ASSET MANAGEMENT
Making the most of GIS H
PSE talks to Chris Holcroft, director & CEO of the Association for Geographic Information
Chris Holcroft
ow has GIS affected democracy over the last twenty years?
Perhaps until now GIS has had little overt effect on the public’s perception of impacts on democracy in the past. That’s not to say it hasn’t had an effect however. If we think about parliamentary boundaries, then behind the scenes geographic information, digital mapping and GIS has played a part to help facilitate the evolution of these political areas.
Boundaries are reviewed periodically by the relevant UK Boundary Commissions and redrawn taking into account factors such as demographic, cultural, historic and social links. Creation and distribution of these boundaries in digital form is carried out in association with Ordnance Survey (GB) and the Land and Property Service in NI.
GIS has a lot to offer in this area, being a powerful tool to collate, analyse and output the necessary material to assist in the boundary assessment process. There has been the reported issue of new boundaries being based on census data that is already out of date, but that being the case, this is more an issue of data collection regimes than the choice of tool to help carry out the task.
We are increasingly encountering more striking use of digital maps onscreen and on the Internet. One example is the highly visual role played by geographic information in the media coverage of recent local and general elections.
Maps from GIS are now 50 pse
propagated so swiftly and so visibly in the public domain and our research indicates that this will grow still further.
We are also seeing the rise of political engagement with the emergence of new technologies and applications in the mainstream that exploit geographic information and maps. What I’m talking about here is political and public service websites as well as emerging applications on smartphones.
Local councils are often enabling the citizen to contact them through their own websites and Web GIS applications but third party free services such as
fixmystreet.co.uk also address service issues that affect the citizen using a map base.
To what extent do you believe that GIS has the capacity to enrich democracy, through greater transparency of information for the public?
GIS can and will enrich democracy to ever greater and significant degree. GIS is excellent to bring together, display, analyse and present disparate information on a map. A very visual and, for many, a familiar format. I’ve already mentioned the appearance and considerable growth of the presence of geographic information on websites and smartphone applications. The public may not even know or care about what they are accessing being geographic information or GIS, more an easier way to understand the spatial patterns that impact democracy as well as a very easy way to report public service issues to local public service providers.
We mustn’t forget either that very recently as part of the former government’s Making Public Data Public policy launch, Ordnance Survey data and other public sector geographic datasets were made free at the point of use to enable better transparency as well as to help foster greater innovation in private and public created applications. Government recognises that the spatial data element is integral to the meaningful use of public sector information and its growth in the knowledge economy.
How else can GIS help both central and local government keep the public better informed?
It’s worth pointing out that central and local government were early adopters in the use of geographic information and GIS back in the late 80’s through the 90’s. GIS has penetrated many aspects of government activity but it has not saturated it, nor is the sharing of geographic information or the coordination of activity as good as it can be. Hence the emergence of a national strategy for geographic information in 2008 and the resultant UK location programme.
What I’m saying is that GIS is not that new to government but what is new is the ease with which the public can now be kept informed about many things that are geographically distributed. Over the last decade public facing websites and applications have gone from simply publishing and distributing information to now allowing public interaction and feedback. This is what is known as Web 2.0. Whereas a few years ago a local council may have produced a map showing where
Sep/Oct 10
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