A Contextual ICA Stakeholder Model Approach for the Namibian Spatial Data Infrastructure (NamSDI)

Abstract

In 2011, the Namibian parliament presented and promulgated the Namibian Spatial Data Infrastructure (NamSDI) with the aim of promoting the sharing and improved access and use of geospatial data and services across Namibia. Notable SDI models, developed from the enterprise, information and computational viewpoints of the Reference Model for Open Distributed Processing (RM-ODP), comprise direct and indirect roles of stakeholders and special cases of each general role in an SDI. Hence, the International Cartographic Association (ICA) model was used to identify the stakeholders in and around NamSDI, which is still at the infancy stage of development. The application of a high-level ICA model proved to be relevant and useful in discriminating and categorizing Nam-SDI stakeholders according to their roles and vested interests. Some stakeholders, such as official government mapping agencies, assume multiple roles, while others, such as database administrators, are not yet active. In the absence of baseline data and given the infancy status of NamSDI, attributes such as skills, capacity of producers and service providers, were not considered. Modelling NamSDI stakeholders in the context of ICA's stakeholder model contributed significantly to a better understanding of NamSDI stakeholder types and subtypes and pointed out gaps that may hinder its successful and effective implementation.

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“…Therefore, we can conclude that the application of Namibia's SDI policies in the biodiversity geospatial data could improve their quality and facilitate their use for any organization or user that would be interested in them. Moreover, the existence of NGOs with relevant data for the government, although not detailed in this work, was not considered by [36]. The consideration of NGOs as possible Producers and Providers in Namibia's SDI can provide a great quantity of relevant geospatial data that can cover areas for which the government does not have much or any data.…”

“…Sinvula et al [36] conclude that the ability level of all stakeholders that take on the actor roles Special Interest and Information Source is of an Expert Amateur, although, during the development of the work, the authors stated that there was no Expert Amateur in Namibia's SDI. Finally, Namibia's SDI has a deficiency concerning stakeholders related to the SDI services, as there is none that takes on the roles of Service Distributor, Service Arbiter or Service Integrator.…”

“…Owusu et al [38] used ICA's SDI model to identify the actors in the NAFGIM when it was working, with the goal of understanding why it was unsuccessful and avoiding repeating the errors in Ghana's SDI. Those authors used the same method adopted by Sinvula et al [36].…”

“…The results were similar to those obtained by Sinvula et al [36], in which the NAFGIM, concerning the actor Producer, has no stakeholders with the role of Community of Interest and Source of Information, besides not having Producers with Beginner or Interested Amateur ability levels. Moreover, the NAFGIM lacked stakeholders related to the services of the SDI, with none that took on the roles of Service Distributer, Service Arbiter or Service Integrator [38].…”

“…Sinvula et al [36] identified the stakeholders in Namibia' SDI, which is at an early stage of development, based on the actors identified by ICA's SDI model proposed in [8], and all official mapping agencies, commercial mapping agencies, communities of interest and sources of information are considered Captors of Raw Data. Since Namibia's SDI was at an early stage at the time of publication of the present paper, all data producers of the SDI take on the responsibilities of the actor Database Administrator.…”