“In 1974, Mr Justice Kenny, in his landmark report on the price of building land, found that it was not possible to compile accurate national statistics for land prices. Some 36 years later, the public awaits right of access to national property sales data”.
Whilst related to the specific area of property sales, the above quotation ( Irish Times article, Saturday August 14th) brings home a simple basic truth – to make informed decisions, you need information! Yet much of the information pertinent to our daily lives seems, in Ireland anyway, to be locked or hidden away from view – maintained in isolated silo’s, sometimes quite deliberately.
One can think of many critical information sources if one chooses to take the example of NAMA, indeed the NAMA business plan (click here) specifically refers to the acquisition of a Portfolio Management System, and the need for this Agency to engage proactively with Government Departments, Local Authorities, State Agencies and other bodies – access to information on national mapping, planning, survey data and land registry will be crucial, to name but a few.
Without a cohesive approach to information management across Government and related areas, it is going to be interesting to watch how the work that NAMA has to do unfolds in the coming years.
On top of this, at the highest levels of Government in this country there appears to be a blind eye turned towards the role that geography plays in crucial information management. Why is this? The mystery deepens when one takes a look at what is going on across the Atlantic as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA, see www.recovery.gov).
We can see that information management and crucially GIS is being used to provide transparency and context to investment programs for communities in the U.S., under the tag line of “Track The Money”. Imagine if we could see where our money is being spent, and how! Imagine seeing regular, map based, updates of what NAMA are (or will be) up to!
Imagine using GIS to stimulate investment in broadband, green initiatives, alternative energy, bridges, roads, rail, mass transit, and more! One need only look across the border to see what the Strategic Investment Board is doing in Northern Ireland (http://www.isni.gov.uk/InteractiveMap.aspx).
Perhaps by following the pointers provided by my colleague Eamonn Doyle (see Esri Ireland blog “Please Minister”), our eminent leader Mr. Cowen (http://www.rte.ie/news/2010/0818/cowenb.html) and his Government might take the steps needed to show the world that we can make transparent, informed decisions for the greater good of our little island?
Authored by: Michael Byrne
