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Communities of practice poised to reap rewards of CGDI investment
"If you've got it, flaunt it!" That's the thinking behind a push to capitalize on four years' worth of investment in the Canadian Geospatial Data Infrastructure (CGDI).
To date, GeoConnections has devoted much of its energy and resources to building the CGDI. Through three of its programs-GeoInnovations, Access, and Framework Data-GeoConnections has spurred the CGDI's creation and growth. GeoInnovations funding has enabled organizations to develop the advanced technologies that power the CGDI today. And the Access and Framework Data programs have standardized important national, provincial and territorial data sets and made them available to a variety of users through the CGDI.
Now it's time to reap the rewards of those efforts.
Selecting communities of practice
In 2002, GeoConnections began to focus more attention on communities of practice. In doing so, it worked with many different groups and learned much about various user communities and their requirements. The following year, GeoConnections targetted five communities of practice or priority areas that could most benefit from the CGDI: First Nations; health; environment; public safety and emergency response; and municipalities. (Communities of practice are groups who share concerns or problems and have common requirements of the CGDI.) GeoConnections has since developed collaborations with organizations from these communities of practice across the country to better understand their requirements, examine common problems facing these priority areas, and show how these communities of practice could use CGDI capabilities to improve decision-making.
In the spring of 2003, GeoConnections issued a call for proposals from public- and private-sector organizations to develop projects that enable new applications for a community of practice and utilize the existing and emerging capabilities of the CGDI. By January 2004, GeoConnections had received 33 letters of intent-a remarkable response. It subsequently invited full proposals from 27. From those full proposals, GeoConnections selected 13 projects that deal with a range of issues, from tracking diseases and responding to forest fires to assisting with Aboriginal land-use planning.
Streamlining decision-making
How will these projects help the communities of practice? By streamlining decision-making.
The issues facing many communities of practice often fall under several jurisdictions. And each jurisdiction can hold unique information vital to sound decision-making about these issues. For the right decisions to be made, various agencies are required to cooperate and share information, which is easier said than done.
For example, consider water, part of the environment community of practice. Municipalities monitor drinking-water quality; provincial conservation offices administer watersheds; and the federal government is interested in waterways that cross provincial borders. Moreover, other organizations have responsibility for protecting fish habitats or removing pollutants. Yet one thread links all of these responsibilities: they all deal with water.
That's where the CGDI comes in: it can enable these various jurisdictions to share information much more readily. Decision-making therefore becomes simpler and more effective-an excellent return on Canada's investment in the CGDI.
Project announcements by early summer
GeoConnections is now negotiating partnership agreements and will announce the new community of practice projects in early summer 2004. Stay tuned!