Human Support Systems

Over a decade ago, when the Global Spatial Data Infrastructure was still in its infancy, one of the tasks facing the organizations and nations working toward making what was still a theoretical collaboration a reality was to arrive at a definition of a spatial data infrastructure with which all parties could agree and work. The challenge was to describe their collective vision in a way that was sufficiently broad to reflect the convergence of the telecommunications, information services and information technology sectors, but that also extended beyond the physical facilities used to transmit, store, process, and display voice, spatial data and images.

Robert Pepper, of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, expressed the challenge in this way:

When we talk about infrastructure, we tend to think about wires—hardware. Infrastructure is far more than that. It is people, it is laws, it is the education to be able to use systems. If you think about the highway system, we tend to think about bridges and interstates, but the infrastructure also includes the highway laws, drivers' licenses, McDonalds along the roadside, gas stations, the people who cut the grass along the highways, and all of those support systems. You cannot talk about infrastructure in the telecom-information sector without also talking about the human support systems. [Kelley, P.C. [1993]. "A National Spatial Information Infrastructure." Proceedings of the 1993 Conference of the Australasian Urban and Regional Information Systems Association (AURISA), Adelaide, South Australia, Australia.], quoted in http://www.gsdi.org/docs1997/97_ggdiwp1.html]

Similarly, we cannot talk about the Canadian Geospatial Data Infrastructure, which is now a well-established reality, without talking about its “human support systems”: in other words, the people who use and contribute to the CGDI.

The success of the CGDI depends on its users—people like you—taking advantage of the geographic databases, tools and services it makes available. Over the course of this online training, we have presented and explained the benefits of familiarizing yourself with and using the various components of the CGDI.

Now that the infrastructure is in place, the standards are agreed upon, and the education is at your fingertips, the focus is on the people who use them: people like you.

It’s our turn to ask you for your input on the CGDI, by asking you the following questions:

• Which elements of the CGDI do you find most useful? Which ones are you already using or do you plan to use in the near future?
• Do you have any “success stories” of your own that involve the CGDI?
• Are there any aspects of the CGDI that you would like to see included in future training?

The GeoConnections team wants to hear from you. You can contact us in two ways:

1. By joining the CGDI development network and mailing list at http://lists.geoconnections.org/mailman/listinfo/cgdi-dev-net.
   
   
2. By sending your comments and suggestions about this module, online training or the CGDI in general to info@geoconnections.org.

We look forward to hearing from you.