Introduction

SDIs have been rapidly developing around the world during the past 15 years. Many countries have spent considerable resources in developing their National Spatial Data Infrastructures. According to Masser [2005] National SDI have 3 common characteristics 1. They are explicitly national in nature 2. They refer either to geographic information or spatial data 3. They imply the existence of some form of coordinating mechanism for policy formulation and implementation purposes. In 2001, 120 of the 192 countries were working on their National Spatial Data Infrastructure. One of the main components of an NSDI is a Clearinghouse, and the first nation to establish a national clearing house was the United States.[Crompvoerts, 2006]. In this report the development of SDI initiatives of United States as well as United Kingdom will be studied. These two countries had very different approaches to SDI development. United States experienced an SDI development late compared to other countries but have become one of the world leaders in this area. On the other hand in United Kingdom, SDI development is seen to have started much earlier than other countries, but UK is still to realise a working National SDI.

What is an SDI
An SDI is a framework of policies, institutional arrangements, technologies, data and people that makes it possible to share and use geographic information effectively [Craglia et al., 2002]. It provides mass of data within a geographic extent, the means of spatial data discovery, data evaluation and ability to add value to the data by means of spatial applications. The parties

involved in an SDI include different levels of government, the private sector, the educational institutions, the NGOs and the general public [Nebert, 2004]. SDI is defined as an Infrastructure to provide the analogy to a road network or a telecommunication network. SDIs also facilitate access to GI information using the minimum required set of standard practices, protocols, and specifications. The applications that run on this infrastructure are not usually specified, and like any other network an effective SDI would facilitate different types of applications to run on the infrastructure. Minimally an SDI must host geographic data and attributes, metadata, a discovery portal, and a means to visualize and evaluate the data. [Nebert, 2004].

SDI Development in the United Kingdom

Introduction
The total population of the United Kingdom was estimated at 64 million in 2010 (http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/tgm/table.do?tab=table&language=en&pcode=tps00001&ta bleSelection=1&footnotes=yes&labeling=labels&plugin=1). The country is a constitutional monarchy and a unitary state and in effect 4 nations within one country: England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland (http://www.statistics.gov.uk/geography/uk_countries.asp). This fact with the added historical effect of union and disassociation with Ireland has resulted in variable systems of government within the regions. For example, the agency responsible for land and property in England and Wales is Her Majestys Land Registry. In Scotland, its counterpart is the Registers of Scotland. Also, the national mapping agency for Great Britain is the Ordnance Survey, covering England, Scotland and Wales. Its counterpart in Northern Ireland is the Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland [Craglia, 1999]. 2

Development of a GI policy
The discussions about the need to establish a GIS policy in the UK was initiated with the publication of the Report of the Committee of Enquiry on Handling Geographic Information chaired by Lord Chorley in May 1987 [Department of Environment, 1987]. The Chorley report which was commissioned by the then Secretary of State for the Environment was divided into two parts. Part one reviewed recent developments in GI handling technologies and part two discusses the specific issues involved in GI development and prescribes 64 recommendations and the reasoning for it. One of the recommendations was that an independent national centre for geographic information be established. This however was rejected by the government of that day [Craglia, 1999]. The report described GIS as "the biggest step forward in the handling of geographic information since the invention of the map" [Department of Environment, 1987, par 1.7], and it also noted their concern that information technology in itself must be regarded as "a necessary, though not sufficient condition for the take up of geographic information systems to increase rapidly" [Department of Environment, 1987, par 1.22]. To facilitate the process of GIS integration, the committee maintained that is it essential to overcome a number of important barriers. Specific importance was given to the increasing need to greater user awareness and the availability of digital data suitable for specific applications [Craglia, 1999]. The report did result in the development of Association of Geographic Information (AGI) in 1998/1999, an NGO of public and private sector GI developers and users. The AGI has been one of the major players in GIS development in the country. The government however was reluctant to take the initiative in leading SDI development and settled at setting up just an Intragovernmental Group on Geographic Information (IGGI) [Evans, 2006]. 3

For a long time, the country has lacked a coordinating structure to implement its SDI, but there are several organisations that have a direct or indirect role in shaping the environment within which SDI related activities can take place. These are listed in the table below [Craglia et al., 2002]. Organisation Office of the Deputy Prime Minister Function Responsible for Local government, regional development, planning Scottish Executive (Scotland) Responsible for Local government, regional development, planning National Assembly (Wales) Responsible for Local government, regional development, planning POSTCOM Regulator of postal services, maintenance and access to postal address file Improvement and Development Agency Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland Ordnance Survey The Inter-governmental group on GI (IGGI) Information about activities of local government National mapping agency for Northern Ireland National Mapping Agency of Great Britain Membership organisation that promotes effective use of GI across central government departments Association of Geographic Information (AGI) Cross-sectoral organisation which has over 1000 members from the government, private sector and academia to maximize use of GI
Table 1: Organisations with SDI related activities. [Craglia et al., 2002]

Ordnance Survey
The most complete datasets on the geography of the UK are held by the Ordnance Survey of UK. The Ordnance Survey, which is the national mapping agency of Great Britain, grew out of the Board of Ordnance which was originally a military arm of the government that undertook surveys. The initial surveys were all for military purposes and during the period of the Second World War, the British National Grid System was developed by Ordnance Survey. (http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/ aboutus/history/index.html) Although, the Ordnance Survey has been a tax-payer funded agency, its data has never been freely available. The British Government have pushed for greater commercialization of organization and in 1999, Ordnance Survey was changed to a Government Trading Fund, requiring to effectively fund itself [Evans, 2006]. In 1995, AGI lead an initiative with Ordnance Survey, private industry and independently acting government agencies to form The National Geospatial Data Framework (NGDF). NGDF has the aim to develop an over-arching UK framework to facilitate and encourage efficient linking, combining and widespread use of geospatial data which is fit for purpose (http://www.ngdf.org.uk/Pubdocs/Pubpapers/ngdfcan.htm). Progress on this initiative was hampered with both policy disagreement and lack of government funding. With the disordered nature of GI data at that time, NGDF could not work on the geospatial framework as they originally intended to so instead they started developing a web-based metadata repository for GI data which was first called Ask Giraffe. Their second project was to develop standard geographic boundaries as recommended by the Chorley Report. However this was not successful as the datasets at that time were conflicting and had no common reference system. The project

was revised to recommending best practice use of certain pre-existing datasets and techniques. [Evans, 2006] As the NGDF was not successful in their quest to form a geographic framework, they were eventually disbanded in 2001 and their projects were taken over by AGI. The Ask Giraffe project was renamed to GIgateway. Currently, GIgateway is to be decommissioned by 31 March 2011 and to be replaced by new the government run UK Location Programme [Evans, 2006]

UK location Programme
In 2006, the UK government, led by Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs started the UK Location programme [Geographic Information Panel, 2008]. This is the undertaking that can be described as being closest to an SDI. The objective of the Location Strategy is stated as to maximize the value to the public, government, UK business and industry of geographic information [Geographic Information Panel, 2008]. The Strategy is also planned to be delivered in a corporative effort by involving the central, local and devolved governments of the UK. The strategy was developed in 2006 by a panel drawn from the public and private sector. This panel, which was called the Geographic Information Panel, was originally formed in 2005 to give high level advice to Communities and Local Government Ministers on Geographic information issues of national importance for the UK [Geographic Information Panel, 2008]. The panel found that currently in UK, users of GI spend 80% of their time organising and managing data and only 20% of time analysing and adding value to the data. Furthermore, it was discovered that there was duplicate data being collected, and that there was little understanding of the data collected, stored or maintained by either the public or private sector. There were also 6

too few data standards that were universally being used for referencing and collecting GI data [Geographic Information Panel, 2008] Hence, it was decided that there was a need to (1) know what data was available and avoid duplication, (2) use a common reference system (3) establish a common infrastructure of standards, technology and business relationships (4) develop appropriate skills among the GI professionals as well as user groups (5) create a strong leadership and governance to drive the proposed changes [Geographic Information Panel, 2008]. A further impetus for the development of the UK location strategy was to streamline the SDI development of the country with the newly formed INSPIRE directive. The INSPIRE directive (Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe) dictated the framework for establishing an infrastructure for spatial information in Europe to support community environmental policies, and policies or activities which may have an impact on the environment (http://inspire.jrc.ec.europa.eu/) The location strategy was to be a corporative effort owned by central, local and devolved governments in the UK and it was a requirement that each public sector organisation make publicly available the details of its geographic datasets. The Location Strategy programme was led by the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. A Steering Committee named the Location Council was formed to drive the Location Programme. The location Council is composed of public sector departments and agencies that provide funding or resources in kind to the Location Programme. A nominated person is to represent all devolved governments and initially the private sector, academia and 3rd sectors were to be represented through the Association for Geographic Information (AGI). The

following figure shows the governing structure of both the UK Location Strategy and the UK INSPIRE implementation [Bouguslawski and Carlyle, 2009].

Figure 1: Governing Arrangement for Location Council and INSPIRE implementation [Bouguslawski and Carlyle, 2009]

With the provided details of datasets owned by public sector organisations, the Location Council is required to maintain the minimum requirements and common standards to manage such datasets and base these standards on internationally recognised open standards where appropriate. The collected metadata should include information about how and when the datasets 8

has been collected, its accuracy tolerances, its format and storage, and its access rights. The Location council should monitor implementation closely and report to the Ministerial Cabinet Committee on Domestic Affairs [Geographic Information Panel, 2008]. Although it is mandatory for public sector to provide datasets, it was deemed inappropriate for the Government to require private sector organisations to provide these. However, the system would be open to private sector to apply the standards and lodge details in a central repository, if one is developed [Geographic Information Panel, 2008].

Data management
The location information system will not store any data apart from metadata and master data. Data is to be supplied either directly from the data provider or through a secondary publishing agent. It would be extremely expensive for a large country like UK to have a central data hub, and although it will be difficult to maintain compliance to standard with a distributed data supply network, it was believed to allow more sustainable and flexible infrastructure for data sharing and reuses [Manning and Murray, 2009].

United States
Introduction
The United States is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district. The 2010 census gives a population figure of 308 Million (http://2010.census.gov/2010census/data/apportionment-dens-text.php). There are quite a few agencies involved in creating GI in the US and with the federal structure of the US government, many important responsibilities for GI is decentralised at the 9

state and local government level. Noteworthy to mention is that land titles registration and land taxation matters are handled by local governments within each state. As a result over 80,000 agencies including 50 states, more than 3000 counties and 7000 cities are involved at some level of GI creation [Messer, 1998].

The National Spatial Data Infrastructure

The term National Spatial Data Infrastructure was first used by John McLaughlin at the 1991 Canadian Conference on GIS in a paper that was entitled Towards a national spatial data infrastructure [McLaughlin, 1991]. The idea was later developed by the US National Research Councils Mapping Science Committee in their report on Toward a co-ordinated spatial data infrastructure for the nation. The Mapping Science Committee identified NSDI as the comprehensive and co-ordinated environment for the production, management, dissemination and use of spatial data. [National Research Council, 1993]. The background to NSDI development is found in the policy during the first Clinton term which aimed at reducing the size of federal deficit, to more effectively use the billions of dollars spent annually in collecting and managing geographic information [Masser, 2002]. To complement this, the US Office of Management and Budget revised the Circular A-16 on Coordination of Geographic Information and Related Spatial Data Activities in 2001 and the circular was disseminated to all heads of executive departments and agencies. The Circular outlines the importance for an NSDI as well as defining its scope and the role of the Federal Geographic Data Committee. It also made it mandatory for all federal agencies to participate in the NSDI, however since the level of government are independent under the US constitution, the participation of state or local governments are not mandatory but voluntary. [Circular No. A-16]

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The vision of the NSDI is defined in the circular as to assure that spatial data from multiple sources (Federal, State, and local governments, academia, and the private sector) are widely available and easily integrated to enhance knowledge and understanding of our physical and cultural world. The NSDI shall honour several key public values in its development and administration. The circular was accompanied by the executive order 12906 issued by the then President Clinton. The Circular also defines the components of the NSDI as data themes, metadata, The National Spatial Data Clearinghouse, standards, and partnerships. The Circular also established the Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) as the inter-agency coordinating body of the NSDI related activities.

The Federal Geographic Data Committee

The Federal Geospatial Data Committee Steering Committees purpose statement states very clearly the importance of coordinating geospatial investments and activities. It states that such coordination is essential in order to eliminate duplication of effort and data, avoid redundant expenditures, reduce resources spent on unfunded mandates, leverage geospatial investments, accelerate the development of electronic government to meet the needs and expectations of citizens and agency programmatic mandates, and improve the efficiency of effectiveness of public management. [FGDC Steering Committee charter] The FGDC was to be chaired by the Secretary of the Department of Interior with Deputy Director for Management, OMB to serve as the vice-chair. It is a 19 member interagency committee composed of representatives from the Executive Office of the President, and Cabinet level and independent Federal agencies. The FGDC provides executive, managerial, and

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advisory direction and oversight for geospatial decisions and initiatives across the Federal government. According to FGDC charter, All agencies responsible for NSDI spatial data themes are required to be members of FGDC and FGDC is to establish a National Geospatial Data Clearinghouse and to develop standards for implementing the NSDI, in consultation and cooperation with all the stakeholders. [FGDC Steering Committee charter] The following figure shows the structure of FGDC.

Figure 2: Structure of FGDC (http://www.fgdc.gov/participation/index_html)

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The FGDC is composed of several committees. It is governed by the FGDC Steering Committee which provides the executive leadership for coordinating geospatial activities between member agencies by instituting policies and regulating and providing guidance. There is also an FGDC Executive Committee which is composed of the seven Federal agencies with the largest investment in geospatial technologies. The committee provides guidance to the FDGC on major geospatial undertakings and although the committee does not have a decision making role the suggestions of the committee are tabled in the Steering committee for decisions. The FGDC coordinating group assists FGDC in inter-agency coordination and implementation of the NSDI at the operational level. The coordinating group also provides leadership to FDGC functional groups and sub-committees. There is also a National Geospatial Advisory Committee which was established under the Federal Advisory Committee Act and is the advisory body that provides advice and recommendations on Federal geospatial policy and bridges the connection between representatives in the geospatial community (http://www.fgdc.gov/participation/index_html).

Framework Data
Circular A-16 defines framework data as core data themes. These are: (1) Geodetic Control (2) Orthoimagery (3) Elevation and Bathymetry (4) Transportation (5) Hydrography (6) Cadastral and (7) Government units (boundaries) Framework data involves federal agencies defining each theme and standardising them. Multi-sectoral standards development teams have been recruited in order to define data content for information exchange for each of the seven themes. Other data are encouraged, particularly in terms of documentation, publication, and service for all types of geoinformation [Masser, 2002]. This abundant geographic data are available through a distributed metadata catalogue known as the Clearinghouse. 13

National Spatial Data Clearinghouse

Circular A-16 describes the National Spatial Data Clearinghouse as the electronic service providing access to documented spatial data and metadata from distributed data sources. The Clearinghouse is established by the FGDC as a network of a community of distributed data providers who publishes metadata information about the data they have. Each metadata collection is called a Clearinghouse Node and is hosted by the related organization. The metadata in these nodes can be searched by the geodata.gov portal and provides the user with the ability of quickly assessing the properties and boundaries of available data (http://www.fgdc.gov/). It is encouraged that all metadata be published for free and it is required that all federal agencies make non-sensitive data available only at the cost of distribution. [Circular No. A-130] The FGDC selected the search and retrieval protocol Z39.50-1995 (ISO 23950) to provide search interoperability among different servers of geospatial metadata in the Clearinghouse. This protocol uses client and server software to establish a connection, pass a formatted query, return query results, and present identified documents to the client in one of several formats. (http://www.fgdc.gov/).

Private sector Development

As the National Spatial Data Infrastructure is federally driven, other public sector stakeholders have a lesser role in its development. This is also true for the private sector. This led a panel of leading GI experts to recommend the establishment of a broadly representative National Spatial Data Council to complement the function played by the FGDC and provide national leadership and coordination for the NSDI [Masser, 2002].

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While the FGDC has been instrumental in much of the progress achieved over the past few years, the panel is convinced that an Organisation is needed which provides full participation by all the major parties and interests engaged in developing and maintaining the NSDI. Without such participation, the NSDI is likely to be seen as a federal programme run from Washington of limited value to state and local governments. Without stronger private sector participation, there will likely be less cooperation and continued efforts in Congress to limit or abolish federal capabilities needed to realise the full NSDI. In addition, some of the functions now being performed by government would benefit by the conduct of them in a more businesslike manner [Masser, 2002]. As of yet US government have not acted upon this recommendation.

Comparative Evaluation
If we look at the US Circular A-16 and the British Location Strategy, It can be seen that the driving forces behind both these spatial data infrastructures are similar, i.e. reducing wastage, good governance, sustainable development and promoting economic growth. However, there are clear differences in the mechanisms that have been developed for coordination. The structure of US Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) is broad in scope but restricted nevertheless to federal government agencies. The US is yet to act upon the recommendation of the US National Academy of Public Administration to establish a broadly representative National Spatial Data Council to complement the FGDC in providing national leadership and coordination for the NSDI [Masser, 2002]. If we compare the US and the UK SDI initiatives, we can see a lot of difference in their initiation and development. The US SDI development was officially started by a presidential directive and the stakeholders running it had the authority and mandate to carry it forward. The 15

objectives and the responsibilities of different parties were very clearly indicated in the Office of Management and Budgets Circular [Circular A-16] and the presidential directive. [Executive Order 12906, 1994]. It was stated in Circular A-16 that no federal funds will be used directly or indirectly for the development of spatial data not complying with NSDI standards; hence this reduced the amount of wastage that could have occurred. There was also a circular which encouraged all metadata to be published for free and which required that all federal agencies make non-sensitive data available only at the cost of distribution [Circular No. A-130]. This resulted in the reduction of cost of data that was available and provided a lot of data for free as well. The British system had a slow progress from the beginning. Since the release of the Chorley Report in 1987, progress has been slow with regard to SDI development. [Evans, 2006]. There were misalignments between the governments thinking of SDI development and the thinking of the GI industry. The government seem to have more free market and commercial thinking, for example by changing Ordnance Survey to a trading fund and also not taking the initiative to drive the development of SDI as proposed in the Chorley Report. Eventually in 2006 with the Initiation of the UK Location Programme, it seems that the government is taking steps towards showing leadership in SDI development. The pressure from INSPIRE initiative is seen as one of the reasons the government went into this direction. However, it will take some years before the results from this initiative can be seen.

Conclusion
The UK and the US have taken two very different approaches to developing their SDIs. Both countries are developed countries and seem to have a strong community of GIS users and educators. However, it seems that the initiatives taken by the US has been more direct and has 16

resulted in a more robust and effective GI infrastructure. The UK is yet to develop a SDI system however has taken the first steps to doing so.

References and Bibliography

Bouguslawski, R. and Carlyle, S. (2009) Report UKLC Programme Governance Arrangement. United Kingdom Location Council Craglia, M., Annoni, Alessandro., Smith, R. S., and Smitsax, Paul. (2002). Spatial Data Infrastructures: Country Reports. GINIE: Geographic Information Network in Europe Craglia, M, and Evnorfopoulou, K. (1999). Comparative Evaluation of National Data Infrastructures. MADAME: Methods for Access to Data and Matadata in Europe Crompvoerts, J.(2006). National Spatial Data Clearinghouses, Worldwide Development and Impact. , PhD Thesis. Wageningen University, Wageningen

Department of Environment (1987). Handling Geographic Information: Report of the Committee of Enquiry Chaired by Lord Chorley. London: HMSO European Commission (n.d.) Total Population Table. European Commission [On-line] 21 March 2011. http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/tgm/table.do?tab=table&language=en&pcode=tps00001&ta bleSelection=1&footnotes=yes&labeling=labels&plugin=1 European Commission (n.d.) Inspire Directive [On-line] 21 March 2011. http://inspire.jrc.ec.europa.eu Evans, A.J. (2006) The National Geographic Information Policy of Britain. Proceedings of the GIS International Conference / GIS Korea 2006, Seoul, Korea, 17-19 May 2006, p.275-299 Federal Geographic Data Committee. (n.d). Steering Committee Charter Federal Geographic Data Committee (n.d.) FGDC Structure and Federal Agency and Bureau Representation [On-line] 21 March 2011. http://www.fgdc.gov/participation/index_html Federal Geographic Data Committee (n.d.) The Federal Geographic Data Committee [On-line] 21 March 2011. http://www.fgdc.gov/ Geographic Information Panel (2008) Place matters: the Location Strategy for the United Kingdom 17

Masser, I., (2007). Buildind European Spatial Data Infrastructures. 1st ed. ESRI Press. Redlands, California Masser, I., (2005). Changing notions of a spatial data infrastructure. Masser, I. (2002). Report on a comparative analysis of NSDIs in Australia, Canada and the United States GINIE: Geographic Information Network in Europe Masser, I. (1998). Governments and geographic information, London: Taylor and Francis Manning, T. and Murray, K., (2009) UK Location Programme Conceptual Design. United Kingdom Location Council McLaughlin, J.D. (1991). Towards national spatial data infrastructure, Proceedings of the Canadian Conference on Geographic Information Systems, Ottawa, pp. 1-5 National Research Council (1993). Toward a coordinated spatial data infrastructure for the nation, Mapping Science Committee. , Washington D.C: National Academy Press Nebert, D. D.(2004). Developing Spatial Data Infrastructures: The SDI Cookbook. Version 2., Global Spatial Data Infratructure Office of Management and Budget (2002). Circular No. A-16 Revised.

Office of Management and Budget (n.d.). Circular No. A-130 Revised Ordnance Survey (n.d.) From revolution to e-volution [On-line] 21 March 2011. http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/aboutus/history/index.html Rackham, L., and Rhind, D. (1998) Establishing the UK National Geospatial Data Framework. Presented at SDI, Ottawa, Canada, June 1998. Website:http://www.ngdf.org.uk/Pubdocs/Pubpapers/ngdfcan.htm United States Census 2010 (2010.) Resident Population Data [On-line] 21 March 2011. http://2010.census.gov/2010census/data/apportionment-dens-text.php The White House (1994). Executive order 12906 Coordinating Geographic Data Acquisition and Access: The National Spatial Data Infrastructure. Williamson, I., Rajabifard, A., Binns, A., (2006). Challenges and issues for SDI development. International Journal of Spatial Data Infrastructure Research, Vol. 1, pp. 24-35.

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