A Local-State Government Spatial Data Sharing Partnership

1.1 Background to Research
3
Chapter 1 - Introduction
Accurate, up-to-date, relevant and accessible spatial information at the local level is
critical to the delivery of many government services, particularly emergency services such
as police, fire and ambulance. The development of sub-national spatial data infrastructures
(SDIs) which support these services increasingly depends on the effective co-operation and
exchange of information between government jurisdictions and industry. However, in
countries with decentralised systems of government, the sharing of data between
jurisdictions, and hence SDI development, continues to be problematic. This thesis
addresses this problem by investigating the effectiveness of local-state government spatial
data sharing partnerships as a means of facilitating sub-national SDI development.
Geographic information systems (GIS) are now widely utilised and integrated in many
areas of our society. Governments, businesses and the community now rely on spatial
information for practical decision making on a daily basis (1995a). With the dramatic
growth of GIS during the 1980s and 1990s, the focus slowly began to shift from the
management of technology to the management of information. Organisational efforts were
directed towards improving information management in line with the concept of “gather
once, but use many times”. As the advantages of a single point of entry for intra-
organisational information were realised, attention turned to improving the flow of inter-
organisational information (Lee 2003). Both government and the private sector recognised
that the duplication of effort and disparate data holdings was becoming an increasing
burden on their operations. Unlike technological barriers which are being continually
resolved, it is “institutional inertia” which is proving to be the more formidable challenge
(Craig 1995).
This challenge began to be addressed in the early 1990s by shared or multi-participant GIS
projects in Europe and the USA (Masser & Campbell 1994; Nedovic-Budic 2000) and
other regions such as Asia and Australia (Masser 2002). The recognition by many
countries that information should be considered as an infrastructure led to the concept of
geospatial or spatial data infrastructures (ANZLIC 1996; Coleman & Nebert 1998; Masser
1998b; National Research Council 1993).
Australia, like other countries around the world, began to take positive steps towards
building its SDI through national policy development and co-ordination efforts.
Progressively, the national SDI initiatives in Australia were followed, or often preceded,
by state government SDI initiatives. As the state governments’ understanding of SDI