The three-day Managing Change Spatially conference was marked by widespread support from clients and users from throughout the SADC region, their flags and accents adding a touch of colour and vibrancy to the opening session on 29 September in the main function hall of the Indaba Hotel in Sandton.

GIMS Technical Director Steve Hine drew spontaneous applause and spoke on the growth of the company since its founding in October, 1989. In an address notable for its wry humour tinged with emotion, he told the audience of nearly 200 that GIMS had grown at an average of 20% per year in the last 10 years to the point where it was an African leader in GIS. The company remains in private hands, in spite of many offers to purchase, and has zero gearing. It has a staff of 112 and 18 business partners.

"Despite advice to broaden our base, we have remained focused on GIS. We have teamed up with people who are experts in their specialist areas to apply GIS technology to the best advantage of our clients. Our key strengths are our staff of GIS professionals, our strong southern African customer base (Botswana, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia, Zimbabwe) and the excellent products we bring to the market.

"In terms of technology, we are up there with the best. As far as data is concerned, we have started putting together some really good data sets, but we are still faced with challenges." Hine said massive amounts of unusable data was still being collected in a nonstandard form that rendered it unshareable. "We have a responsibility to influence people in key areas to collect good spatial information in well structured databases and to make that information available to a wider audience."

He said the need for skilled personnel remains a problem in the software industry because of the ongoing brain drain, especially in the GIS arena where the attractive packages on offer in the United States could not be countered. The private sector had to focus on training because there were not enough people being trained by local universities and technikons to build a spatial information system for Africa.

GIS software suppliers needed to supply companies such as GIMS with the core tools to launch applications into the market to provide clients with the power to access the information needed for decision making. "Our challenge is to build spatial information management systems. We need to capture the data once, in the proper manner according to international standards that we all support. We need to make our data available. We need strong user groups throughout the country. We need to work in teams, sharing our skills. And we must ensure that the correct data is delivered to the correct people in the type of databases that decision makers can access."

GIMS

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