Implementation of Spatial Data Infrastructures in Transitional Economies

This is the second special issue on the topic of “implementation of Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI) in transitional economies.” In the introduction to the first special issue (Georgiadou, Bernard, & Sahay, 2006), we argued that the majority of SDI initiatives in developing countries are characterized by a technical focus and a journalistic discourse (more hype and grand visions and less of realized practical benefits), as well as a rather weak theoretical understanding of the reasons underlying the unrealized potential of geographic Information Technologies (geo-IT), especially for public sector organizations. We expressed our belief that the technical orientation, both in theory and in practice, may contribute to the unrealized benefits of SDI despite significant investments, political support, push by vendors, and the 17% annual growth of the global geospatial market. (According to DaraTech (USA), the global GIS/geospatial market grew 17% in 2005. Worldwide GIS/geospatial revenue is forecast to reach US$ 3.6 billion in 2006, up from US$ 2.82 billion in 2004. This growth is driven by sales of commercial data products and the emergence of desktop and Internet-based systems. See http://www.daratech.com/research/gis/2006/.) We described how we attempted to address these challenges, first, by organizing a research workshop on Cross-learning between Spatial Data Infrastructures and Information Infrastructures (http://sdi.jrc.it/ws/crosslearning/index.cfm) in the spring of 2005 at the International Institute for Geo-information Science and Earth Observation (ITC) in Enschede, the Netherlands; and second, by soliciting papers for publication in two special issues of