Towards Whole of Government Spatial Enablement

Bill Hirst

ACT Surveyor-General

Manager, Land Information

November 2012

Problem

• Silos – good intentions not realised

• Duplication

• So much potential

• Technical agreement but lack of senior level commitment

• ESA focused user

Spatial Virtual ACT

VIRTUAL

ACT

Readily

Integrated

Long

Term

Whole of

Government

Flexibly

Accessible

Easily

Discovered

Quality

Assured

ACTSTRENGTHS

• Positional accuracy – integrity

• ACT Land Information Group (ALIG), cooperative enthusiastic

• Skills

• CORS

• ACTMAPi

• PSMA – Jurisdictional cooperation

• One government (no LGAs)

ACT WEAKNESSES

• Silos

• Some duplication – roads / points of interest

• Lack of agreed whole of govt. policies -custodianship, metadata, pricing and access, licensing, software

• Skill shortage – interoperability, data modelling

• Lack of whole of government spatial planning, governance and leadership

ACT OPPORTUNITIES

• Efficiencies in non-traditional areas

• Exploit existing infrastructure

• Exploit existing applications – utilise other

jurisdictions' applications – policies - skills

• Open government

• Digital city - Virtual ACT

• Improve information management

ACTTHREATS

• Failure to deliver on expectations

• Failure to take advantage of opportunities

• Staff / skill loss

• Failure to manage privacy / security concerns

• Data hording – fear to release

The Challenge

• Underutilised resources – data, infrastructure, applications

• Limited budget

• Competing demands on staff and resources

• Privacy / security

• Governance - commitment

COMPELLING OPPORTUNITIES

Elements required

• Communications

• Technology

• Policy

• Governance

• Financial

RELATED

Selling the ConceptCOMMUNICATIONS

• Important

• On-going

• Seek opportunities – Open Govt.

• Never let a chance go by

• Keep it simple (tricky)

• Non-traditional (Health / Education) are the key targets

• Looking for the story behind the data

Selling the Concept

Some useful facts and figures:• 80% of all information has a location component (?)

• All information to 2003 = 5 exabyte5,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes

Now generated in 48 hrs (Ed Parsons Google 2010)

• CORS – centimetre accuracy – real time

• Revenue $1.4B contributing $6-12B to GDP (ACIL

Tasman 2008)

• From Maps to Solutions

• From managing spatial information to managing information spatially

• 70-80% of all internet searches have location relevance (Peter Ulm – Microsoft Virtual Earth)

TECHNOLOGY

• Need all (most) key players to agree

• Leadership not ownership

• Forget agencies – focus on customers

• Listen to everyone

• Try to move forward incrementally within a broad plan (Bigger the bang the bigger the risk)

• Beware of complex in-house developments andlarge consultancies

Bite size. Hub concept

Don’t interrupt existing business systems

POLICY

• Important for:– Custodianship

– Pricing, licensing, access

– Metadata (?)

– Addressing

• Plenty of examples and assistance available

• Wide consultation required

• Linked to communication / governance

• Keep simple and succinct

Custodianship• ACT Government spends an estimated $4-5M annually maintaining spatial data

• Much of this data is of interest to others outside the agency or section collecting the data

• Need to maximise the return on investment

• Potential to gain efficiencies by utilising custodianship as a tool to work more efficiently

• Gives users more confidence in the level of integrity, timeliness, precision and completeness.

KEY TO SDI

GOVERNANCE

• Ideal whole of government

• Biggest obstacle

• Need teeth

• Committees struggle

• Whole of Govt. team– Handy

– Expensive?

– Only partially effective

FINANCE

• Need on-going

• Savings real but hard to honestly quantify

• Pricing policy?

• Can make progress with little

• Share ideas / technology with others

• Communication

Key messages

• Constant selling required

• Don’t try to own the thing – can’t break down silos by building another one

• Consultation is tiring, tedious, on-going and essential

• Governance remains a big challenge

• Smaller on-going finance better than one off big sum

• Keep trying – do a little bit every day

• Minimise disruption to existing systems

Towards Whole of Government Spatial Enablement

Bill Hirst

ACT Surveyor-General

Manager, Land Information

November 2012