Mr Derek Clarke, Chief Director, Surveys and Mapping, South Africa, opened the session and introduced two speakers who were to present case studies on NSDI's in Countries in Transition.
Dato' Abdul Majid bin Mohamed, Director-General, Department of Surveying and Mapping, Malaysia, presented a paper outlining the development of the National Infrastructure for Land Information System (NaLIS). He described how NaLIS had its roots in the creation of the Digital Cadastral Database (DCDB) and the National Topographic Database (NTDB) in the 1980's. In the following years, numerous agencies embraced GIS technology, setting up a number of isolated systems.
In the 7th Malaysian Development Plan (1996-2000), the government of Malaysia made a concerted effort to harness the power of modern networking technology and approved the development of NaLIS with an initial budget of RM$1billion (~AU$300million). Subsequent economic problems in the Asian region resulted in that budget being reduced to RM27million (~AU$11million).
Dato' Majid reported that the development of NaLIS was supported by Public Administration Circular (PAD 1/1997) and although it is initially based on the US NSDI model, there was an acknowledgement that NaLIS would need to adapt to the Malaysian political and cultural environment. Custodianship of data is vested in government but it is anticipated that the private sector will have a role to play.
A national NaLIS Coordinating Committee has been established and has met several times. It has also cooperated with the existing National Mapping Spatial Data Committee to establish a Joint Working Group. State coordinating committees have been established. Metadata, standards and framework sub-committees have been established. A NaLIS Clearinghouse has been established.
Dato' Majid concluded by saying that NaLIS was in its infancy but development needs were being quantified and an appropriate administrative structure was being negotiated with government. Issues of custodianship, access and copyright were important areas to address.
In response to questions, Dato' Majid said that the NaLIS had support from the highest levels of government, as is demonstrated by the substantial budget assigned to it. He also said that Malaysia had established a sound geodetic framework and that a key issue to be addressed was the integration of the topographic and cadastral themes with that geodetic framework. The cadastral data presented a significant challenge as, unlike the topography, the cadastre was not a federal responsibility but a State one. As a consequence there were inconsistencies between the spatial frameworks used for topography and cadastre.
Dr Gábor Remetey-Fülöpp, Secretary-General, Hungarian Association for Geo-Information, said that the driving forces for the implementation of a NSDI in Hungary were the need for digital maps, the need to share data production costs, the need for geo-referenced inventories, the modernisation of administration and the challenge of Euro-Atlantic integration.
The initiative for the National Spatial Data Strategy for Hungary had come from the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) in 1996. The Strategy addresses a wide range of issues including macro-economic studies, bottlenecks in the legal environment, private partnerships, improvement in data collection, quality assurance, standards, public relations and marketing.
The PMO has established an Intersectoral Working group on Geographic Information and this working group has developed an Action Plan for the NSDI. That Action Plan provides for a national cadastral program, an administrative boundaries database, a national topographic program, a national aerial survey, a unified geo-referenced address registry, and a multi-purpose parcel-based information system.
Panel Session
Mr Clarke introduced the panel. The members were Mr Tom Fenwick, Chairman, Australia New Zealand Land Information Council (ANZLIC), Australia, Mr John Moeller, Staff Director, Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC), USA, Mr Bryan Nanson, Director, National Geospatial Data Framework (NGDF), UK, and Dr Robert O'Neil, Director, Geo Access Division, Canada Center for Remote Sensing, Canada.
Mr Fenwick said that ANZLIC had achieved a remarkably high level of cooperation and sharing despite the absence of any supporting legislation. A National Agreement on Spatial Data Management, which supports the implementation of the Australian Spatial Data Infrastructure (ASDI), was being finalised. The structure and components of the ASDI were largely agreed and the current focus was on developing better coordinating mechanisms and on delivering community access to the ASDI. Intellectual property was another issue that was receiving significant attention.
Mr Moeller said that the focus for the FGDC in the coming year was on metadata, framework data and partnership arrangements. A geodata policy forum was being set up, aimed at key policy-makers and decision-makers. He said that he was struck by the fact that both Malaysia and Hungary had implemented comprehensive and well thought out strategies to meet their spatial data needs. He was also interested in the focus that both countries had given to the cadastre and wondered how the GSDI would deal with cadastral data.
Mr Nanson reported that the NGDF was a joint effort between the public and private sectors. He said that it was significant that Britain had a new and younger government that had a greater understanding of the importance of IT than any previous government and was determined that the nation would take full advantage of it.
He said that Britain had taken a very commercial approach to the NSDI but the NGDF did not have a role in developing applications or solutions. This was seen as the role of data providers and the private sector, with the NGDF playing an enabling role.
Dr O'Neil observed that Malaysia and Hungary both seem to be headed in the right direction. He went on to say that the challenge for this forum was to define the relationship between NSDI's and the GSDI, recognising that the elements that were important at the national level may be quite different to those that were important at the global level. He said it was important to be clear about who would use the GSDI and what they would use it for.
The Chairman invited the meeting to comment on their view of the relationship between NSDI's and GSDI. Mr Fenwick said that the relationship was similar to the relationship between the ASDI and the individual State and Territory SDI's in Australia. He, too, would like to see a better definition of the need for the GSDI.
Mr Nanson warned that if nations do not act to establish NSDI's then the market will overtake governments with a consequent imposition of a proliferation of standards and systems.
Mr Moeller confirmed that the US envisaged that the GSDI would build upon NSDI's.
Prof John Estes, University of California, said that it was all very well for developed nations to discuss the establishment of a GSDI built from NSDI's, but what about the 75% of nations that did not respond to the FGDC survey of NSDI implementation. There are many nations that have not embarked upon the development of a NSDI. How many gaps can the GSDI tolerate?
Mr Nanson said that one of the key advantages of the GSDI was the opportunity it presented for developing nations to draw upon the experience of other countries to leapfrog the early development stages of the NSDI and avoid the mistakes that others had made. Mr Moeller added that it should be possible to develop a number of tools to facilitate that leapfrogging.
Dr O'Neil agreed but cautioned that while it was easy for us to provide technical advice, there were some areas that are more difficult to address. Those areas included policy issues (such as what data should or could be made available to the public) and funding issues. He said that funding was often made available for specific applications but not for the underlying infrastructure, This resulted in 'stove-pipe' projects yielding single purpose datasets of little value to other applications.
Mr Fenwick observed that Australia, like other countries that had embarked on the development of spatial data systems early, were now saddled with a lot of legacy systems that were difficult to integrate into a NSDI. Those countries coming to NSDI development afresh may not have that problem to contend with.
Mr Michael Brand, President, EUROGI, said that countries in Europe were trying to bring together a wide range of datasets from countries with very different histories and culture. As a result of that experience, they had reservations with the concept of building the GSDI from NSDI's unless a sound underlying framework was put in place first.
Mr Drew Clarke, Secretary, Permanent Committee on GIS Infrastructure for Asia and the Pacific, commented that the panelists had focussed on the similarities between various NSDI's but wondered whether we would learn more by analysing the differences between them. He said that one of those differences was the issue of pricing and access policy and he sought the panelists views on this issue.
Mr Moeller said that the US model for the NSDI encompasses both data that is in the public domain and data that is available commercially.
Mr Nanson said that the UK had a policy of making metadata free and freely accessible. One problem that they had to address was that there was a lot of data tied up in government agencies and there was little incentive for them to make it more accessible. The UK’s policies on charging for data was a mechanism that helped encourage release of data.
Mr Fenwick said that there were similarities between the UK and Australian model. Metadata was free and readily accessible but the various governments had a range of policies on pricing. He believed that, over time, there would be a trend towards reducing costs.
Dr O’Neil said that in Canada metadata was free and framework data was free. It was his personal opinion that there should be a cost associated with attribute data.
The Chairman then concluded the session.