Organizational and Technological Interoperability for Geographic Information Infrastructures

What will it take to share geographic information between real-world organizations? Despite progress in networking technology, database design, standards, and organizational wisdom over the last three decades, it’s still rare for planners or public managers to share information across organizational boundaries. it’s rare even when (as in environmental management for instance) key decision variables are linked by physical pathways (waterways, landforms, habitat) that cross jurisdictions, hierarchies, and other territorial lines. It’s rare even for geographic information, despite its cost and its potential for widespread re-use, and has remained rare even as the Internet has come of age in recent years, and as public agencies have been called to increase their efficiency and public accountability. The problem seems to be part technical, part organizational, and often peculiar to the nature of geographic information: complex in structure and interpretation, rich in meaningful interrelationships, and difficult to understand or use without special-purpose tools.