NSDI in India: The reality behind the dream

3rd NSDI Workshop

12-14 November 2003, Agra

Recommendations

The recommendations in the communiqué are:

• The National Map Policy must be formalized at the earliest and its operational implementation taken up.

• An assessment of any consequential impact of the National Map Policy on NSDI and its activities must be made and solutions enabled by the NSDI Task Force.

• The efforts to institutionalize NSDI must continue and all formal clearances and approvals obtained at the earliest – so that the NSDI, as an institution, can be positioned.

• All organizations, agencies, institutions, be they from the government, private or nongovernment sector, and who have spatial data assets must be encouraged to participate in the NSDI. NSDI may establish procedures and mechanisms for this to happen.

• The NSDI Metadata Standard (Version 3.0) is hereby adopted and all NSDI agencies are encouraged to generate their Metadata according to this Standard. However, a review mechanism of the Standard could be established to regularly update the Standard.

• Similarly, the NSDE Standard (Version 1.0) is also adopted and all NSDI agencies are encouraged to conform to this exchange standard. NSDI, by involving GIS vendors and others, must enable the development of solutions and translators for the NSDE.

• NSDI recognizes the need for technical, institutional and organizational inter-operability and recommends that NSDI commit itself to enable inter-operability and be in line with international efforts, such as OGC, ISO.

• The NSDI Metadata Server and the NSDI Portal efforts be integrated and the NSDI services made operational at the earliest. Agencies are urged to populate their Agency Metadata for the NSDI Metadata Server using the NSDI Metadata Utility at the earliest.

• The demonstration efforts of the NSDI Data and Application Services be continued to evolve a sound design for the Data Servers and valueaddition on NSDI. Appropriate standard documents for the Data Server and Applications Services need to be prepared.

• There is an urgent need to take up standardization efforts in the following areas:

— Content and Design of NSDI
— Applications and Value-Addition
— Quality Standards
— Network design
— NSDI Policy/Guidelines for agency-participation and Access Rules

• The scoping of NSDI must now address assimilating spatial data available at large scales – and especially those which are not based on spatial framework of SOI maps. Studies and assessments need to be made in this direction – especially on standards, linkages and applications of such datasets.

• The NSDI must enable a framework under which spatial information systems and applications can be encouraged at village, district and state level and these need to be assimilated into the infrastructure. In this manner, NSDI could become a tool for empowering people.

• The private sector has a major role to play in NSDI and leverage its capabilities in providing SDI technologies, SDI solutions, SDI services, SDI human resources development and infrastructure establishment, as also for committing its own data assets to such an infrastructure.

• A separate assessment for Public-Private Partnership model for NSDI – with clear de?nition of roles and responsibilities of stakeholders and sharing of bene?ts from NSDI needs to be made.

• The NSDI framework must position foundation partnerships with stakeholders based on ?nancial equity principles and build for itself a viable ?nancial model of growth and sustenance through publicprivate funding approaches.

• NSDI must develop bi-lateral links with nations that have strong SDI programmes for establishing a mutually beneficial partnership. Similarly, NSDI must also actively participate in multi-lateral SDI programme and leverage Indian competitiveness in the global arena.