A Local-State Government Spatial Data Sharing Partnership

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Conclusions and Implications
8.2.3 Objective 3: Assessment of Organisational Characteristics,
Capacities and Attitudes in Local Government
The results have shown that spatial information has become far more mainstream and core
to LGA business activities. The progressive alignment of GIS and corporate ICT was also
evident and may lead to different ways to engage with local governments in the future.
The assessment of the status of the areas of policy and standards in local governments
indicated that there was a relatively low appreciation of the importance of these issues for
data sharing. The influence of state government policies on access and pricing were found
to be significant, and LGAs were found to be likely to follow the lead of the state
government in these policy areas. The business needs of local government were identified
as a priority for establishing future partnership strategies.
Local government differences with respect to spatial information policy, data needs and
outcomes were identified across the three states investigated. There was significant inter-
state variation in the overall level of satisfaction of local governments with each of the
state partnerships. These differences were primarily attributed to the varying access and
pricing policies of the three states and the effectiveness of their partnership management
process. The results of the quantitative analysis correlated closely with the qualitative case
studies at state government level, thereby confirming trends.
8.2.4 Objective 4: Identification of Critical Partnership Factors and
Development of a Generic Partnership Model
In chapter 7, the critical partnership factors were identified through a triangulation process
integrating findings from existing theory, the state government case studies and the results
of the quantitative analysis of the local government survey. Some of these factors
emerged initially in the literature and were then confirmed by the state case studies or the
LGA analysis. Factors that were identified as being highly significant included defined
business needs, resourcing, organisational support, policies, communication and issues
relating to control. Based on these findings a generic data sharing partnership model was
developed. The model consisted of three major components including: contextual factors,
collaborative process and outcomes.
8.2.5 Objective 5: Evaluation of the Partnership Model and
Assessment of its Contribution to SDI Development
The partnership model was evaluated using the original case study data to determine its
application and useability. The evaluation successfully identified a number of short-
comings in each of the existing local-state government data sharing partnership strategies.