The urgent need to share geospatial data is known to all of those working with GIS. South Africa’s environmentalists are alive to this need as witnessed by the recent launch of CoGIS (Collaborative Geographical Information Service). This is an important initiative and the South African Earth Observation Network (SAEON) and the Council for Industrial and Scientific Research (CSIR) must be applauded for taking this first step towards ensuring that our environmental data is shared and accurately managed. However CoGIS only covers the environmental sector.
There is no question that South Africa needs to be sharing and managing ALL of its geospatial data especially that generated by the various research organisations, government departments and municipalities across the nation.
At the recent GIS Summit 2009 it was disconcerting to hear how some GIS colleagues from local municipalities and provincial government departments are still unaware that government departments are able to access SPOT 5 data free of charge, hadn’t heard of Eskom’s SPOT Building Count, or about the National Spatial Information Framework's (NSIF) new metadata sharing tool (SMD). Even worse few knew about their responsibilities under the Spatial Data Infrastructure Act, Act 54 of 2003 and that as custodians of South Africa’s spatial data they are legally responsible for capturing metadata during the course of their work.
How much expenditure of time, money and effort could have been saved if all government and municipal officials working with geospatial data knew that they were entitled to free SPOT 5 data. That some of these delegates were not even aware that they can be held legally responsible for not capturing metadata is shocking. Important messages are clearly not being communicated to government employees working with geospatial data and this is obviously the responsibility of people higher up the chain of command.
The worsening economic climate has seen budgets cut and people being pushed to complete more work in the same hours. At the same time there is increasing pressure on government to improve service delivery as evidenced by last year’s outbreak of xenophobic violence.
Despite these pressures people working in the GIS arena need to assist the NSIF in populating the new SMD and to volunteer themselves, where appropriate, as data custodians for geospatial information. The NSIF needs to come to the party too and make the most of all avenues to get buy-in on the SMD from geospatial data generators across the country.
Unfortunately the government restructuring has hampered the NSIF’s recent initiatives, resulting in a delay in the appointment of the members for the Committee for Spatial Information (CSI). While we wait for the wheels of government to move, the NSIF can make the most of this waiting period by communicating details of their SMD far and wide. South Africa is in urgent need of a centralised spatial data management platform and making it work is going to take effort from top-level government geospatial practitioners as well as from geospatial practitioners on the ground.
Contact Clare van Zwieten, Tel 011 543-7000, clare.vanzwieten@ee.co.za