Institutional Barriers to the Irish Spatial Data Exchange Project John Evans, Coastal Atlases Workshop, 26 th July 2006 (26 Slides)

“If you don’t know where you are, a map won’t help” - Watts Humphrey (But a signpost might)

What is the ISDE? A data discovery service with multiple entry points and multiple nodes

Why build the ISDE?

Where can I get data on offshore mineral deposits? The Marine Institute? The Geological Survey? The Environmental Protection Agency? DCMNR? Third Level?

“Lets build a portal for Marine Data Sets”!

- They assume you know where they are - Sometimes people say portal and mean repository - Harvesting is a costly process - Meta-data records can have multiple instances - Different levels of information quality exist across portals The Trouble with portal sites...

- Allowing people access meta-data via the routes they expect - Placing the burden of maintenance on the organisation that generates the data (with exceptions) - Minimising and spreading the operational costs - Providing a mechanism so meta-data records do not need to be duplicated - Working to simple and agreed standards The ISDE aims to overcome these problems by:

So what are the barriers? 1.The question of control Funding Standards and Infrastructure Ability to participate Technologies

- By allowing multiple entry points the ability of a portal to generate revenue is removed - Not all organisations have the same agenda in this area (or the same mandate) - Some organisations have greater influence The Question of Control

- Most agencies are single mandate and budget constrained - A project like the ISDE required contributions from multiple sources – without the promise of control - There are very few sources of inter-agency funding Funding

The Exception...

- There are lots of standards! - Very few mandated for use - ISDE faced with a choice, define ourselves or wait for standards Lack of Standards

- An infrastructure of sorts does exist – the PSB - Not intended for this kind of traffic! Lack of Infrastructure

- Available meta-data in suitable format o Meta Data just isn’t sexy to IT Managers - A suitable infrastructure o CSW2.0 ready services Readiness of target participants

- This actually is not much of an issue - What is an issue is the perception that technologies cannot inter-marry - Addressing this was a specific objective of the ISDE Competing Technologies

Current Status Website Active ( Search in “Beta” Release ISDE Interoperability Guidelines Published

Where next? - Local Branding - Reach Integration - Data Delivery - More partners

Thank you