Realizing Spatially Enabled Societies - A Global Perspective in Response to Millennium Development Goals

Summary Spatially Enabled Society is a scenario for the future as we are in an increasingly complex and rapidly changing world. In this environment, meeting sustainable development objectives and responding to Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are also complex and temporal processes which involving multiple stakeholders. The creation of economic wealth, social stability and environmental protection in line with MDGs can be achieved through the development of products and services based on spatial information collected by all levels of government. These goals and objectives can be facilitated through the development of a spatially enabled government and society, where location and spatial information are regarded as common goods made available to citizens and businesses to encourage creativity and product development. This requires data and services to be accessible and accurate, well-maintained and sufficiently reliable for use by the majority of society which is not spatially aware. Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDIs) as enabling platforms are being developed by many countries to improve access, sharing and integration of spatial data and services however, there are still many issues and challenges which need to be overcome in order to have a fully functioning platform. This paper aims to introduce and discuss various challenges and issues associated in re-engineering current SDI design to support the new vision on spatially enabled government and society. It also discusses the central role that an SDI as the enabling platform plays in facilitating data sharing and integration. The paper highlights a range of activities and processes to be created across all jurisdictional levels in order to facilitate such a platform design and development. This includes aspects of designing, creating and processes involved in development and in particular governance of an SDI platform.