D1.2 Definition of Strategic Mission and Vision Deliverable Name Description Milestone D1.1 Analysis of European and National Policy and the impact and implications for the NSDI D1.2 Definition of Strategic Mission and Vision Review of all European and National Policy with a report detailing what it means for the implementation of the NSDI Reviewed and approved by key stakeholders D1.3 Defined Objectives of the NSDI Reviewed and approved by key stakeholders D1.4 NSDI Guiding Principles Guiding Principles which will be used to frame the contribution of all participants within the NSDI D1.5 List of key stakeholders Based on the Provisional list of key stakeholders in Annex B List of Deliverables for D.1 from MK-RECRP-4768MK-CS-10-C3-1 Terms of Reference Introduction This document relates to Deliverable 1.2 and is concerned with the definition of the strategic vision and mission. In brief the document describes the key attributes that a vision and mission statement should have. It describes the purpose of such statements then looks at some examples used in NSDIs in other countries. Finally, the common elements for a vision and mission statement for Republic of Macedonia are suggested. Once a vision and mission have been formulated for Macedonia they should be incorporated into the communications plan and form a basis for key messages and promotional materials. As a start for the NSDI-vision and mission statements, the key NSDI-objectives as determined by numerous stakeholders during the 2 nd Workshop Macedonian Spatial Data Infrastructure (23 April 2010) could form an excellent base. These key Macedonian NSDI-objectives are listed at the end of this document. Vision and Mission Statements These terms are often used by organisations to provide a description of what they aspire to achieve in the mid to long-term future. Goals and objectives are sometimes summarised into a mission statement and/or a vision statement. Other organisations begin with a vision and mission and use them to formulate goals and objectives. All of these aspects then should therefore be considered together. Within the Macedonia NSDI Strategy they should be considered alongside the Defined Objectives (D1.3) and the Guiding Principles (D1.4). A vision describes a view of the perfect situation that might eventually be achieved in an ideal world whereas the mission more describes the day-to-day activities and processes needed to achieve the vision. A Vision statement defines the purpose or broad goal and can remain the same for decades if well designed. The mission statement should guide the actions of the organisation(s), spell out the overall goal, provide a sense of direction, and guide decision-making. It provides the framework or context within which strategies are formulated.
The concepts are used in the case of National Spatial Data Infrastructures (NSDIs) to describe an ideal scenario in the future (vision), and the practical measures that have to be taken to get to that situation (mission). As with a business it is essential to have a clear idea of the vision of where we are trying to get to, as well as a clear understanding of the measures that need to be taken to get there. Existing NSDI Vision Statements: As can be seen from the following examples, various NSDI agencies around the world have taken the vision statement principle and created a short, punchy piece of text that encapsulates their ideas for what the NSDI should ideally be like. 1. USA the NSDI Vision Statement The NSDI Strategic Plan written back in 1997 states, Current and accurate geospatial data will be available to contribute locally, nationally and globally to economic growth, environmental quality and stability, and social progress. Comment: While this has been added to over the years the original succinct wording fulfils the purpose of a vision statement for NSDI very well. It is brief and summarises in a few words the vision of what is being aspired to. It mentions three key qualities for the spatial data - current, accurate and available. It states the different levels of resolution local, national and global, and states the main purposes or areas to benefit. This vision is built on Executive Order 12906, Coordinating Geographic Data Acquisition and Access: The National Spatial Data Infrastructure, signed by President Clinton and issued April 1994, named the national digital spatial information resource described in OMB Circular A-16 as the National Spatial Data Infrastructure, or NSDI 2. India The strategy and action plan for the Indian NSDI was launched at a workshop held in New Delhi in February 2001 that briefly explained the vision of the Indian NSDI as being: National infrastructure for the availability of and access to organised spatial data use of the infrastructure at community, local, state, regional and national levels for sustained economic growth Comment: Again this is very brief and focuses on what will be made available, at what levels, and for what overall purpose. 3. Canada "A Canadian geospatial information infrastructure that is accessible to all communities, pervasive throughout our country, ubiquitous for its users, and self-sustaining, to support the protection and betterment of Canada's health, social, cultural, economic and natural resource heritage and future."
4. INSPIRE 1 to make harmonized and high quality geographic information readily available for formulating, implementing, monitoring and evaluating Community policy and for the citizen to access spatial information, whether local, regional, national or international 5. Australia ANZLIC s vision for the ASDI is that Australia s spatially referenced data, products and services are available and accessible to all users Comment: ANZLIC is the Australia & New Zealand Land Information Council. ASDI is the Australian SDI. This is the shortest of all the statements given as examples here. 6. Jamaica Geospatial data, products and services are current, available and accessible, to all users to facilitate planning, management and use of the island s resources thereby contributing to sustainable development and economic growth. 7. Nigeria To enhance optimal use of Geospatial Information as a critical resource in all phases of sustainable national development for the alleviation of poverty and improvement of quality of life of the people of Nigeria by establishing and maintaining a National Geospatial Data Infrastructure (NGDI). 8. Spain To integrate data, metadata and geographical information produced in Spain into Internet, which provides to locate, identify and access to such information by its potential users. 9. Sweden All the organisations that in their daily work handles geodata shall increase the public value with geodata, connect the information resources in a network, serve the public sector businesses and citizens, and meet at all levels from local to global. 10. Netherlands To make geo-information accessible for citizens and private sector, to enable the private sector to create added value, to have integrated use of geo-information by public sector, and to continue with NSDI-development/innovation 1 Strictly speaking of course this is a pan-regional SDI
Conclusions Vision statements In summary, these examples follow some quite similar themes. Common elements can be seen in most of them, for example: 1. Quite short and punchy - getting the message across generally in one sentence; 2. They focus on the subject geospatial data; 3. Different levels of use are often described local, national, global ; 4. Some key qualities are often mentioned, for example available, accessible, current, accurate, high quality ; 5. There is often, but not always, mention of the purpose or the benefits, for example for alleviation of poverty or economic growth. 6. Finally, the number of clear NSDI-statements is still limited. Proposal for Macedonia s NSDI Vision Statement On the basis of this list of NSDI Vision Statements, the members of AREC team as well as the NSDI-Stakeholders group discussed the topic to derive an appropriate statement for the vision of Macedonia SDI. They propose the following vision statement: The Macedonian NSDI will facilitate the access, sharing, use and distribution of standardised spatial data/services in an efficient, effective and harmonised way in order to fulfil the needs of the private/public sectors as well as citizens, contributing to economic growth and sustainable development in the country
Existing NSDI Mission Statements: 1. United States The following mission statement is from the National Geospatial Advisory Committee (NGAC), presented in February 2010. The NGAC is a USA government body responsible for the development and implementation of the NSDI. Its mission is stated as: To provide strategies regarding the creation, management and dissemination of cohesive geospatial data, information and knowledge to enable commercial, academic, and non-profit organizations and all levels of government to more effectively: Empower and serve the public; Protect our homeland; Foster economic growth; Advance science; Manage our resources; Prepare for and respond to emergencies; Govern our nation. Comment: Going into more detail than a vision statement this goes into more depth about the goals of the NSDI and what outcomes it is attempting to achieve. 2. United Kingdom Development of an NSDI in the United Kingdom takes place via a pan-government initiative called UK location. The intention is to improve the sharing and re-use of public sector location information. The term location has been used with the intention of making the term more meaningful to the general public than spatial data. Development will be delivered through a multi-year programme of work the UK Location Programme. While not specifically using the term, the following set of outcomes summarise the typical content of a mission statement: The implementation of the Location Strategy will focus on joining up and integrating information from many public sector sources within a consistent reference framework, leading to far greater sharing and use across the public sector and beyond. It will build a coherent Information and Communication Technology (ICT) oriented information infrastructure to underpin data sharing for place-based information, which will assist policy delivery and operational decision making. It will drive out costs in collection of data, drive reuse of data and drive efficiency by improving targeting of both policy and operational and local service delivery, which in turn will reduce the costs of implementation. This will result in information about UK s land, sea and air being: Fit for purpose; Collected once to universally accepted standards; Appropriately maintained and used many times by the public and private sector; Referenced to a definitive information framework which supports its seamless combination; Better enable effective cross-organisational business processes; Easy to discover, and with clear terms for its use; Simple to access and easy to share and integrate; Understood sufficiently to maximise its application; Aligned with Europe and the INSPIRE Directive.
Comment: This goes into more detail but it also talks about the how joining up and integrating information from many public sources. It also gives a summary of many of the benefits of NSDI and makes an explicit mention of INSPIRE. 3. The Netherlands In April, 2008 the Dutch Council for Geo-information presented GIDEON - Key geoinformation facility for the Netherlands, approach and implementation strategy (2008-2011). This document set out how public sector parties responsible for managing and using spatial information intend to create a key geo-information facility for the Netherlands that all parties in society will use sustainably, successfully and intensively. It included the following statement: Within four years, through the continuous improvement of services, the Netherlands will have a key geo-information facility that all parties in society will use sustainably, successfully and intensively: The public and businesses will be able to retrieve and use all relevant geo- information about any location; Businesses will be able to add economic value to all relevant government- provided geo-information; The government will use the available information about each location in its work processes and services; The government, businesses, universities and knowledge institutes will collaborate closely on the ongoing development and enhancement of the key facility. Comment: This adds a temporal element to the statement; it provides a deadline by which the service will be available. It also obliges a continual improvement of services and adds sustainability as a quality the NSDI should have. 4. Jamaica To coordinate the development, implementation, maintenance and management of a national spatial data management infrastructure and to promote the sharing and use of geospatial data so citizens, communities and government can access and use place-based data to make better decisions. Comment: The Jamaican example is very brief compared to others here and is more similar to the vision statements in some ways. It is however stating the tasks that need to be done, while also mentioning the purpose or benefits. 5. Nigeria The mission of the Nigerian Spatial Data Infrastructure is to: Generate geospatial databases, which are vital for development at the National, State and Local levels in Nigeria by facilitating cooperation and collaboration among GI stakeholders. Establish institutional, legal, technical and administrative frameworks for (a) a consistent and harmonized mechanism for geospatial data distribution (b) easy access to vital geospatial datasets and their efficient sharing and exchange (c) integration of datasets through the application of common standards Promote research, training, education and capacity building related to geospatial data production, management and usage. Promote the production, dissemination and use of geospatial information for poverty
alleviation, food security, job creation, improvement of quality of life, good governance, education and health care delivery, water resources management, environmental and disaster management, transportation, tourism, communications, gender mainstreaming, national defence and security, economic planning and natural resources management. Eliminate duplication in the acquisition and maintenance of geospatial data. Comment: Quite a comprehensive list that combines an overall goal, mentions different levels and the need for stakeholder collaboration. It appears to cover all aspects in terms of what needs to be done, and for what reasons, and includes mention of benefits. Conclusions Mission Statements In summary, in a similar way to the vision statements, these examples follow some quite similar themes. Common elements can be seen in most of them, for example: 1. A description of the service that should be provided by the NDSI or of the responsibilities of the organizations combining to create the NSDI; 2. Comment on the scope of the measures that need to be covered, e.g. legal, technical and administrative; 3. The benefits are often mentioned in more detail, e.g. eliminate duplication and better enable effective cross-organisational business processes ; 4. The purpose is also often mentioned, e.g. protect our homeland and manage resources, job creation and natural resources protection ; 5. The number of clear NSDI-mission statements (linked to a vision statement) is still very limited 6. Finally, many countries mix NSDI-vision, NSDI-mission and NSDI-Objective statements Proposal for Macedonia s NSDI Mission Statement On the basis of this list of NSDI Mission Statements, the members of AREC team and NSDI- Stakeholders group discussed the topic in order to derive an appropriate statement for the mission of Macedonia SDI. They propose the following mission: To establish a technological, institutional, legal and administrative framework for inter-organisational collaboration that will: - support e-government - integrate geo-information from different sources in one network - avoid duplication of spatial data acquisition - be in line with INSPIRE - establish effective business processes - meet the needs of the stakeholders - promote the access, sharing, use and distribution of spatial data.
Towards Macedonia s NSDI-vision and mission statements During the 2 nd Macedonian Spatial Data Infrastructure workshop (23rd April 2010) the participants looked into the question of objectives for the Macedonia SDI. The findings provide an excellent foundation for the study into the NSDI vision and mission (and also of course the D1.3 deliverable: defined objectives ). During the workshop there was agreement among the NSDI-stakeholders about the NSDI-objectivities that need to be achieved. In general, the stakeholders agreed that the Macedonian SDI should facilitate the access, exchange, sharing and use of standardized spatial data to serve public and private stakeholders, to support the national economic development, to foster environmental sustainability, and to reduce cost for data production/collection. In addition, it was also clarified that application of the Macedonia SDI should also improve the public administration services, and to contribute somehow to better and more transparent decisions. It is recommended to reformulate these NSDI-objectives into Macedonia s NSDI vision and mission statements that are shared among all the NSDI-stakeholders.
Links: USA India http://www.fgdc.gov/policyandplanning/future-directions/reports/fd_final_report.pdf http://mycoordinates.org/is-indian-nsdi-an-example-to-follow/ Canada http://www.geoconnections.org/publications/reports/tvip/cgdi_vision_e.pdf Australia http://www.anzlic.org.au/infrastructure_asdi.html The Netherlands http://www.gsdi.org/gsdiconf/gsdi11/papers/pdf/75.pdf http://www.spatialist.be/statgen/pdf/eurosdr/atlas_inspire_thenetherlands.pdf United Kingdom http://location.defra.gov.uk/ Jamaica http://www.licj.org.jm/licj/documents/general/licj newsletter Vol 1 Issue June 2009.pdf Nigeria http://geoinfo.uneca.org/sdiafrica/reference/ref2/finalnigeriagipolicy.pdf Sweden http://www.spatialist.be/statgen/pdf/eurosdr/atlas_inspire_sweden.pdf