Proposal for a South African spatial data infrastructure (SASDI) stakeholder collaboration framework, informed by the case of geospatial data for the municipal land use application process

Abstract

Globally, the geospatial community is making great effort to maximise the use of geospatial information for solving complex problems, at various scales. The United Nations Committee of Experts on Global Geospatial Information Management (UN-GGIM) who set the international direction for the governance and management of geospatial information, has in recent years published the Integrated Geospatial Information Framework (IGIF). This framework was designed to assist countries with developing an integrated approach to geospatial information, equipping them to better respond to their national objectives. Implementation of the IGIF may be realised through various existing platforms, such as spatial data infrastructures (SDI). However, the traditional SDI with its narrow focus has to evolve one that is 'open', encourages and enables participation from a wider pool of stakeholders, and is able to contribute to various disciplines. With a wider pool stakeholders comes various governance challenges, the IGIF will assist with managing those challenges.

Efforts toward an SDI-like initiative in South Africa dates back to at least four decades. Originally, the purpose was to make standardised national geospatial datasets available to users. Over time this evolved, and with the enactment of the Spatial Data Infrastructure Act No.53 of 2003, the South African spatial data infrastructure (SASDI) was established as the technical, institutional and policy framework to govern geospatial data produced by government organisations. There have been changes and advances with the SASDI, however the governance still requires much work, which has resulted in limited access to fundamental geospatial datasets. Therefore, the aim of this research is to propose a solution for the governance challenges related to geospatial datasets in the context of SASDI.

The municipal land use use application process as prescribed in the Spatial Planning and Land use Management Act No. 16 of 2013 (SPLUMA), was selected as the case study. The results informed the proposed solution, which is a SASDI stakeholder collaboration framework. This process was ideal because it involves multiple stakeholders who all have an influence over the process, various geospatial datasets are required to make land use the land use decisions, and fundamental geospatial is derived from this process, the municipal land use rights and zoning data. Through study of the spatial planning and land use management legal framework and a process of semi-structured interviews with municipal representatives from two provinces, valuable insights were gained into the municipal business processes, their stakeholder engagement and their management of geospatial information.

The main results show that metropolitan municipalities have access to more resources compared to local municipalities, placing them at an advantage with the implementation of their land use management systems, and governance of geospatial data. On the contrary, local municipalities, especially those situated in rural areas have, and continue to rely on the support of provincial government for implementing SPLUMA-compliant systems. The type of provincial support was different between the two provinces, either way, provincial government proved to be a vital intergovernmental link between municipalities and national government.

With SPLUMA, municipalities gained influencing power of land use decisions, which has translated into urgency. The urgency was observed through their strict compliance with the SPLUMA time-frames, and the actions they take to ensure compliance, such as spending their budget on acquiring the geospatial data they need. In addition, the urgency was also determined by the individuals' attitudes; they believed that their actions contribute to societal benefits.

Municipalities experience great difficulty in accessing the geospatial information they require. National departments such as the National Mapping Agency and Office of the Surveyor General continue to disseminate data that does meet the requirements of municipalities. Despite their challenges, municipalities have been resilient; they have developed innovative ways to acquire the data in order to address their mandate for service delivery, for example, there is extensive collaboration between the departments to create the data they need and avoid duplicate data capture. There was no evidence of data-related collaborations between the municipalities and external stakeholders. There was also no evidence of any significant external support with the management of geospatial data; specifically, the SASDI has not aided in this adequately. In fact, SASDI awareness was very low amongst municipalities, and those who had knowledge expressed their need for guidance, support and mechanisms to access good quality geospatial data.

The proposed SASDI stakeholder framework is aimed at improved access to useful, usable geospatial information. The conceptual model for the framework utilises a mechanisms approach, as taken from the data governance literature and was enriched with the case study results. Four interrelated mechanisms were proposed, the structural, procedural, relational and evaluative mechanisms. For each of the four mechanisms, the structures, instruments and influences are proposed. Though the framework is designed for the South African context, it may easily be translated for other countries.