Drew Clarke as Head Analytical and Mapping Division, Department of Industry, Science and Resources, Australia, welcomed visitors to Australia and set the scene for the conference.
Dato' Abdul Majid Bin Mohamed President Permanent Committee on GIS Infrastructure for Asia and the Pacific gave a welcome address highlighting the need for countries to develop their national spatial data infrastructures.
The Honourable Warren Entsch MP Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister Department of Industry, Science and Resources. Opened the conference and spoke of the management and application of spatial data and how it is applied in the information age.
He announced the official release today of the Australian Spatial Data Directory.
Jane Patterson , Chair, GSDI Steering Committee and Senior Advisor for Science and Technology to the Governor of North Carolina delivered an overview of the development of the GSDI concept and the structure of the Global Spatial Data Steering Committee. To set the context for GSDI she examined the progress to date and focused on knowledge management as a term to embrace culture, process, and technology.
She defined her objectives as being to set up a global GSDI structure, and the need for this conference to take the opportunity:
She described an example of the need to get the major items in place first- "use the big rocks as the basic building blocks", and identified the work of the conference as being to address the big items (copies of her overheads were made available after the session).
John Moeller , Staff Director, Federal Geographic Data Committee, USA, delivered a combined presentation incorporating the research by Ian Masser , who was unable to attend. John presented an impressive wealth of data from the global surveys with 100 respondents as well as expert summaries and analyses of the data (copies of the detailed overheads were made available after the session).
Summary
The session outlined the background on the approach to build a GSDI at the two previous GSDI conferences and the work of the steering committee. This was placed in context by Jane Patterson and a wealth of information presented by John Moeller. The message from the session was that now is the time to tackle the big issues and to move forward with a global structure and a commitment to resource this initiative.