[GSDI Legal Econ] [SDI-Europe] eGovernment InteroperabilityCampus 2007

Fri Mar 9 06:17:18 EST 2007

Kate,

True as that may be, maybe just two comments:

1) I guess my comment applies a bit more to the EU than to the US; I
have noticed that in the US there is occasional reference to spatial
data in the egov community - especially after katrina - and that
historically the two communnities may have come from a similar origin 

2) Yet, if you would check one of the major discussion fora and meeting
places for scientists and professionals to discuss egovernment issues in
the US - the Digital Government Society
http://www.dgsociety.org/index.php  - one can notice that geospatial
information already plays a marginal role, and that the term or concept
SDI is even hardly noticable in any of their conference proceedings.
Just check the call for papers for the dgo.07 conference this year :
http://www.dgsociety.org/call_for_papers.php . The term GIS is used
under the heading computer science, hence regarded as a tool, and the
term "information infrastructure" or spatial information infrastructure"
is not even mentioned. 

On the other hand, a term which I do see appearing in these egov
communities is that of "bio information infrastructure" and that of
"legal information infrastructures". It would be interesting to see why
that is, and how these terms are used differently than - what we within
the geospatial community would consider - the spatial equivalent. It may
be however that the terms are used in a completely different context,
and have a completely different legacy of how they were formed and
described. 

Walter  

------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------
From: Kate Lance [mailto:klance_remote at yahoo.com] 
Sent: Friday, March 09, 2007 11:35 AM
To: Walter de Vries
Subject: Re: [GSDI Legal Econ] [SDI-Europe] eGovernment
InteroperabilityCampus 2007

Walter,
Geospatial One-Stop (GOS) is a US Federal E-Gov initiative begun in
2002, one of 24 major e-government initiatives under the White House
"Expanding Electronic Government" reform program. 

-----Original Message-----
From: Roger Longhorn [mailto:ral at alum.mit.edu] 
Sent: Friday, March 09, 2007 11:11 AM
To: Walter de Vries
Cc: SDI-Europe; GSDI Legal-Economic Work Grouup; EGIP
Subject: Re: [GSDI Legal Econ] [SDI-Europe] eGovernment
InteroperabilityCampus 2007

In my SDI consulting experience, and also simply from watching how the
eGovernment and SDI initiatives developed in a few EU countries over the
past several years, the disconnect starts at the point where quite often
two completely different groups of people or organisations are involved
in developing the eGov work and the SDI (if any).

The primary eGov folk often first see "SDI" presented to them via the
GI/GIS community, national mapping agencies, etc. They see this "SDI
thing" as a tool, not as an infrastructure - if they recognise it all. 
Even in the UK, where there was a GIS advisor in the eGov unit
developing the UK's eGovernment initiatives, standards, interoperabilty
framework, etc. - the early SDI components, such as the GIgateway (the
national GI portal) and the metadata on which it was based, were not
compatible with the eGov equivalents. This led many in government to
satisfy their eGov "information asset register" requirement but not the
spatial info requirements. Also, when the same datasets are classified
as "eGov" for one purpose and then "geospatial/SDI" for another, do we
really think that the people in the government departments will have the
time or resources to fulfill two sets of sometimes competing
requirements. I think not and current experience seems to prove that.

Roger Longhorn
ral at alum.mit.edu

Walter de Vries wrote:

>Roger,
>
>I'm glad you have noticed this too. I've been going through many 
>articles in egov and egov-related conference proceedings and found very

>little reference to spatial data infrastructures, let alone any special

>sessions, clusters or tracks. If fact, I was aiming to report on that 
>during  digital governance conference in May of this year. In fact, the

>same applies to most egov related policies on a global scale. I am yet 
>to find any specific reference to the spatial part of infrastructures 
>in any general national egov policy. This can mean two things: either 
>the SDI is not really an issue in the egov community - where 
>increasingly most of the focus seems to be completely different issues 
>like edemocracy, eparticipation - or there are hardly any SDI 
>researchers / paper submissions on these egov conferences.
>
>Walter de Vries   
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: legal-econ-bounces at lists.gsdi.org 
>[mailto:legal-econ-bounces at lists.gsdi.org] On Behalf Of Roger Longhorn
>Sent: Friday, March 09, 2007 9:49 AM
>To: SDI-Europe; GSDI Legal-Economic Work Grouup; 
>AESI-align at i-dra.co.uk; EGIP
>Cc: Christopher Corbin
>Subject: Re: [GSDI Legal Econ] [SDI-Europe] eGovernment 
>InteroperabilityCampus 2007
>
>Note once again that there is no specific link/topic listed in the 
>"papers wanted" section that would deal with spatial information 
>infrastructures, even though significant volumes of eGovernment data 
>are also spatial. I say 'also' because for many purposes, the 
>spatiality is not important, but for others it certainly is. We get 
>back to the value of the spatial component or attribute of information 
>depending upon its use for specific reporting/monitoring tasks. There 
>continues to be a lamentable disconnect between many (most?) 
>eGovernment initiatives and their spatial information counterparts or
components.
>
>Roger Longhorn
>ral at alum.mit.edu
>
>Kate Lance wrote:
>
>  
>
>>http://www.egovinterop.net/SHWebClass.ASP?WCI=ShowDoc&DocID=2736&LangI
>>D=1
>><http://www.egovinterop.net/SHWebClass.ASP?WCI=ShowDoc&DocID=2736&Lang
>>ID=1> "eGovernment Interoperability Campus 2007"
>>Paris, France, October 9-11, 2007
>>Since the late 90's, the European Union and its Member States pursue 
>>the strategic objective of transforming their Public Administrations 
>>to become more efficient and centered on the delivery of ICT-enabled 
>>services to citizens and businesses. The cornerstone of this strategy 
>>is to help developing the framework, tools and environment for 
>>interoperability between existing systems and applications, in order 
>>to foster the development of public services that would be 
>>cross-organisational, cross-level, cross-border, transparent, 
>>integrated, secure, decentralised and available anywhere at anytime.
>>The main aim of this third eGovINTEROP conference is to create a forum
>>
>>for discussion between the research community, technology players and 
>>public institutions. The conference will focus on all aspects of 
>>interoperability in eGovernement, both from technical as well as from 
>>semantic, organisational and socio-economic perspectives, and will 
>>discuss the progress of the various European initiatives in the field.
>>The Campus is expected to gather about 500 participants primarily from
>>
>>he European Union.
>>Conference
>>The conference is calling for papers to be submitted by _April 6, 
>>2007_. Broad topic areas are:
>>
>>- Platforms for eGovernment interoperability
>>- Interoperability frameworks
>>- Standardisation initiatives in eGovernment
>>- Security of open eGovernment services
>>- Transport middleware for government applications
>>- Managing governmental business processes
>>- Pan-European Government services
>>- Local and regional eGovernment services
>>- Change management in networked governments
>>    
>>
>  
>
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