Most of the data created by the public sector can be related to a geographical location, therefore enjoyed through cartographic representations. The availability of this information - in a clear and precise form - is of great importance not only for public administrations but also for private and third sector organizations, as well as for individual citizens. For these tangible reasons, the creation of Spatial Data Infrastructures, SDI (Spatial Data Infrastructure), assumes a strategic value to generate benefits for the whole society. – A contribution from the blog “MUCH”
I fell in love as a kid: one of those captivating passions that, if they take hold of you, will accompany you throughout your life. That was how the mountain was for me. The discovery of the existence of the precious "tablets per twenty-five thousand of the hygiene”. They were the only maps available at the appropriate scale, for interpreting an itinerary described in a guide and reporting it on the representation of that territory where the route would take place. It was not easy to obtain them: in the city, only a bookshop kept a certain number. Those not available had to be ordered; wait times were unpredictable.
Among my memories, I have the one linked to the surprise felt on reading the wording in the lower left for the first time which indicated the year of the last update of those maps: a date that never exceeded the mid-thirties. It wasn't a lack that worried the apprentice explorer: it goes without saying, the mountains have times of geological change; at the time the refuges could only be those prepared by the Alpine Club at the beginning of the 1900s and the network of paths was created over the centuries for transhumance or for the King's hunting trips. However, the condition was "take it or leave it" , of course geopaparazzi!
This sentimental return to the times of my adolescence, seeks only to highlight the extraordinary diversity with that era: just compare this example of access to the spatial data infrastructure of the time, and the use that a kid could make of it, with the possibilities given to our children, who can freely consult satellite images of any place, interact with people from all over the world, search through huge amounts of data with a simple click of the mouse. A stark contrast: perhaps we shouldn't overlook the fact that everything happened in a period of time sufficient for still substantial sections of the current population to be able to live both experiences.
I used the term "infrastructure", I don't think improperly: even if it was not used at the time, the Military Geographical Institute -together with the other cartographic bodies of the State- constituted the set of technologies, methods, policies and institutional agreements, however tense to facilitate the availability, homogeneity and access to spatial data. Nonetheless, with respect to the meaning that is assigned to this term today, each subject represented a self-consistent supplier with respect to the requests and needs he had to meet and a self-sufficient producer, possessing almost all the skills and tools necessary to make his own products. This, essentially, was the reality of the public administration and this was also that of the few private producers, mainly oriented towards satisfying the needs induced by the nascent phenomenon of mass tourism.
The term “Spatial Data Infrastructure” has actually only been used since the early 1990s. It was coined in the United States, as part of the search for solutions to rationalize the production of spatial data between the various levels of the Public Administration, originally from a very pragmatic perspective: to reduce the economic commitment and guarantee a more efficient use of public resources to acquire and manage geospatial data.
Over time, this new paradigm for managing what we commonly identify as "maps": has taken on a wider value, also including the promotion of the use of geospatial data and their reuse for multiple purposes, not only in the public sphere but also with growing attention to the private sector, given the increase in products and applications aimed at the market consumer. While this process is going on, new themes appear and affect the implementation of Spatial data infrastructure: expressed by the market (“the hurricane” Google maps), technological (the semantic web, Internet of things, The cloud computing, …), social (Volunteered Geographic Information), the public sector (OpenGovernment).
These are the same themes as the States General of Innovation. It may therefore be interesting and useful to consider the scientific literature on SDI, to know and consider what the studies carried out on the practices carried out in many countries have highlighted, as salient aspects and as topics that still require analysis and insights, to build effective and efficient organizations. What follows is only an overview, certainly not an exhaustive treatise.
A first topic found in the literature that may be useful to keep in mind concerns aspects related to what is meant by the term infrastructure in the context of IT. SDIs are establishing themselves as an evolution of GIS structures and federated systems eGovernment already operational, they do not arise as an original conception, nor can they be considered as the result of a temporally confined planning. In other words, their development does not follow the traditional process of creating an information system, rather it is based on the evolutionary exploitation of the already existing technical-organizational solutions for the management of geospatial data, to which further components are gradually added ( technical and organizational) according to mesh models. There are no codified processes to describe or implement the development of an SDI, each path followed must necessarily keep in mind the organizational and operational context in which it is developed.
Studies conducted in the last decade on information infrastructures, highlighted that the technical aspects (for example: hardware, software, databases) and non-technical ones (such as: human resources e skill, management, forms of governance) cannot be considered independently, as they interpenetrate and are an essential part of each other. The development of an SDI, with all the characteristics of a real operational infrastructure, it implies simultaneous attention to both technical and non-technological requirements.
The documentation concerning the existing SDI (at different levels: national, regional and local), in different geographical areas (even with different levels of development, forms of government and culture), confirms that such infrastructures are born and are growing more rapidly, harmoniously and they are more successful - that is, they satisfy the users' needs, and they themselves testify to it - where the aptitude for collaboration, cooperation between institutions is greater. The information on the "best practices” provide useful data and indications for understanding which aptitudes are necessary at the level of inter-organizational collaboration, which roles belong to individual GIS units and which function the users of an SDI must perform.
As far as the needs of the users of an SDI are concerned, in addition to the technical requirements (such as: data standardization and harmonization requirements, indications for improving the services for using the data themselves), non-technical requests can be: the improvement of the methods communication and dialogue between data provider and users, reduction of data access constraints, improved metadata management, more frequent data updating, access policies (licenses and prices) to smaller (in number) and clearer data.
The diffusion of SDI therefore goes hand in hand with their continuous transformation and technical evolution - induced by the progress of ICT - but also organizational, determined by the growing experience acquired with respect to the criticalities of the infrastructures dedicated to the surveyed spatial data, such as:
• the increase in organizational complexity, due to increasingly inter-organizational contexts within which they are called to operate
• the difficulty in identifying potential users and how to monitor and evaluate requests and ways of using the services made available by the SDI
• the need to increase capacity (capacity building) of the stakeholders and managers to develop and carry out innovative actions in response to the stimuli for change (for example induced by the previous points).
The evolution of the SDI is naturally influenced by the transformations concerning the public administration. The public sector in the Information Society is expected to play different if not new roles; for example, with respect to data, it performs fewer collector functions to assume those of manager of the quality (authenticity, reliability, ...) of the sources of information. It is also developing new ways of relating: with less emphasis on hierarchy, in favor of horizontal networks, based on partnerships and collaborations. The functions assigned by the company to this sector will be better defined on the basis of user expectations and will be carried out by dividing the tasks between the public, the sector no profit and private.
In short, these changes show a change in the relationship with data: no more public administrations holding database, How much database used (also) by public administrations. Also with respect to this perspective, the growing importance and value that Territorial Data Infrastructures are assuming emerges.
