When we thought of NSDI five years before, it was a dream, a passion, a purpose, a commitment and a movement. The whole purpose was to enable easy access to spatial data. There were four critical components of the initiative - standards, centralized access, open sharing of the data and building of partnerships for value addition. It was thought to involve players at every level like states, villages, communities that will eventually lead to the creation of not only NSDI but also SDIs at state, districts and village levels too. This larger vision does not appear to have been fully encapsulated in the recent government resolution. A major drawback is that the National Map Policy still does not allow open access to the ordinary citizens to maps. A willingness to bring map information in the open public domain has to precede the creation of a NSDI.

This willingness is still largely absent within the ambit of the National Map Policy. The present resolution of the government was originally intended to create an overarching institutional framework and an organization which would have sufficient clout to administer and implement policy, and to design policy which would make spatial data infrastructure a powerful tool of social transformation and improved governance.

This needs something far beyond the creation of government committees with little or no administrative and financial powers to enforce its policies.
In addition, it needs professional leadership through a full time CEO who is the convener/ coordinator of both the committees. Such a CEO would also require a core team of committed professionals to assist him.

Without a CEO and a core team, the organizational framework can easily slide into performing bureaucratic rites and rituals. I do not see any sign of how this is proposed and implemented.

The NSDI movement has been driven by a few individuals of a few organizations. Although it started with a lot of enthusiasm, this slowly waned away. The initial larger participation was slowly taken over by a sense of indifference.

We should understand that processes that need consensus are generally time consuming. The positive thing was that despite all the frustration that was creeping in, the taskforce stayed together. Some of the working groups persevered and due to them, continuity was maintained. Now the government has given an authority and the entire movement is now set to move with greater momentum. We can expect that all the organizations who have participated in this endeavor with great enthusiasm will rejoin with same vigor.

Significant groundwork has already been done. Standards are in place. Interoperability of large datasets is to be demonstrated in September this
year. The misapprehensions of many government agencies have already been resolved. The very fact that many organizations have spoken to each other and agreed to pool their datasets itself is an achievement. The academia is a part of this effort. However, the industry so far has been passive in its response. I look forward for their active participation.

The other area of concern is to involve state governments. We need to think how to get them on board through state level SDI. Survey of India state level Geo-spatial Data Centre (GDC) should act as facilitator for this. Although major data producing agencies are at central level but at micro level most of the datasets are with the state governments. We expect all the stakeholders to put in place their portal gateway for data sharing. Survey of India will soon be setting up a portal to service NSDI. We also need to understand the process of data sharing. It should serve the need user needs with least hassles. The SOI is already in compliance with OGC standards.

The challenge as Member Secretary is the implementation of an action plan within a given timeframe. And also to get all the government partners work at the same pace. Most importantly, it has to be done through consensus. Some of the working groups who could not make progress at the desired pace will be restrengthened.