[SDI-AsiaPacific] Seminar: Public-Private Partnerships for Spatial Data Infrastructure in the Context of E-Government (PPP4SDI & E-Gov)

[Asmat Ali]

 EUROGI organized a seminar on above mentioned subject in 1st week of December 2007 at University Roma–La Sapienza, Rome, Italy. I also had the opportunity to attend this seminar.
  I share my views and findings about this seminar. 
   
  Before the seminar
   
  Being a student of spatial domain and therefore well motivated to attend the above said seminar organized by EUROGI in 1st week of December 2007 at University Roma–La Sapienza, Rome, Italy, lot of efforts and arrangements had to be made. One of the reasons to attend the seminar, was also the excitement to participate in a function of significant importance organized by economically, socially and technologically developed countries of the world. My expectations were high and moral, too. Obviously, I attached great hopes inspirations with the seminar where I could see practical examples of SDIs based on Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) as Dr. Morales has been teaching in GIM course to  have been developed through innovative approach PPP. 
   
  At the seminar
   
  Almost 43 participants from various countries of the European Union (EU) were present in the seminar. The purpose of the seminar as advertised by EUROGI was “To explore ways in which Private-Public Partnerships (PPP) can assist in building the Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) across Europe. A number of practical examples of PPPs in the spatial data and services fields will be highlighted”. 
   
  It was a two days seminar. The first day was devoted to SETTING THE SCENE by invited speakers on their experience in building SDI’s related projects through PPP. Mauro Salvemini president of EUROGI & AM-FM Italia from Italy gave a snapshot of EUROGI and its current activities in EU. He stressed digital data while arguing the challenge of next few years faced by SDI, and underscored it also a challenge for SDI Europe. The paradox exposed by him “GI demand is highly increasing” was termed as the first paradox while “Europe not developing integration solutions” was termed as the second paradox by him. Generally speaking his presentation was revolving in an orbit of digital data, technology, market driven supply and demand theory neglecting the social aspect of SDI which was my first disappointment. Because technology alone does not work, it needs humans and humans prompt to socially valuable aspects rather than just technological innovations.
   
  Eva Pauknerova from Spatial Data Infrastructures Unit of INSPIRE kept the ball rolling towards “technical SDI” (Georgiadou et al. 2006) arguing “What is the Spatial Data Infrastructure?” and envisioned following four components of SDI:
   
    
   Institutional Framework  
   Fundamental Data Sets  
   Technical Standards  
   Information Services
   
  The presenter gave the frequently cited example of road infrastructure which was not new at all for me and most of the participants like the components of SDI mentioned above. The rest part of the presentation was enclosed by terms like metadata, interoperability, data sets and policy issues which were well engraved in my brain by GIM teaching staff. 
   
  Rest of the day was exploited by vendors of ESRI, Intergraph and some other private sector representatives. Anyhow the presentation made by Michael Nicholson of Intelligent Addressing Ltd from UK proved to be a break through when he revealed “The UK currently has no nationally accepted SDI”. One of the reasons he pointed out during informal talk, has been the sixty pages license offered by Ordnance Survey to private sector for data exchange. During exchange of views, he placed Netherlands SDI as one of the success SDIs of the world. I supplemented, commenting that the reason behind was that ‘it was less SDI and more PPP’.      
   
  “No examples of PPP in the SDI area in Italy are known to AM/FM” one of the presenter mentioned. The audience was not informed about the reasons of having no PPP in SDI in Italy. The definition of PPP put by almost of all the presenters was, “A Public Private Partnership is a contractual agreement between a public agency (federal, state or local) and a private sector entity. Through this agreement, the skills and assets of each sector (public and private) are shared in delivering a service or facility for the use of the general public. In addition to the sharing of resources, each party shares in the risks and rewards potential in the delivery of the service and/or facility” which is put forward by The National Council for Public-Private Partnerships (http://ncppp.org/). This is service centric definition where as vast majority of presenters focused on product based SDI. 
   
  At the end of first day, in concluding remarks one of the dignitary speakers underpinned the data part of SDIs.
   
  In the second day of the seminar, slide show continued before and after coffee and lunch till round table discussion. Luigi Zanella of a private sector organization named Core Soluzioni Informatiche which develops software and services from Italy, in his presentation said “Core do not have strictly speaking PPP experience

.”. Presenters continued declaring their developed product based projects as successful examples without mentioning the success criteria. On raising this point to the key speaker of the forum, appreciation was served to me instead of reply.  
   
  Yves  Riallant from France gave following examples of PPP4SDI  in France:
   
  •        MAPEOS  : Web map services for municipalities
   
  •        TERIA  : French network for centimeter accurate positioning in real-time
   
  MAPEOS is not vendor neutral application as it is using ESRI which is not open source software.
   
  These presentations were being referred as in the context of e-Government. 
   
  Later in the seminar, conclusion wrapped up the forum. The summary of the conclusion is:  
   
    
   PPP is an option for SDI development. It helps to quantify risk but it takes long time for establishment which is a problem of PPP.  
    For SDI, data and information policy must be formed with giving public sector priority  
   Service is in fact remote service and it is part of e-Gov  
   Simplification is needed at public/private  level to enhance efficiency and reduce cost  
   Public tendering includes PPP  
   PPP promotes professionalism   
   External Data infrastructure (DI) is due to private` sector  
   Cultural issues are important and need to be realized
   
  After the seminar
   
  I just returned back more or less disappointed from the above said seminar as the expectations I had from the outcome of the seminar could not be fulfilled though from a big forum on SDI. Moreover, my vision was to see the things in the practical perspective and what I gained during my studies at ITC. However, it added to my vision about SDI approach being currently analyzed in Europe.
   
  Conclusion
   
    
   There is wide gap between theory and practices in SDI domain.   
   There is light at the end of the tunnel in spatial domain of developing countries like Pakistan for PPP to be a mechanism of NSDI development.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

       
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