A Local-State Government Spatial Data Sharing Partnership

A Local-State Spatial Data Sharing Partnership Model to Facilitate SDI Development
5.4.2 Institutional Environment
The Tasmanian Government agency responsible for land and property management is the
Department of Primary Industries, Water and Environment (DPIWE). The grouping of the
land management functions into a multi-disciplinary department has become increasingly
common within State Government departments in Australia as the traditional mapping
agencies are downsized and integrated with other land management activities to form
“super departments”. From a political perspective, the State of Tasmania has been very
pro-active in its attitude towards both intra- and inter-jurisdictional collaboration. A
partnerships program, initiated under the Tasmanian Department of Premier and Cabinet in
1998, actively promoted the development of co-operative agreements to improve the
working relationships between local and state government in Tasmania (Tasmanian
Department of Premier and Cabinet 2002).
Historical Development of Partnership
The coordination of land information activities in Tasmania has been undertaken by the
Tasmanian Land Information Coordination Committee (LICC) since the early 1990s. In
1995, as part of its Strategic Plan, the LICC set one of its objectives as “the creation and
maintenance of a common and effective land information infrastructure” (Land
Information Coordination Committee 2001). The LICC adopted a “whole-of-government”
approach to achieve this outcome and initiated a study to identify those data sets across
government which could be considered as core to this information infrastructure. This
study identified a potential list of over 300 data sets, of which 56 were selected for initial
development. A project and business case was then prepared by the Division of
Information and Land Services under the state government’s Capital Investment Program,
to establish a web based delivery platform to replace the existing land titling and valuation
delivery systems. In 1997, a policy initiative on delivery and access to spatial information
was released, which heralded the beginning of the Land Information Systems of Tasmania
(LIST).
The development of the LIST was initially budgeted to cost $6.5 million, including $2.9
million of new funding and $3.6 million of existing departmental resources over a three
year period. However, only $2.44 million was initially allocated from the State Investment
Program with a condition that the system was to be completed in two years. Within this
short project timeframe the project was required to:
• develop and negotiate agreements to manage the custodianship and sharing of data;
• acquire and develop the computing systems to manage and deliver the data sets;
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