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Article Excerpt
Introduction
Public Participation Geographic Information Systems (PPGIS) explore the normative avenues by which GIS can engage more and diverse members of society in public policy making (Schroeder 1996). (1) Researchers have demonstrated that in the PPGIS process, access to geographic information/technology is embedded in local organizational and political contexts and in broader societal milieus (see for example, the URISA Journal double issue on access and participatory approaches, published in 2003). Whereas the concept has received intense scrutiny, PPGIS scholars have diverged on its definition. Access has been variously characterized as information about the policy-making process, admittance to participation in that process, acquisition of raw digital data being used to craft policy, provision of data by government institutions to the public, and the ability to submit information into official data sets (Leituer et al. 2000; Laituri 2003; Smith and Craglia 2003; Tulloch and Shapiro 2003). Access to information about the process compared to access to the raw data suggest that differences exist even in the degree of access that is considered necessary to constitute a PPGIS endeavor.
Access to data, particularly in their digital form, tends not to be examined separately but is subsumed in wider issues of GIS access (e.g., to spatial technologies or literacy). This is exemplified by Leitner et al. (2000), a comprehensive article on different models of GIS provision. Their five dimensions cover communication structures among nonprofits and other institutions, level of interaction with GIS, location of the GIS, type of stakeholders involved in GIS, and legal and ethical issues in PPGIS projects. Clearly, sizeable overlap exists between GIS provision and data provision. Their five dimensions are further characterized by 19 attributes, one of which is access to publicly held information. This article concentrates on that specific attribute and utilizes a working definition of access to spatial data as the actions and conditions of likely participants in decision making to first acquire data from data suppliers and then to manage those data. The article considers access from the data users' point of view, distinct from the data suppliers (the data availability) perspective, although the two fluidly interact.
Where it concerns the data portion of the access equation, much of PPGIS research and practice emphasizes local knowledge--the perceptions, places and indicators that represent community values, which derive from the residents themselves. The knowledge production of PPGIS concerns the transformation of those data, either alone or in concert with secondary data; its inclusion in public policies should presumably contribute to community empowerment (Elwood and Leitner 2003). With this focus on the generation of knowledge, PPGIS research and practice often treat the more prosaic access to secondary data, most of which are produced by public agencies, as a given (e.g., distributed by supportive universities or embedded in pre-existing decisionmaking processes (Sieber 2006)). Importance is placed on the nature of public participation in policy making or the obstacles to adoption of GIS technology by nonprofit organizations. (2) However, nonprofits may very well fail to meet their goals if they operate in areas without cooperative institutions from which they can access spatial data or if they are unable to gain unmediated access to the data sets underlying specific public policies.
The growing sophistication of nonprofit GIS applications, the emergence of easier-to-use GIS tools such as Google Earth, and the rising ubiquity of digital data suggest that nonprofits will increasingly demand access to spatial data, primarily in digital form. This paper argues that spatial data access is influenced by technical characteristics of the data, organization factors, and legal and economic regimes, all of which are situated in a political reality. These factors mirror those in the mainstream GIS literature on data access (e.g., Onsrud and Rushton 1995; Nedovic-Budic et al. 2004), which historically has focused on intra-governmental organizational relationships but can miss the uneven dynamics between the public and the nonprofit sectors.
To illustrate access, the paper presents the GIS activities of six nonprofits from northern California. These cases exhibit varying motivations for and experiences with spatial data access. Their situations exemplify the complex and fluid relationships between suppliers, intermediaries, and users, which render access to certain data sets effortless and access to other data sets impossible. Results from these cases better help us to recognize the challenges of nonprofits in obtaining public data. Further, it underscores the need for continued understanding of the role of public agencies and intermediaries in that access.
Factors Influencing Spatial Data Access
Because it forms an integral part of the GIS adoption process, access to data will likely be conditioned by a set of technical and non-technical factors that influence the application of GIS technology. These factors are as much inter-organizational as they are intra-organizational, and they embed GIS adoption in a larger social network of organizations upon which nonprofits may depend for their access and technical support. Resources and networks are conditioned by political context. The literature on government-to-government spatial data access adds that the legal and economic regimes in which these networks exist heavily influences an organization's ability to access data. Table 1 summarizes the factors that govern spatial data access by nonprofits.
Data Resources and Technical Factors
Access is predicated on the existence of data resources. If the spatial data fail to exist in the right place, on the needed subject, or in the appropriate format, then improving access is irrelevant. Localities will have differing degrees of information richness or poverty (Laituri 2003). Numerous reasons may dictate why data are physically inaccessible. The needed data may be available only in a hard copy or on less easy-to-manage digital media (e.g., 4 mm tapes), thus requiring organizational resources for data entry or conversion. They may be located at a distant site, for example at a state or national capital. Technological media for data dissemination, such as web-based GIS, promise improved access to nonprofit and community residents (Wong and Chua 2004; Kingston 2002). Technological innovation alone, however, does not ensure useful information and may actually inhibit a fuller understanding of access. For all the promise of access offered by Internet Map Servers, Wong and Chua (2004) find that web developers possess little knowledge of problems their users encounter once the data are downloaded.
Data access is further controlled by the degree to which data are organized. Data may exist in a variety of formats, from paper maps to tabular information, as well as digital spatial data. Calkins and Weatherbe (1995b) characterize the varying levels of spatial data processing:
* Data may exist as raw observations (i.e., initial data entry);
* Data may be classified or aggregated;
* Information may be organized by topic or geography; and
* Information can be organized by digital file format (e.g., in native formats or in a ready-to-use formats like a .shp file).
Data management will inevitably correspond to institutional needs. Consequently, a nonprofit may require the raw observations but discover that only aggregate summary data have been retained.
Sawicki and Peterman (2002) report that urban nonprofits frequently require neighborhood or city block level data; however, much of the available data is aggregated to a census tract or municipal level. The map extent or scale of available data may not match the extent or scale of the problem (Aitken 2002). The relevance of that access will be further affected by the degree of the data set's completeness, currency, quality, and accuracy (e.g., positional, attribute). Not all nonprofits will demand high levels of accuracy; it appears that environmental and conservation organizations demand greater positional accuracy than urban community-based organizations (CBOs). Urban CBOs require high degrees of attributional accuracy (Barndt 1998; 2002). Barndt (1998), who has had long experience directing a nonprofit data centre; notes that data must be appropriate, actionable, synergistic, insightful, and they must fit organizational priorities, although the precise meaning of these will vary considerably by nonprofit, its needs, resources, and institutional climate.
Organizational and Political Factors
Constraints on access would be lessened if a nonprofit possessed sufficient organizational capacity to collect and manage its data. The nonprofit sector encompasses organizations ranging from all-volunteer grassroots groups to non-governmental organizations with hundreds of employees (e.g., a local conservation club is much smaller in its capacities than a nonprofit organization such as the World Wide Fund for Nature). Small to medium nonprofits are known to experience considerable instability in terms of such resources as funding and staff turnover. Resource fluctuations can delay or even irreparably damage nonprofit GIS applications if, for example, staff who possess mission-critical GIS expertise and connections to spatial data suppliers leave the nonprofit.
Several additional factors affect access. One is a flexible organizational structure that can easily transmit requests for and receive data matching the needs of the applications. Also important is an upper management that is committed to ensure resources for data purchases and conversion.
Organizational goals that support (and are supported by) secondary data access, an organizational history of computing and spatial analysis, and long-term organizational stability are yet others (Barndt 1998; Elwood and Ghose 2004). Organizational capacity and structure are two of the non-technical factors that shape nonprofits' ability to access public information. Elwood and Ghose (2004) were the first to frame PPGIS projects in terms of the local intra- and inter-organizational context. Within organizations, the authors put forward the following factors: knowledge of available external resources, experience with GIS, organizational stability, and priorities and strategies aligned with the resource demands of GIS. Between organizations, they point to the importance of networks of collaborative relationships and access to resources. Their conceptualization grounds the factors in this section.
Nonprofits do not operate in a vacuum, but instead act within complex and dynamic relationships with other institutions, including government agencies, public libraries, universities, vendors, foundations, and other nonprofits. Social networking has proven beneficial to nonproft GIS implementation because it can offer such services as training, hardware and software, and, of course, data (Sawicki and Craig 1996; Leitner et al....
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