Darius, My colleagues who read the GKD discussion forwarded your post to me and I find it (and many other threads there) very interesting.
To your post. In terms of "must-read" literature, most of the work in this area has been done in non-ICT fields, especially, cartography, surveying (geomatics, geoinformatics) and geography. So you should look at literature emanating from those fields. There was a PhD thesis at the Department of Geomatics of the University of Melbourne <www.geom.unimelb.edu.au> that studied diffusion of GIS in government. Even though the focus was not on "developing countries", you may be able to adapt the methods used there. The FIG commission 3 <www.fig.net/figtree/commission3> on spatial information management has conducted several seminars on spatial information. In the 90s, they used the term LIS/GIS and I remember a seminar in Copenhagen in 1996 on the theme "LIS/GIS for Developing Countries, LIS/GIS for the Future." One of the papers there was titled "Enhancing the Utility of GIS for Africa" and discussed the issue of appropriateness. And in related fields, you should look at the work of Commission 7 of the FIG on the Cadastre, especially their work on Digital Cadastral Databases. The underlying technology is GIS. There have been several conferences on Cadastral Reform and issues relating to culture and appropriateness have been discussed. You have already mentioned GSDI. There are several other organisations working on SDI, some with particular emphasis on specific regions of the world. In Africa, you should look at the work of EIS Africa <www.eis-africa.org>. The US State Department had a project last year called Geographic Information for Sustainable Development <external.opengis.org/gisd/> and the US National Academy of Sciences produced a publication called "Down to Earth: Geographical Information for Sustainable Development in Africa." Most of these sources will not necessarily be discussing the appropriateness of GIS for developing countries, but will rather focus on various aspects of information and knowledge management. I don't think anybody will question the appropriateness of having decisions based on sound information. The questions then shifts to the availability and easy access to data and information products, knowing that some technology will be used to collect, process, manage, disseminate, search for and discover, digest, ..., data. Therefore, people tend to concentrate on GEOINFORMATION, rather than GIS. There is a risk that too much emphasis on the tool will detract from the main objective: to use information in decision making. At ECA, we also concentrate on geoinformation. Thus in 2001, we released a position paper on the "Future orientation of geoinformation in Africa", placing emphasis on SDI. EIS Africa also has a similar position paper on EIS. Currently we are working on a "living document" on implementation of SDI in Africa. The snapshot as at the time of AfricaGIS (Nov 2003) can be downloaded from <www.uneca.org/disd/geoinfo/sdiafrica>. Back to appropriateness, see if you can find in the libraries a 1996 copy of the South African Journal of Surveying and Mapping. There was a paper there that discussed the appropriateness of the "Cadastre" for rural Africa. The paper is the second of a two-part work done for the FAO on land information management for rural Africa. I hope the above comments are useful. Dozie Ezigbalike Development Management Officer Development Information Services Division United Nations Economic Commission for Africa ------------ ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, a Non-Profit Organization*** To post a message, send it to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: <http://www.edc.org/GLG/gkd/>
