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Issue Date: February 2004

Service delivery improved using GIS integration

1 February 2004

According to Sue Binedell, GIS consultant at DLK Consulting, "If all levels of South African government are to meet the challenge of better service delivery to both urban and rural communities there needs to be a concerted effort to break down the isolated silos of information housed in government departments so information can be more easily shared."
DLK is involved in various GIS projects for the City of Cape Town and the Provincial Administration of the Western Cape.
Binedell says that the Internet, which offers access to linked government websites, will be the major avenue for accessing information stored in different departments, but for this to be meaningful there needs to be consistency in how the information is gathered, stored and presented, and a commitment to keeping it up to date.
"Spatial data must be shared and systems need to be interoperable if the full benefits of GIS are to be applied in South Africa where skills and IT resources are in such short supply. Enterprise-wide GIS offers the best solution but it takes a government-wide commitment to standards and working together."
Working in isolation in the mistaken belief that the information gathered and stored is of little interest to outsiders, is a mindset that must change in South Africa, she adds. "Everyone involved in development - whether government or the private sector - needs to join forces to share spatial information because our development imperatives are so onerous we do not have time to waste on protecting isolated information empires."
Recent mergers of major municipalities into megacities has given some impetus to the need to standardise how information is stored and presented but manpower shortages and budget restrictions are inhibiting the rate at which this is happening.
"Government cannot accurately plan service delivery if it does not have access to reliable and current information. Due to funding shortages, there is a large backlog of data that still needs to be captured to make the data sets current."
An open Enterprise GIS system allows for the sharing of geographic data, integration among different GIS technologies and integration with other non-GIS applications. It can operate on different platforms and databases, and is scalable to suit specific needs.
"Within government," says Binedell, "an enterprise GIS could be a spatial data warehouse supporting the shared data and services across various government departments such as transport, health, environment, and emergency services. While each department might have its own database to maintain, the division responsible for maintaining the enterprise GIS (the State IT agency for example) would be responsible for providing an e-government portal for public access."
Binedell says that currently, national, provincial and local governments are actively involved in the process of creating and maintaining land records but this process is usually spread across many departments in the different tiers of government. This results in duplication of effort, poor data integrity and doubts about its currency, and different technologies.
She says that the technology exists to more efficiently gather and store the information needed for Enterprise GIS in data warehouses and distributed on server farms that are all made accessible through portals on the Internet.
GIS data requires a tremendous amount of data storage space and, because of the volumes of information, takes a long time to transmit over South Africa's bandwidth-stressed telecommunications system. This means that there is not the desirable level of integration via the Internet that would make strategic planning in government easier.
For more information contact Leon Hendricks, DLK Consulting, 021 531 9403, www.dlkconsulting.co.za


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