Spatial Data Infrastructure Anguish
Paul Ramsey has put together three frank blog posts on spatial data infrastructures (SDIs). Well worth a read if you have anything to do with an SDI effort.
I’ve only participated in one spatial data infrastructure effort, at a technical level. The problems Paul describes ring true. Here are some of my experiences (generalised):
- Services: Asking people to expose public services because it’s the right thing to do (what Paul calls “karmic reward”) guarantees that it will be on the bottom of their to do list, if they have the infrastructure and skills.
- Data: If data needs to be prepared (cleaned, denatured, etc) to make it “safe” for publishing then don’t count on it happening without a lot of cajoling. Expect resistance to making data public, especially any data that can be perceived to impact on financial interests (e.g. salinity on farmland).
- Metadata: Always the last thing to get done, and getting it usually required a lot of hassling. When we did get metadata it was either too detailed, or too brief.
- Performance: One slow or unreliable service, especially if it is supplying the base map, will kill the user experience, and the client application cops the blame.
- Client complexity: Any web client that can do everything required by an SDI will be complex, and therefore difficult to use for non-GIS users.
- Cost/benefit: The user community was, well, out there somewhere. We had a rough idea who they were but without decent metrics it was difficult to know which maps and individual datasets were popular. But, having metrics would have challenged the “publish everything” ideal.
- Politics: The more people/organisations involved the harder it gets. Sharing some money around can help provide focus, but when people are involved… An SDI is a political/people/business issue, not a technical issue.
Despite all the issues, I still think that this project was a worthwhile effort. At the time there were ideas, standards and (a few too many bleeding edge) technologies that had to be tested in the real world.
The most valuable output of the project might be obtained by shining a cold hard light on the entire process and discovering what really worked, and what didn’t.