Geographic information infrastructure and local land use plans: Research at the development of GII and DURP, and their mutual relation within Dutch municipal organizations

Infrastructure is not only the hardware but encompass many more, such as the people involved. The geographic component of the information gives it extra value, but generating it is very costly. There are many different definitions of GII and it is useful to identify the vital components of which a GII consists. Based on the four GIS dimensions, humanware, orgaware, infoware and technoware different components of a GII can be identified. GII consists of dynamic conditions and possibilities offered to various types of users to generate, share, access, and use geographic information. The infrastructure consists of technical standards, the physical infrastructure, an institutional framework, a financial basis and awareness at the decision making and management levels. GIIs operate at different levels: from corporate to global. The final purpose to develop a GII is to improve decision making. Decisions require information and an optimal GII facilitates the access to current and accurate geographic information. Within governmental organizations the obligated authentic registers will be of increasing importance for the GII. DURP stands for digital exchangeable spatial planning and is setup to modernize the spatial planning process by the Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment. The objectives of the stimulation programme are to make the spatial planning process more effective and efficient through digitalizing of the development, use and exchange of spatial plans, as well as to improve the involvement of citizens and to make the process more transparent. Municipalities are not yet obligated to digitize their local land use plans, but new legislation in the near future is suspected to change this. Digital exchangeable spatial plans consist mainly of geographic information and are used by a lot of users within the municipal organization. Spatial planning on the local level, municipalities, is of great importance. Municipalities are responsible for developing local land use plans, which can be very detailed and have strong judicial value. That is why it is important to have the most up to date local land use plan. The relation between GII and DURP is clearly noticeable here. The characteristics of this relation is the scope of the research. The integration of DURP within a GII will improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the use and development of the spatial plans within the municipal organization. Besides this the existence of a GII could influence the implementation of DURP, as well as DURP could influence the implementation or development of a GII. Between the different municipalities there are strong differences in the implementation of DURP. This all leads to the following research question: How does the implementation and development of geographic information infrastructure within the municipal organization relate to the implementation and development of digital exchangeable spatial plans? Municipal organizations consist of two parts: the political and the official organization. The official organization is usually organized according to the concern model. Specialized decentralized sectors and on top a central concern staff and facilitating services. The sectors are each responsible for specific problem areas, for instance economy or social welfare. Currently most of the municipalities are developing from a company-orientated organization, where the focus is on results and performance to an environmentorientated organization, where the focus is on output and process. ‘Turn over’ of the organization or decompartmentalization of the sectors is needed to be able to serve the citizens in a better way. Based on the two models of Graafland (1993) and Kok and van Loenen (2005), stages of development of geographic information provision within municipalities are identified. Currently most municipalities are developing from the stages ‘local control’ to ‘infrastructure development’ defined by Graafland. Local control is characterized by a development of standards, slight awareness for cooperation and the management level gets involved and tries to formalize internal relations. Infrastructure development is characterized by a start of authentic registers, change of organization and a more top down approach to support development of infrastructure. This transition is a shift from demand driven to supply driven and from controlled bottom-up to controlled top-down. The corresponding stages of the GII development model are from the end of the ‘stand alone’ stage, to ‘exchange and standardization on technical level’ and to the beginning of the stage ‘intermediary’. Finally, when considering information provision within municipal organizations it all turns down to the field of tension between a sector and a corporate approach. The implementation and development of DURP is researched in the selected municipalities. The start of DURP is mainly triggered by external events. Together with the digitizing and making exchangeable of the local land use plans comes standardization. The Information Model Spatial Planning (IMRO) is developed to offer each municipality the same set of standards. Although the IMRO standards leave space open for own interpretation, it is a first step in improving the spatial planning. Many of the investigated municipalities initiated the digitizing together with updating of outdated plans. Municipalities are covered by a large amount of local land use plans, often more than 200. Many plans are joined together, to approximately 30 or 40, and the current situation is recorded. The plans are lay down in object-based geographic information files, in which the regulations and explanations are linked to the planned objects. These projects are mostly supported by the GII coordinating department to help implementing the object-based method of working, together with the ICT department which supports the acquiring and integration of the software. Redesigning of the work processes within the development of a local land use plan and setting up managerial control for the continuation of the standard processes and output are important factors for a successful implementation of DURP. This research did not reveal an observable pattern between the level of development of GII and DURP within the investigated municipalities. The relation must especially be found in human and organizational aspects. Knowledge at the GII coordinating departments has in many cases supported the setup of the digitizing of spatial plans. The object-based method of working, familiar to the GIS community, has caused a culture shock within the departments responsible for spatial planning. Another human aspect is the awareness for sharing geographic information. The possibility of other departments to consult spatial plans through the GII will motivate them to share geographic information as well and to keep the information up-to-date. The vital standardization needed for the digitizing of the spatial plans can be used as an example towards other work processes and information sources. For the generation and dissemination of information through a GII, it is important that all the work processes are optimal designed for the exchange and use of geographic information. Exchange requires standardization. Although there is no relation between the development of the two aspects, GII and DURP are certainly intertwined with each other. The information generated by digital spatial planning is often shared through the GII and a lot of the information required within the spatial planning process is obtained through the GII. In most of the researched municipalities, DURP is integrated within the GII. In other words the GII facilitates an important part of the input and output of information within the spatial planning process.