Lessons learned from Standards for Data and Software for Spatial Information : Considerations for the Spatial Tenure D

1. Lessons learned from Standards for Data and Software for Spatial Information: Considerations for the Spatial Tenure Domain Model Keith Clifford Bell Rural Development, Natural Resources and Environment Sustainable Development Department World Bank - East Asia and the Pacific Region WASHINGTON D.C., USA Workshop: The Social Tenure Domain Model: From concept to implementation, March 12, 2009

2. Outline • Initial thoughts • Past experiences • Issues for consideration • Final thoughts

3. Initial thoughts • Replicability of STDM in in different countries, in different regions • Implications of “Templating” for the complex land tenure issues • Impact on any future transaction costs • Legal status of STDM • Previous experiences with standards for data models, data transfer, public domain and interoperability.

4. Some Past Experiences Software • 1980s and early 1990s public domain software – driven by high GIS costs • Open GIS Consortium focus on systems interoperability • FLOSS – Free Libre Open Source, making available source code. Evolved from the free software movement 1983 and Software Freedom Law Center to advance FLOSS established in 2005. GIS has picked up on this around 2006. Data Transfer Standards • ASCII – American Standard Code for Information Interchange – first published 1963 • FIPS – Federal Information Processing Standards program established in early 1960s • SDTS –US Spatial Data Transfer Standard conceived 1980 and approved in 1992 as FIPSPub. 173 . Ratified as ANSI NCITS 320-1998. Various data profiles published. • SAIF – Canada’s Spatial Archive and Interchange Format, draft 1991, accepted 1993 Data Models • NSDI – National Spatial Data Infrastructure1994 (US Presidential E.O.) • AGDB – Australian Geographic Data Base Model (early 1990’s), based on SDTS profiles • Geospatial Metadata – initiated 1992, approved by US Federal Geographic Data Committee, 1994

5. Some Models from Australia and New Zealand

6. Australia New Zealand (continued)

7. Tenure Issues

8. Tenure Issues i

9. Issues to Consider • Prescriptive nature of standards vs the diverse nature of land administration systems of each country/jurisdiction • Replicability – can one template work? • Every extra data field means a cost escalation in data capture and maintenance • What data are essential vs what the user want? • What data do donors want? • Privacy and confidentiality issues • System security and accessibility • Capacity of a country/jurisdiction to develop/implement/maintain systems be they open source or proprietary • Custodianship of STDM-LAMS • Cluttering of the LAMS with “all kinds of land & property/spatial units regardless of the level of formality”

10. Final Thoughts • The benefits of STDM, are arguably in the learnings that come from its development and dissemination • As a rule data acquisition and maintenance costs are comparatively high to software acquisition and maintenance • Does STDM simply represent a re-allocation of costs that should be invested in software license maintenance agreements and development costs • Before any jurisdiction takes on STDM, they should do a business case that would compare investing in SDTM and open source software versus proprietary systems with maintenance agreements and extrapolate over at least 10-15 years (?)

11. So can one model fit all?