of the Environment 1987) was rejected by the government of the day. As a result the British National Geospatial Data Framework is the most recent of the first generation of national geographic information strategies. It dates from late 1996 when the first meeting of its Board took place. This consists of data producers from both the public and private sectors and is chaired by the Director General and Chief Executive of Ordnance Survey Great Britain. An Advisory Council consisting mainly of data users has also been set up. This is serviced by the Association for Geographic Information. Both the Board and Advisory Council are independent bodies who work closely with government.

The main objective of the National Geospatial Data Framework is to unlock geospatial information (NGDF 1998, 1). Its strategy is built around three ‘pillars’: collaboration, standards and best practice, and access to data (Hobman 1997, 1). Its work programme is managed by a taskforce which reports to the Board. This has set up working groups on various priority areas including metadata, accreditation and research.

3. EVALUATION

From these brief national profiles it can be seen that the first generation of national geographic information strategies come in all shapes and sizes. They include some recent initiatives which have as yet little to show other than good intentions as well as some more established initiatives which have already achieved a great deal. They mix together some very small countries with some very large ones as well as countries with and without federal systems of government. The profiles also point to the extent to which some of these initiatives are confined largely to the public sector whereas others have a strong private sector and user involvement.

Two main questions must be addressed when evaluating these strategies:

• what are the driving forces behind them?
• what are their main features in terms of status, scope, access, approach to implementation and resources?

When addressing these questions it is useful to bear in mind the differences between these countries in terms of geography, levels of economic development and systems of government. Table 2 summarises these differences with respect to some of the key indicators involved. From this it can be seen that there are massive differences between them both in terms of area and population. The United States, for example, covers an area which is nearly a thousand times that of Qatar and has nearly 500 times the population. Even if Qatar is discarded on the grounds that it is essentially a city state, the differences remain considerable with both the Netherlands and Portugal being smaller in both area and population than many American states. The same is the case in terms of levels of economic prosperity as measured by Gross Domestic Product per capita. In this respect the US is nearly 10 times as wealthy as the poorest country, Indonesia, and between two and three times as wealthy as countries such as Korea, Malaysia and Portugal.

It should also be noted that five of these countries have some form of federal system of government (Australia, Canada, Indonesia, Malaysia and the United States) although the extent to which powers are devolved to state and local government agencies varies considerably. At one end of the spectrum is the United States where a wide range of responsibilities relating to geographic information have been delegated to over 80,000 separate state and local government agencies (Tosta 1997a). At the other end come Indonesia and Malaysia which retain a considerable degree of federal control over land related matters. In contrast, in the six countries with non-federal systems of government, most of the responsibilities for geographic information are handled centrally (see, for example, Masser 1998, 92-95).

3.1 Driving Forces

Two basic themes underlie the national geographic information strategies described above. These are the growing importance of geographic information in the coming age of digital technology and the need for some form of government intervention to coordinate data acquisition and availability. The significance of the former is encapsulated by Vice-President Gore (1998, 1) in the following remarks:

The case for the latter is set out at the beginning of President Clinton’s Executive Order for the US National Spatial Data Infrastructure:

The need for government intervention to create the necessary infrastructure for exploiting the potential of digital geographic information technology is particularly important in the eyes of the Korean government:

The Australia New Zealand Land Information Council also highlights the parallels between geographic information and other types of infrastructure:

In essence, then, the objectives of most national geographic information strategies can be summarised as follows: to promote economic development, to stimulate better government and to foster environmental sustainability. The notion of better government is interpreted in several different ways in the strategies. In many countries it means better planning and development. This is particularly the case in developing countries such as Indonesia and Malaysia. Planning, in the sense of a better state of readiness to deal with emergency brought about by natural hazards was also an important driving force in the establishment of the Japanese National Spatial Data Infrastructure while in Portugal the National Geographic Information System is seen as an instrument for modernising central, regional and local administration.

On the other hand better government can also be interpreted in terms of more open government as a result of better access to information in the statements quoted above by President Clinton and ANZLIC. The importance of access is particularly apparent in the mission statement of the British National Geospatial Data Framework which seeks:

These views are echoed in the final report of the pilot study carried out on the Canadian Geospatial Data Infrastructure. It formulated its mission in the following terms:

3.2 Key Features

The eleven national geographic information strategies can be divided into two broad categories with respect to their status: those which are the result of a formal mandate from government and those which have largely grown out of existing geographic information coordination activities.

The first category includes Portugal where the National Geographic Information System was created by the Decreto Lei of 53/90 and the United States where the National Spatial Data Infrastructure was the subject of an Executive Order of the President in April 1994. There is also clear evidence of strong government involvement in the establishment of the Japanese NSDI and the Korean NGIS as well as the NGIS in Qatar. The Indonesian NGIS is built into the country’s sixth Five Year Plan and a GIS arrangement law is currently under consideration. Similarly, the prime mover of the Malaysian National Land Information System is the Ministry of Land and Cooperative Development.

The second category consists of countries where national geographic information strategies have largely grown out of existing coordination activities. This is clearly the case in Australia where current discussions regarding spatial data infrastructure are essentially an expansion of earlier discussions regarding national land information strategies. Similarly the reconstitution of the Dutch Council for Real Estate Information in 1992 as the National Council for Geographic Information marked a significant step towards the development of a national geographic information infrastructure. Canada also falls into this category as the Federal Inter Agency Committee on Geomatics was asked by the Canadian Council on Geomatics in 1996 to take a leading role in creating a Canadian Geographic Information Infrastructure and it should also be noted that the US Federal Geographic Data Committee was in itself a outgrowth from the previous Federal Inter Agency Committee on Digital Cartography.

In many respects the British National Geospatial Data Framework falls into a category of its own in that it has no direct mandate from government, nor is it in any real sense a direct product of any existing governmental coordination activities although it is strongly supported by professional bodies such as the Association of Geographic Information and leading government agencies such as Ordnance Survey of Great Britain. As a result its formal status vis a vis government remains unclear.

Scope can also be looked at from two different standpoints: the range of substantive geographic information interests which is represented in the different coordinating bodies and the extent to which the main stakeholders are directly involved in the process.

With respect to the former the membership of the US Federal Geographic Data Committee covers a very wide range of substantive interests. These include the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Defence, Energy, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, State and Transportation as well as the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Library of Congress and the National Archives and Records Administration. The Canadian Inter Agency Committee on Geomatics also includes representatives from a wide range of federal agencies, but, unlike the FGDC, it also has a representative from the Geomatics Industry Association of Canada which represents the private sector.

The Portuguese and Qatar National Geographic Information Systems also involve a wide range of central government agencies. In contrast the Indonesian and Malaysian National Geographic Information Systems tend to be focused mainly on surveying and mapping activities associated with land management. The initial stages of the Korean National Geographic Information System and the Japanese National Spatial Data Infrastructure are also primarily focused around central government surveying and mapping activities. However, in the case of the latter an NSDI Promoting Association has also been set up to complement these activities. This is chaired by a representative of Mitsubishi Corporation.

The Australian coordinating body is concerned primarily with the coordination of the collection and transfer of land related information between different levels of government. Each of the 10 members of ANZLIC represents a coordinating body within their jurisdiction (i.e. the Commonwealth Spatial Data Committee, the respective coordinating bodies at the eight state and territory levels and Land Information New Zealand. These members have the responsibility for both expressing that jurisdiction’s views at the council and also for promoting ANZLIC’s activities within their jurisdiction (Masser 1998, 64).

Unlike the other national geographic information strategies the Dutch and British initiatives are dependent on voluntary rather than mandatory participation. Nevertheless, the board of the Ravi consists of most of the data providers and users in the Netherlands. These include the Cadastre, the Topografische Dienst (national mapping agency), and Statistics Netherlands together with representatives from various groups within the Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment (VROM), the survey department of the Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management (V&W), the National Institute for Public Health and Environment (RIVM) and the Centre for Land Development and Soil Mapping (Staring Centre) as well as representatives from the Association of Provincial Agencies (IPO), the consultative group of the Public Utilities Companies, the Royal Association of Civil Law Notaries, and the Association of Water Boards. Another major stakeholder, the Association of Dutch Municipalities (VNG) also supports Ravi by contributing to the costs of some of its projects but is not a member of its Board (Masser 1998, 47).

The Board of the British National Geospatial Data Framework includes key data providers in both the public and private sectors such as the Office for National Statistics, Ordnance Survey and HM Land Registry in the former, and Landmark and Property Intelligence in the latter as well as representatives from the Information Management Advisory Group of the Local Government Management Board and the Natural Environment Research Council. Its Advisory Council has an even wider remit with members drawn from government departments such as the Environment Agency, the Public Records Office, as well as ESRI (UK) and MVA Systematica in the private sector, academia and bodies such as Friends of the Earth.

There are important differences between the national geographic information strategies particularly in terms of the extent to which the main stakeholders are involved in the management of them. The vast majority of these initiatives are primarily public sector in scope and most are largely concerned with central or federal government activities. Although essentially public sector in scope ANZLIC is unusual in that it is centrally concerned with the interface between different levels of government.

The exceptions to this general rule are the British and Dutch initiatives whose coordinating bodies are not a formal part of government and also include private sector and user representation. This is particularly well developed in the case of the Ravi where a separate business platform consisting of representatives from the main geographic information service providers has been established to complement the activities of its council and efforts have also been made to ensure that the needs of academic research are also taken into account when formulating policy. By comparison, representation on the British National Geospatial Data Framework bodies is more of a hit and miss affair particularly with respect to the Advisory Council whose members are elected on an individual rather than an institutional basis.

Given these differences it is useful to note some of the recommendations made in the US National Academy for Public Administration report on "Geographic Information in the 21st Century: Building a Strategy for the Nation" to the Bureau of Land Management, the US Geological Survey, the Forest Service and the National Ocean Service as a result of its assessment of the public management issues created by recent developments in geographic information. One of the principal recommendations of this report is that a National Spatial Data Council should be set up to provide a forum for all organisations involved in the development and maintenance of the US National Spatial Data Infrastructure:

It is envisaged that the National Spatial Data Council will be a private, non-profit organisation, preferably authorised by Congress but clearly located in the private sector and that its activities will complement those of the FGDC by concentrating on coordinating geographic information functions and activities outside federal government.

The eleven national geographic information strategies also differ considerably in terms of their positions with respect to access to public information. One end of the spectrum is the United States where federal government agencies are required by law to make the information they collect available to the public free from any copyright restrictions at no more than the marginal costs of dissemination. This is the policy followed by the National Mapping Division of the US Geological Survey and the US Bureau of the Census with respect to the distribution of their products (Tosta 1997b, 1). In countries such as Australia, Britain and Canada the position is more complex as a result of conflicts between the desire of their governments to promote more open governments and public accountability and the need to recover some or all of the costs of database creation and maintenance through the sale or the licensing of access to these databases.

At the other end of the spectrum come countries such as Malaysia where topographic survey maps are classified documents and access to NaLIS is restricted to public sector agencies. This position also creates a major barrier to implementation as the Renong Berhad (1995, 3.42) report points out:

It is also worth noting that restrictions on access to public information are not limited to developing countries such as Malaysia. For example, Pollard’s (1997) guide to digital national land information in Japan (Kokudo Sûchi Jôhô) contains the following statement:

Only two out of the eleven countries have set up specialist centres to implement their national geographic information strategies. These are the National Centre for Geographic Information Systems in Qatar and the National Centre for Geographic Information (CNIG) in Portugal. Although in both cases the work programme is overseen by government ministries, it should be noted that both these centres have a considerable degree of autonomy regarding the planning and implementation of particular projects. The Portuguese case is especially interesting in that its activities include more general geographic information R&D activities as well as national geographic information system implementation. Part of its funding is also derived from projects funded by the European Community and other agencies.

Feasibility studies have been commissioned in Malaysia and Canada to explore the options for a national geographic information strategy. In the case of Malaysia these included the controversial option of privatisation where the consultants recommended that "in the long term, the implementation of NALIS should be privatised in order to transfer the burden of funding from the government to private sector and accelerate implementation" (Renong Berhad 1995, paragraph 6.2). The Canadian study reviews some of the other national geographic information strategies described in this paper and recommends a cooperative approach towards implementation which takes account of circumstances which are specific to Canada as against the US National Spatial Data Infrastructure model which has "tried to accommodate the prevailing fragmented conditions, arrangements and the underlying culture defining geographic information management in the US at this time" (Geoplan 1996, 43).

Only in the case of Australia has there been any attempt to quantify the benefits associated with the implementation of a National Land and Geographic Data Infrastructure. ANZLIC commissioned Price Waterhouse to carry out a study of the economic benefits arising from the acquisition and maintenance of land and geographic information at the national level in 1994. The findings of this study suggest a benefit cost ratio for data usage of the order of 4:1. They also showed that:

It is very difficult both to obtain and to interpret the information that is available for the eleven national geographic information strategies with respect to resources. The only thing that is clear is that the task of coordination is relative inexpensive in relation to the overall expenditure on geographic information whereas the task of core digital database development is relatively expensive. With respect to the former it is worth noting that the US Office of Management and Budget has estimated that federal agencies alone spend $4bn annually to collect and management domestic geospatial data (FGDC 1994, 2). This sum is of a very different order to the $25m that has been spent by the USGS to date to support the FGDC and its work (Tosta 1997b, 4). With respect to the latter it is worth noting that $288.5m out of the $360m budget for the Korean NGIS is allocated to digital topographic, thematic and underground facility mapping (MOCT 1995, 8). Similarly, in Malaysia the federal government has allocated nearly $50m to cover the costs of the development of the initial NaLIS prototype in Wilayah Persekutuan Kuala Lumpur (NaLIS 1996) and it even cost $5m to build the database sets for the tiny state of Qatar (Tosta 1997a).

4. TOWARDS THE NEXT GENERATION OF NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION STRATEGIES

In the light of the findings of this analysis it is possible to consider what lessons can be learnt for the next generation of national geographic information strategies which will come into being over the next ten years. Although the findings themselves show that there is a great deal of diversity in the first generation of national geographic information strategies, they also point to some useful lessons for the future. Insofar as status is concerned there are clear advantages associated with a formal mandate for a national geographic information strategy, provided that this is accompanied by the necessary resources to enable its implementation. Lack of dedicated resources is obviously the weak point where initiatives are essentially outgrowths of existing coordination activities, yet this model also has considerable advantages in that it builds upon existing cooperative procedures.

Similarly there are both advantages and disadvantages in the different positions that have been taken with respect to the scope of national geographic information strategies. The case for a comprehensive approach is a very strong one given the importance attached by users to integrating data from a wide variety of sources. On the other hand it must be recognised that some players are more central than others and that comprehensive coverage does not necessarily equal similar levels of commitment. As Tosta (1997a) has pointed out, even though President Clinton signed the Executive Order for the NSDI and the Secretary of the Interior, Bruce Babbit chairs the FGDC, no other Secretaries sit on this committee and many agency representatives are not the "highest" level. Consequently a good case can also be made for approaches which are more limited in scope and concentrate only on key stakeholders who have a strong vested interests in the success of national information strategies as is the case with respect to Indonesia and Malaysia in the land information field.

In the medium to long term, however, the success of these strategies is likely to be closely coupled with the extent to which they meet the requirements of users. In this respect questions of public access to public information are likely to be a critical factor not only from the standpoint of the extent to which geographic information is utilised in practice but also with respect to its impact on the economics of spatial database creation and maintenance. This is potentially one of the great strengths of the British National Geospatial Data Framework where producers and user interests are taken into account through the dual Board and Advisory Council structure.

Where there is little existing GIS activity and/or there is a lack of basic skills and resources, the establishment of a national centre can play a vital role in creating a national geographic information strategy as was the case in Portugal and Qatar. Similarly, feasibility studies and pilot projects of the kind that are underway in Canada and Malaysia can be of considerable value both for building up operational experience and technical skills also for raising overall levels of awareness of the opportunities opened up by national geographic information strategies.

Awareness, not only within governments but also within the public at large is likely to be the critical factor in the success of these strategies (see for example, FGDC 1997, goal 1). Closely linked to this is the need for those politicians and decision makers that are most closely involved to recognise that geographic information is a national asset which must be effectively coordinated and managed in the national interest (Barr and Masser 1997).

It is also likely that the next generation of national geographic information strategies will come into being in rather different circumstances to those which gave rise to the first generation. Two factors are of particular importance in this respect. These are the changes that are currently taking place in the nature of government itself and the growing globalisation of geographic information activities respectively.

In many countries, governments are increasingly expected to operate in a more commercial way. "Reinventing government" as the title of Osborne and Gaebler’s (1992) classic book suggests, implies reassessing the operations carried out by governments with particular reference to privatisation, deregulation and market testing. The impacts of developments such as these on many of the key government stakeholders in geographic information is likely to be profound. In Britain Ordnance Survey is approaching 100% cost recovery and the option of its privatisation has not been excluded by the government. In the Netherlands the Cadastre has become an independent administrative organisation within the Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment and it also set up a separate company in April 1996 to develop a new postal address coordinate product for all 7m postal addresses in the Netherlands (Masser 1998, 41). In other countries surveying and mapping activities are being restructured in ways that substantially alter their roles within government. For example, the subdivision of the old Department of Surveying and Land Information in New Zealand in 1996 into two new organisations, a national interest surveying and mapping agency (Land Information New Zealand) and a state owned commercial enterprise (Terralink) has introduced a new dimension into the national geographic information strategy debate in that country (Robertson and Gartner 1997). Development such as these raise fundamental questions about the future of many national mapping agencies. In the eyes of O’Donnell and Penton (1997, 214):

Alongside these developments is the emergence of global - i.e. transnational and regional - initiatives in many parts of the world (Masser 1997). The establishment of the European Umbrella Organisation for Geographic Information (EUROGI) in 1993 with help from the European Union was the first of these ventures (Burrough et. al 1993). Since then its membership has gradually expanded to include many central and east European countries and created a very useful platform for transnational strategic debate and professional collaboration in this region. More recently the creation of the Permanent Committee on GIS Infrastructure for Asia and the Pacific in 1995, following a resolution of the 13th United Nations Regional Cartographic Conference for Asia and the Pacific in Beijing, can be seen as the first stage of a broader UN strategy on this front (Godfrey et. al 1997). This committee has representatives from 55 countries in the region including China, mainly at the national mapping agency level. It should also be noted that the United Nations regional agencies are in the process of establishing a parallel body for Africa and the Middle East. If this comes into being and similar arrangements are made for the Americas, it can be argued that some of the basic organisational building blocks for a global spatial data infrastructure are already in place. These developments bring a new dimension to the work that is already been done as a result of established global remote sensing and mapping initiatives such as the UNEP Global Resources Information Database Programme (GRID) which began in 1985 and the International Geosphere Biosphere Programme (IGBP) which was established in 1986 as well as the activities of the International Steering Committee for Global Mapping which was set up in 1994 and has its secretariat at the Geographical Survey Institute in Japan.

With these considerations in mind it is worth considering which countries are likely to be candidates for the second generation of national geographic information strategies which will come into being over the next ten years. In practice probably three different sets of countries are most likely to fall into this category. The first of these are members of the first generation who will substantially restructure their current approaches as a result of the experience that has been built up over the last few years. This trend can already be seen in the proposals outlined by the US National Academy for Public Administration (1998) for the future development of the NSDI. Secondly, there are a number of developing countries, especially in the Asia and Pacific region who are likely to follow the examples of Indonesia and Malaysia to facilitate the planning and management of economic development and natural resources. Last but not least are the group of central and east European countries such as the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland where there had been a massive investment recently in cadastral and digital mapping programmes as part of national restructuring activities in the post-Communist era (see, for example, Bogaerts 1997).

Given the number of countries potentially falling into each of these categories it seems likely that there will be a considerable increase in the number of national geographic information strategies that are being implemented throughout the world in the next ten years. Because of the very different circumstances within which these will be implemented it also seems likely that these will be at least diverse in character as those of the first generation.

NOTE:

A comprehensive and up-to-date list of websites for these initiatives and other related activities can be found on http://www.anzlic.org.au/anz_site.htm .

REFERENCES

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TABLE 1

The First Generation Of National Geographic Information Strategies

TABLE 2

Some Key Indicators for the Eleven Countries

Note: * 1989.

Sources: Whitakers Almanack 1997

National Bureau for Economic Research http://www.nber.org/ .