A Spatial Data Infrastructure for a Spatially Enabled Government and Society

Meeting sustainable development objectives is a complex and temporal process that involves multiple stakeholders. The creation of economic wealth, social stability and environmental protection can be achieved through developing products and services that are based on spatial information collected by all levels of government. These objectives can be facilitated by developing a spatially enabled government and society where spatial information is regarded as common goods made available to citizens and businesses to encourage creativity and product development. To do so requires data to be accessible and accurate, well-maintained and sufficiently reliable for use by the majority of society who are not spatially aware. With this in mind Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDIs) are being developed by many countries as an enabling platform to improve access, sharing and to integrate spatial data and services. However there are still many challenges to overcome in order to have a fully functioning SDI and to guarantee the investment in its development. Furthermore, in order to deliver this SDI, there needs to be a mechanism of assessment that uses a set of agreed indicators to measure the progress of its development and delivery of its services. In this regard, the assessment of SDIs is an important component in any SDI design and development and needs to be part of an SDI Chapter 1. An SDI for a Spatially Enabled Government and Society 12 support strategy. This assessment can help to better understand the issues, to find best practice for certain tasks and to also improve the system as a whole. This chapter aims to introduce and discuss various challenges and issues associated in re-engineering current SDI design to support the new vision of a spatially enabled government and society. It also discusses the central role that an SDI plays as the enabling platform. In order to support this, the chapter also discusses the importance of having an SDI assessment mechanism or strategy as part of the SDI to measure the success and delivery of SDI services aligned with the objectives of SDI development. The chapter then highlights a range of activities and processes to be created across all jurisdictional levels to facilitate SDI design and assessment, including aspects of its design, creation and the processes involved in its development, particularly governance of an SDI platform and the overall relations between different challenges and the SDI assessment process.