POSITION PAPER ON THE GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION
INFRASTRUCTURE CONCEPT
1. Introduction
The Portuguese National Geographic Information Infrastructure (NGII) was
officially created in February of 1990, under the name of “Sistema Nacional
de Informação Geográfica, SNIG”, following a preparatory work that took
place from February of 1986 to 1990. Accordingly to the text of the Law
(Decree Law nº 53/90, from 13th of February of 1990) that has created SNIG,
it consists in the network that links all the distributed geographic data bases
(regardless of their respective nature - graphical, alphanumerical or in the
form of imagery) that are collected by local, regional and central
administration agencies. Thus, this NGII was created as the single network
for all the geographic information, available in digital formats, supplied by
Public Administration.
In this document, the process of building the Portuguese National
Geographic Information Infrastructure is presented, focusing on the most
controversial issues that have been raised within the debates on the
European Geographic Information Infra-structure.
Since more than a decade ago the issue of what the EGII should be has
been a main topic of discussions throughout the GIS European community
and it can be stated that, this far, there is no single perspective on what such
concept should be. The existence of ETeMII project, and the scope of its
working packages is just an evident example of the lack of such an unified
concept.
In the EGII debates, the basic topic of discussion has been linked to the role
of the national topographic agencies in the implementation of the EGII and to
the importance of the topographic data in such implementation. Here lies the
origin of the concepts of “core data” or “reference data”, considered by some
as the basic element of the EGII that should be the object of the primary
investments in the EGII implementation.
Unlike this very topographic thematic oriented views on what an EGII should
be, which have managed to “constrain” the debates that have taken place,
CNIG´s perspective is totally different. For CNIG, the topographic data are
just one of the many themes that should be integrated in any geographic
information infrastructure (GII) and, more important than that, no investments
should ever be made with GII funds to produce any geographic data set
based on their importance to the GII. (All the agencies in charge of the
production of other GI themes would also claim that the GII implementation
investments should be primarily dedicated to produce new sets of their types
of data and this would become a never ending story).
The developments of the Information Society have strongly supported
CNIG´s claims that the topic of topographic data sets (regardless of the
names that are assigned to these data sets – core data, reference data, etc -)
are not part of the problems that have to be tackled on a GII implementation
process. The same holds true as far as the role of any particular set of
organisations whose mandate is to produce geographic data, no matter how
important their lobbying capacity might be.
In the following text one tries to identify the issues that are important on a
NGII implementation in light of the Portuguese experience, considering the
relevance of these within the context of a possible EGII and GSDI (Global
Spatial Data Infra-structure) implementation.
2. The emergence of the Internet within NGII
From 1990 to 1994, the work performed regarding SNIG implementation led
by CNIG (“Centro Nacional de Informação Geográfica”), its co-ordinating
body, followed the plans prepared in the late eighties. Accordingly, a
dedicated geographic data network was for the first time implemented by mid
1993, linking a number of geo-data bases belonging to the agencies that by
then were prepared to integrate their data into this network. This included the
water resources data base from the Water Institute, the fisheries data base
from the Planning ad Management Fisheries Agency, the demographics
statistical data from the Statistical Institute and the local data from the
Municipality of Oeiras.
In 1994, the spread of the Internet among the technical and scientific
communities led CNIG to decide to implement the NGII on the Internet, and
the corresponding preparatory work was completed by the 3 rd of May of
1995, when it became officially opened (it has been operating since then). It
was the first in Europe and one of the first world-wide.
The fact that the Portuguese NGII was implemented on the Internet required
a very important change on its respective process. Indeed, the concept of a
dedicated network for geographic information became obsolete, as well as
the existence of one single entry point for all the national public geo-data, as
any user would be able to access any specific data base as long as the
corresponding URL was known. This was the most important and significant
change that was adopted within SNIG since it was first conceived.
This evolution has reinforced the importance of the NGII as it became
present in the WWW and thus visible for millions of potential users, but at the
same time it has meant a less visible role of the organisation in charge of its
implementation and operation. Indeed, for a large number of users, the name
and the role of such agency do not become apparent when they use the
services that are made available within the NGII.
For CNIG, as well as for any other similar organisation, the success of the
NGII implementation and operation is not the success of any particular data
set produced by the co-ordinating agency, but the success of the services it
provides and the geographic data that are provided by all the agencies.
The lack of visibility of the co-ordinating role performed by the agency in
charge of the GII implementation could have strong negative consequences,
as more and more, what does not become publicly visible might be
condemned in the long run, regardless the importance of the services been
offered for a very large number of users.
3. The creation of a new agency to implement and operate the NGII or
the assignment of such role to an existent agency or to an intergovernmental committee. Proposals for further analyses.
When the concept of SNIG was being discussed (in the mid eighties), it
became obvious that a dedicated network for geographical digital data would
only become a short term reality if the task of its implementation was
assigned to a new agency, that should be out the world of geographic data
production.
CNIG was then created by the same Decree-Law that has
institutionalised SNIG, as a research agency from the Public Central
Administration.
Several reasons were presented to justify such claim. Some of them could be
originated by the culture of the Portuguese administration at that time, some
others were independent from that and still keep their validity.
In the first place, the mission concerning the implementation and operation of
a NGII is not compatible with the data production mission. As a matter of fact,
if an agency is in charge of data production, such activity will always be its
primary mission and in the long run, all possible resources allocated to
secondary missions will be diverted to the primary one, (which is its reason of
existence) as with time these tend to be more and more scarce and the
conflict between the missions will tend to grow.
As far as the users are concerned, the success of the NGII implementation
and operation can not be the result of the efforts to produce new sets of
geographic data, but the result of the efforts invested with geographic data
producers (that could be lacking such help) to populate the NGII with their
specific data and in the development of services that help users to explore
that data. In other words, the success of a NGII implementation implies the
use and exploration of all the geographic data sets that are produced by all
the agencies that have linked their data sets to the NGII, thus meaning the
success of all the agencies that have produced their respective data. Such
efforts and investments from the co-ordinating body would risk to be the
source of conflicts of interest, if they would also include the data produced by
the same co-ordinating body, undermining the trust that has to exist among
all the agencies that integrate the NGII.
This second issue means that the implementation and operation of a NGII
requires a neutral position that can not be easily accepted if performed by
one of the players in the GI data production field. Within the typical culture of
the Portuguese Administration, this was by then (mid eighties) a major factor
that also contributed to justify the creation of a neutral agency, out of the
production of geographic data, to co-ordinate the integration within the NGII
of the Portuguese geo-data production.
A third important reason is the one that concerns the investments and the
priorities that should be targeted for the NGII (or EGII) implementation. In the
past (mid eighties) the importance of this factor was even higher. During that
time the need to disseminate geographic data through data communications
infrastructures was not considered a priority task for any Director-General
who had to deal daily with the usual difficulties of restrictive budgets and the
lack of highly skilled human resources required for such type of
dissemination.
Though
the
need
for
data
dissemination
through
communications networks is now an “acquis” among the agencies in charge
of data production, the resources needed for the tasks aiming the integration
of the data within the NGII are still a major problem, as the tasks that go
beyond the single dissemination of the data on the Internet are not yet
considered a priority for each agency.
Still, on the other hand, to build the NGII requires investments that are
“horizontal”, thus meaning, which cover the set of agencies across different
Ministries and Secretaries of State. Thus, the budget assigned to the agency
in charge of the co-ordination of the NGII will have to be allocated to the
different agencies (dependent from other cabinet members) for the
integration of each data set within the infrastructure. This can only be
possible in effective terms if the agency in charge is not responsible for data
production, otherwise the budget will have the tendency to solve the agency
and the Ministry problems in the first place.
With this in mind, one could be led to propose that the co-ordinating body
should be either an executive agency out of the geo-data production or a type
of an inter-governmental committee, in which there would be no higher
rankings assigned to any particular producer agency. The drawback that
second solution implied in the eighties to the Portuguese case was the fact
that the implementation measures to be carried out required an executive
capacity that such committees did not usually have. Indeed, in the
Portuguese case, major investments had to be made converting existent
analogue geographic data bases into digital formats (belonging to several
agencies whose budget did not allow to cover such conversion process) as
well as in the conversion of existent data bases to make them be accessed
through the Internet. The co-ordinating body, CNIG, has fulfilled such task
with no conflicts of interest that would have arisen if CNIG itself would be the
beneficiary of such type of investments.
Ten years after the NGII creation, with the development of the Information
Society, it can be said that some of these arguments do not hold any more.
The fact that all agencies have nearly all their data in digital formats and the
fact that they all have a mandatory need to make the data available through
the Internet (in result of the measures that nationally and at the European
Union have been established, namely in the Santa Maria da Feira summit)
have reduced the importance of a specific budget regarding the preparation
of the conditions to “populate” the NGII with existent data (a primary goal
when SNIG was created, much before the Information Society and the
Internet became a common reality). In a opposite direction, the activities to
be developed within the NGII service implementation (initially mainly oriented
to the meta-data organisation) have dramatically increased, as the software
developments make it possible now to offer to citizens funcionallities that
before only those who owned GIS packages could benefit. The role of the coordinating body is crucial to offer such type of NGII services as it implies a
“horizontal” perspective and as it requires the implementation of “horizontal”
type of services.
To implement and to operate such type of geographical information infrastructure is not an easy task and does not imply by itself a strong credit from
the public. First of all, because what users are looking for are data, and the
services that are made available to help them find the data in a efficient way
are not credited, except when they fail (and in such case, the credit is the
worst possible one). With the integration of the NGII on the Internet, the
visibility of the role of the co-ordinating body is very difficult to sustain and in
the long run this may have strong drawbacks. This is probably the most
important concern that a co-ordinating agency has to face in the present
days, regarding a NGII implementation.
It would be an interesting topic to analyse at the European level the pros and
cons of the alternatives of creating a NGII co-ordinating body versus
assigning their tasks and responsibilities to an inter-governmental committee.
The third option, to confine these tasks to any existent data producer agency,
still has no ground to be an effective solution due to the above mentioned
reasons, with a possible exception for the cases where, nationally, a single
agency is in charge of the production of the large majority of the geographic
data sets, although this situation does not happen in nearly any the European
Union countries.
Still of interest to analyse at European level could be the possibility to leave
to the private initiative the mission to create the NGII. This far, not only the
European experience proves that the lack of a public initiative in this area
means that no NGII will ever be built, but also that the investments needed
for the organisation of the catalogues on the existent data available and for
the development of the services that a NGII requires are non refundable. For
the time being, no users are prepared to pay for that type of services, and if
they are to be charged, no one will use them, thus preventing the private
initiative to take over this task.
Further than that, the development of the Information Society and the
emergence of new players in the field, namely in geographic data production,
and in the geographic services already being offered by private firms based
on the Internet, are calling for an updating of the missions that still should
remain within the Public Administration as well as for a clear definition of the
policies and the conditions that should prevail regarding public data
dissemination and added value services based on them.
4. The concept of reference data applied to Geographical Information
Infrastructure implementation
CNIG claims that the concept of reference data does not apply any more to
any geographical information infrastructure implementation.
There are presently an immense number of GI users that are interested in
different types of geo-referenced data. Among all of these types, there is no
single common denominator that can be applied to any particular set of data
that could justify its classification as “reference data”.
Within this project, ETeMII, the concept of reference data refers to the largescale topographic and cadastral data that are needed for municipal planning
and management. Thus, it could be then stated that, for local geographic
information infrastructures, these “reference data” were required to allow their
respective implementation.
There is no doubt that the availability of such type of data is a basic
requirement for the efficient municipal planning and management and that, in
a significant number of countries, Portugal included, the present lack of such
updated type of data (that is not considered in most cases a task of the
Central Public Administration) is presently one of the most important
limitations concerning geographic data existence.
However, most of the large number of web applications oriented to local
citizen’s interests are not based on large scale topographic data, as they do
not need more than central line street files and corresponding addresses.
These, presently, can be easily created without the need for the large scale
topographic data base. Indeed, the same holds true for almost all the needs
of the “business” interested in the advantages of exploring the geographic
context of their data, from the banking and insurance services to the geomarketing areas.
As a matter of fact, considering a local geographic information infrastructure
as the one that provides access to the multiple types of GI data that can be
available for a particular area, the center line files and corresponding
addresses are probably the best set of data (if any) to be chosen as the
“common” denominator that will enable to link a very significant number of
different types of data to a single position. This are data sets that are not the
topographic cartography needed for urban planning and management.
At smaller scales, corresponding to the regional or the national perspective,
the same holds true. There is no single set of data that can be considered the
“reference data” and most of the presently available web applications
oriented to the citizens´s interests do not rely in any specific topographic data
set.
Besides the fact that the topographic theme is not a concern in the process of
the NGII implementation, its production requires all of the investments
assigned to it, and even more. All the money that is allocated to the
production of the data set will not be allocated to the real and core business
of what a NGII consists. The interoperability functionality among different
data sets, the metadata implementation, the services for the citizens aiming
to enable users to explore multiple sets of data in a integrated way –
webmapping operations, among others - are the core issues of any NGII
operation. None of these tasks could ever be implemented if a particular data
set is considered the major key block for NGII implementation.
Indeed, in Europe, as well as in any European country, there is no lack of
data to integrate within the NGII, and there are no reasons that prevent the
process of their implementation with the already available data. The
pragmatic view taken by CNIG in the Portuguese case (to start implementing
the NGII regardless the lack of, for instance, large scale topographic data and
urban cadastral information) explains the advance that was achieved in the
Portuguese NGII regarding other national initiatives in other countries.
The evolution that was registered during the nineties has dramatically
reinforced CNIG´s opinions on these matters. First of all the user
communities of such NGII have been deeply enlarged. These user
communities have evolved from, the narrow spectrum of the professionals
that used the topographic data as the reference of their engineering and
planning activities, to the thousands of professionals that only cared about
simplified and non-topographic geo-data for their current business (banking,
geo-marketing, fleet management, utilities management, among others), and
finally to the millions of citizens that now have access to geo-data through the
Internet.
At the same time, the geo-positioning systems have supplied citizens,
professionals and companies with all the accuracy and effectiveness of the
geographic registration they need for their current activities without the need
for topographic data.
A third significant step was the operation of the first very large resolution
satellite sensors and the corresponding images, which are replacing the
traditional topographic maps.
A fourth very important contribution was the emergence of geographic data
suppliers, outside the traditional public administration. These new actors
have started to produce simplified geographic data for specific market needs,
namely streets, roads and routing operations, which are the base for most of
the WWW applications oriented towards citizen´s needs. The business on the
Internet and the mobile phone developments, namely with the UMTS, have
originated the emergence of a number of new geo-data suppliers (dot.com
firms) that are producing their simplified geo-data for implementing services
for the everyday life of citizens. Indeed, if by 1990, CNIG claimed that the
topographic data was not an issue in the NGII implementation, it seems now
impossible to find someone still claiming for such need in 2001.
5. Towards an EGII and a GSDI
As NGII do not exist in the countries that have taken no action towards its
implementation, it can be clearly stated that EGII will never become a reality,
(thus undermining the efficiency of the EU and multi-lateral actions involving
several member states that require efficient access to geo-data - for instance
in the case of an emergency situation) as long as a direct initiative is not
taken by the EC for the EGII implementation.
Unlike what some claim, for the EGII implementation, what is lacking at the
European level is not any particular data set (even if it is called paneuropean) but the development of the “nucleus” of what the EGII should be.
As stated before, what EGII implementation means is the interoperability
among different (15 member states) data sets covering a large number of
thematic
geographic
data,
the
corresponding
metadata
catalogue
implementation, the services to enable users not only to access to the data
but to explore multiple sets of data in a integrated way – webmapping
operations. These are, among others, the core issues of any NGII operation
and its implementation should target to tackle them.
We do not find in Europe 15 NGII neither their corresponding co-ordinating
bodies, thus there is no hope to expect from the non-existent 15 NGIIs an
unified point of view on what the European should do regarding the EGII
implementation. However, the European Commission could take an active
role on this issue, as it would be one of the most direct beneficiaries of its
implementation.
Indeed, it would be possible for the EC to launch an organised set of actions,
involving the committees or agencies (where existent) that are already
dealing nationally with their NGII, aiming to promote the implementation of
the core services that such EGII should be offering, that would become its
nucleus. This would imply the selection of a number of existent data servers
to be integrated within the EGII, and the promotion of the services to be
offered within the EGII (metadata, access to the server´s data and
webmapping functionalities for the integration, in the user side, of the data
made available).
This “core” of the EGII, to be implemented in a modular way, would rely on
the existent operating NGII where they already exist, plus on a number of
data servers that would hold specific thematic data sets, in order to ensure
that the process starts in all the EU countries, even in the ones where there is
no NGII.
A possible way through would be to consider the relevant data needed for
emergency situations, (that could become at the same time the European
contribution to the Global Disaster Information Network, GDIN), or any other
types of sets of data, preferably with obvious “direct customers” both in the
EC and in the member states.
From this core, the EGII would tackle other themes and services to be offered
and eventually it would integrate all the relevant GI data servers within the
UE.
Five types of contributions are needed for such scenario:

a HLWG, including national representatives of the agencies or
Committees in charge of NGII implementation, that would be called upon
for project plan approval and its progress evaluation, as well as for the
definition of the themes and the selection of the data servers to be
included (namely where there is no NGII in charge);

a budget for the EGII operational development that should be allocated
within the EC to a DG that would “host” the core of the EGII;

a program dedicated to promote dedicated R&D actions directly oriented
towards mechanisms for data dissemination and integration, namely new
interfaces for the telecommunications technologies (UTMS and others)
and further advances regarding interoperability for data and data systems;

means to promote metadata generation across all the member states
agencies in charge of geo-data production;

dedicated training actions for the personnel of such agencies aiming to
enable them to deal with these new technologies.
.
Such effective nucleus of services, to be implemented at European level,
could and should be discussed and implemented within the GSDI forum.
6. Conclusions
There is no single recipe for a NGII implementation. The Portuguese case,
one of the earlier to be considered in the European Union and the first to be
officially created and operated within the Public Administration has managed
to adapt itself to the fast changes that have been taking place in the area of
data communications and data networks regarding geographic data
exploration. Other models different than the Portuguese one could lead to
similar NGII implementations, particularly now at a time where most of the
pioneer efforts needed (that have required an executive type of agency) for
such implementation appear as granted. This could be the case of
intergovernmental committees with a capacity to promote and carry out direct
actions.
The horizontal nature of a co-ordinating body for any NGII seems to be
increasingly important, as the concept of geographic data user tend to
extrapolate to every concerned citizen and as the software developments
make of each of these potential users of the NGII services.
For more than a decade the EU community has been addressing, with no
success at all, the need for the EGII. Among the major reasons, the
interference of the noise made by those who claim the need for more
topographic data has certainly taken a major role, as the main issues of the
EGII implementation became offset by the topic of the “reference” data. The
lobbying capacity of a specific group of geographic data producers, directly
interested in the above mentioned production also helps explains the
unsuccessful story of the EGII.
Based on the present level of development of the Portuguese NGII, a number of actions are
proposed to the EC as ones that could lead to the building of the nucleus of the EGII, based
on a core of services to be implemented in a integrated and modular way among the 15
member states.
Rui Gonçalves Henriques and Cristina Gouveia