I. Introduction
Geographical Information Systems (GIS) are considered the paradigm of technological information when it comes to information about reality ( 1999). GIS is computer systems that capture, manage, analyze, display and distributes geographically referenced information data identified that is according to location. GIS has the capacity to connect certain important location for the purpose of using e-government information that will possibly relate to people, their addresses, buildings to parcels within a network and layers that information to give an individual and e-governments a better understanding of how it all links up. GIS can be considered a piece of the organization’s overall information system framework and is often associated with maps as GIS is reflected on planned databases that depict the world through geographic upheavals.
Background
GIS and its Evolution
GIS incorporates a set of sequence changing tools that gain and innovate certain geographic sets of data from existing data process as the function receive rank from accessible data and relate investigate outcomes into fresh consequent information data. The GIS approach has endless uses like in solving problems in relation to government segment, preparation allocation networks, redrawing country limitations. GIS can amicably allow emergency planners to easily calculate emergency response times in the event of a natural disaster and or a GIS might be used to find wetlands that need protection from pollution. GIS might also be used to display community information, such as location of schools, overlaid on a map of the area ( 2003). GIS can also be used for scientific investigations, resource management and development planning. When used with the right approach, GIS can change an organization for the better. GIS goes beyond processing and interpreting data as the GIS also lets model scenarios test various hypotheses and see outcomes visually to find the outcome that meets the needs of all the stakeholders.
Aside, the GIS technology began in the late 1960’s when mapmakers realize that the information on traditional maps had the inertia and viscosity of all analog or continuous information and with still undeveloped information technology, to convert information from maps into crisp and easily manipulated bits. Eventually, mapmakers came up with the grid that at the beginning of the modern era had helped to make the world be easily surveyed and they set out to render reality understandable (1999). GIS can supply individuals and organizations with powerful information. GIS is about modeling and mapping the world for improved decision making and it can be used from simple contact mapping to consumer analysis to complex enterprise systems that are part of an organization’s overall enterprise resource planning structure and it can be a transformational device for any organization if it is used wisely.
Organizations and Utilization of GIS
The GIS process is getting cheaper, quicker, easier to use and packed with more and better data as there can be amounts of such government data become readily available in GIS format, the outlook for GIS in e-government area planning looks really bright as there argues that in terms of using GIS to inform and analyze in predictable sense, government planners should believe using it as a cognitive tool as the residents of a country learn to manipulate GIS data to express their views about planning issues, neighborhood meaning and future preferences as to how GIS can be used in planning is prompted by concern that conventional use of GIS in planning is top-down, rational and technical (1995) and the observation that GIS that is purely technological in orientation will fail in the same manner that large-scale urban modeling within the unquestioned proliferation of GIS in planning practice because it only intensifies reliance on truth planning in the rational tradition. Although GIS is basically about providing and analyzing spatial data, it is difficult to envision how it could be used in local communities in a way that is not essentially technical in process. One could take an optimistic view that GIS, by enabling the interactive display of spatial data, has gone some way toward eliminating the “red herrings, factual disputes and unrealistic predictions” (1997) that clog the planning process.
One could rake the alternate view that just when people begins to effectuate a more democratic approach to planning in which the processes of communication and interaction are given weight within the sanctions of GIS in order to dictate how and with what data, such communication is to proceed. Indeed, the notion of more and more layers of government-generated spatial data garnered with increasingly difficult means of data capture and distribution and manifestation of the complex means of data analysis and the ample position of the GIS as a power that government planners care to challenge.
E-governments and its Evolution
The Internet is deeply changing live and is affecting the way people work, learn and interact. The E-governments to leverage tools like geographic information technology to provide customers like for instance, government staff, citizens and businesses with a portal for more convenient access to government information and services, as well as to improve the quality of those services. E-government presents local government agencies with tremendous opportunities to provide higher quality, cost-effective services that will improve the relationship between citizens and their government.
The government agencies that have adopted GIS find that it increasingly drives their enterprise information management and data dissemination strategies, primarily because a majority of the data used by government is geographically referenced. More importantly, GIS acts as a vehicle for sharing information and integrating services within and among many local government agencies. Information developed by one department or agency is useful to and needed by others. A local government agency looks the same, has the same assets, infrastructure, natural resources and other issues, whether the agency is trying to develop mass transit, provide economic development, clean up its environment, or improve utility services. The rationale behind E-government is to make understanding and provide people with integrated service setting. The government agencies must plan better E-government strategies in such a way that:
Ø conventional means of government service and data access are maintained for those customers who need them
Ø access to the Internet and tools like Web GIS are available for those customers who cannot access it from their homes or businesses
Ø education and public information programs are used to help the citizens of a community take advantage of the Web GIS functionality
Thus, foremost instance of E-government is public works and municipal utility agency that has developed an E-government strategy. The strategy is to enable the use of the Internet and its Web capabilities to allow citizens access to public works and utility related information and services. The adoption of E-government initiative has begun to improve participation in government as well as enhance the agency’s ability to provide effective and efficient services as the goal is to improve the lives of the citizens and customers through good government. E-government is regarding inclusion as their the ability for the citizens and customers to take part in the society and prosperity. The E-government involves the innovative use of enabling technology that is important to the economic and social prosperity of individual citizens and community. Moreover, for the tomorrow’s e-citizens and e-businesses, the coming e-government evolution is good news and offer potentials for services that are designed for citizens’ needs and how they want the augmented efficiency cuts the cost of e-government in transparent ways of doing government collaboration – a fresh stage of accountability for untied and approachable political affairs.
II. Challenges in GIS construction
The poor lines of communication can be a problem for a successful adaptation of GIS within the government as the crucial element and the useful backbone of GIS is effective data communication as well as knowing what data types are available for interaction and the understanding of certain scope for the reliable truth of the GIS application as once the data has been entered, it may need to be edited for accuracy in some ways that will emphasize effective channels for communication among GIS designers and its users respectively and the use of needed data is then influenced and examined within such goals of the project involved that can have explicit geographic reference as well as implicit reference such as an address, census tract name and road name. Communication process will imply the mode of such accuracy as a degree to which information on a map or in a digital database matches the accepted values and certain quality of data and the number of errors contained in a dataset as there requires for such applications even if high and accurate data can be costly to produce and compile and the skewing the results for analysis and resulting in poor communication decisions of the GIS integration measures.
The mapping potential of each source of digital data is measured by its obtainable accuracy which can be relative or absolute. More often, users need to find a position relative to some known landmark, which is what relative accuracy provides as the users with simple data requirements generally need only relative accuracy, it is primarily important for complex data requirements such as those for surveying and engineering based applications. Users of GIS should are to be attentive of technological limitations. For example, idiosyncratic GIS can strictly regulate the scale of such maps to the user stipulation, though certain software will agree to the GIS function to be executed properly. GIS provides a rigorous structure for spatial and attribute data, but it will not change the nature of spatial and attribute data, nor will it correct basic inaccuracies in data and that not much data is derived from third type resources and may not convey precisely and or open to misinterpretation and just because data are in a GIS does not mean that they are correct.
The interactive nature of data costs implying the basis for GIS means that the expression of preferences can be flowing and vibrant. In the essence, the GIS data costs cannot exceed too high for the e-governments to adopt and also, can be used to discover relationships that may lead to reappraisals and redefinitions of government official preferences like, the manner in which GIS allows government authorities to view more than one spatially dispersed variable, turning coverage on and off as desired and allowing them to see and react to interconnections of issues and that people may possibly begin to create expression of issues and preference that can be totally diverse. Government officials viewing a particular coverage may decide that they had misjudged an issue and worse, had neglected to think of it as important because of data substantiality that will be a factor resulting to such changes of contexts when certain views within a spatial allocation of variables are notified like situations dealing to crime incidence or demolition that changes the path of GIS cost drivers relating to government issues and people preferences.
The challenges of existing systems dealing to GIS ways may have the significant value of articulating people preferences as GIS has the potential to strengthen and deepen communication about government and neighborhood issues. (1995) A GIS that reflects people viewpoints could aid in the communication process simply by exposing underlying perceptions otherwise obscured by a lack of appropriate communicative format. (1995) Yet there may be contexts in which a synthesized view of individual expressions is valuable, particularly if the goal is to prescribe a desired course of action. Obviously, there is a danger that such syntheses might compromise individual viewpoints and seriously undermine the very purpose of GIS within the expression of perceived issues and preference (1995). Even so, the application of techniques in GIS, with a clear demonstration of their utility in e-government evaluation process can be by no means standard practice.
The minimal adequacy of computer science can be amended by means of the actual construction of GIS as it begins when a participant sits down with a facilitator in front of a computer screen in either an individual or a group session. Assuming the participant has no prior experience with GIS, the facilitator begins by showing the participant the following:
Ø The coverage of areas obtainable in GIS
Ø The type of e-government features in which several mark symbolize the top location
Ø Fundamental GIS apparatus – how the users turn exposure on and off, alter the scale and how to compute area distances simply
Ø The diverse customs as the assessment was expressed in terms of GIS format
There can be questions that involve GIS drawing functions are in response to questions about location in space or movement through space that involve assigning relative weights to selected objects or spatial elements that have been added. The open-ended evaluation and prescription requires more adept manipulation of spatial concepts that is in terms of selection, drawing and ranking of GIS elements. Throughout the process, spatial difficulty, spatial context and the interactivity and interconnection of ideas in GIS become important tools in the formulation of expression. The qualitative attributes could be assigning to activity routes, such as occurrence of travel in a given route and perceived quality of the route in terms of maintenance safety and what needs to be enhanced the e-governments could use GIS tools and function to merge existing data and add to new data forms.
III. Options in GIS construction
The development of remote user community has the option to dispatch the center of utility that can be responsible for the operation of emergency responses in government plans as the remote user community involves the usage and mixture of reference materials to direct service officials to incidents that will have to include operation maps and built-in drawings of GIS models and the automatic sanction for certain address and telephone directories as well as several index card files that will contain vital phone numbers, asset names and user community address as well as the inventory of receptive individuals that needs special attention because of some medical conditions. When GIS technology was implemented for the remote users there can be linked to the post system like for example, when a call is received, the system passes the caller’s address to the GIS, which automatically locate the address and displays the road and efficacy maps for the nearby areas of concern as the caller’s location is pinpointed by either a property address or coordinate location on the GIS locator map. GIS then aids the correspondent with crisis coordination. During an emergency, a person may need to talk to several different police team and hazardous response unit that outlines conditions and needs to the organization as there is the ability to share information through the Internet and Web GIS – the requestor needs to go through a process instead of many more times.
A GIS approach requires the designing of the systems in order to handle such points, areas and networks for the GIS of implying data standards, software and agreed administration and admission principles for whoever provides and uses the data. For example, transportation and public works agencies often use Intergraph systems which are good for point-to-point design and network analysis, while environmental and planning agencies prefer systems which can better perform polygon processing. The limited vision of potential handing of systems in GIS can be a problem as some planners were aware of only one or two limited GIS applications for instance, the automated map making as others had clearly unrealistic expectations as such, the planning director believed that GIS would organize the desired department and ensure that information could always be found and don’t give priority for operating designed systems along with GIS values and the need to change and reinvent.
The GIS database comprehensiveness refers to the system’s number of maps along with extensive database that encompasses the distinctive elements of urban system and data relevant to planning issues and make it easier to analyze issues for access of the database. The databases for example of integrated land information systems usually have variety of features as the process objective is to satisfy sequence needs of several organizations or government agencies (1989). The multiplicity of data as compared to the sheer amount of data as expected to give thorough usage of GIS with a huge coverage of application, and enhanced effectiveness of accessing the database. Like for instance, the right of way (ROW) department maintained two primary types of property records: property and ownership files and associated ROW maps that the utility compiled in many years as it is updated and recorded as the utilities being built and services expanded from the cities as the ROW record was automated, it was also tagged with the parcel identification number and linked to the descriptive attribute data stored in the city’s property assessment system and the updated information is at once available to the utility, to other city departments and to the public and can use Web GIS in order to locate and exhibit the ROW map as well as linked assets and possession data on parcels more faster than it has been retrieved in the past.
The variety of methods devised to assist in the expression of individual and group issues and preferences as existing techniques being part of consensus-building process includes the interacting groups, hushed deep techniques, survey, focus groups and dialectic groups ( 1995). The expression of preference in consensus building can be as simple as responding to a written questionnaire using the simulation techniques. In the intended custom, range of planning guides promote the use of GIS maps to record group input, for example: “Mark in green those things that are good features that should be protected. Mark in red those things that are problems or liabilities” (1990). Thus, formal survey methods was being used and involve open-ended answers to questions about what is liked and disliked about a given government law and or Likert scale rankings of selected government conditions (1994; 1992). Aside, the society profiling link the need of assessment (1994) of familiar genre.
The GIS approach improves the ability of residents to integrate complex information in their expression of issues and preferences. It is a valuable tool for representing individual or group preferences simply because of the wealth of data it can efficiently store and retrieve. New data can be added to the GIS by residents based on their perceptions, or residents can use existing GIS data if they concur with how the data represent a particular aspect of their neighborhood. In a GIS, country people can retrieve and query this data in a highly efficient way. This ability is important because it allows them to base their expression of preferences not simply on whatever data happens to be represented on the base map being used, such as building outlines or land use, but on a wide variety of variables. (1992) The GIS is an effective way to contextualize discussion and expression of issues and preferences and such distribution of public areas, out migration of population, density of commercial enterprises and distribution of dilapidated buildings and that such entry facilities could involve any spatial queries in lieu of detachment, route and closeness. The government in evaluating a neighborhood using GIS will enable them to articulate spatial measurement of awareness. The use of GIS data will stimulate the outlook of government images and equip people with better spatial language as compared to a simple document GIS techniques.
The influence of a GIS comes from the skill to speak about unlike information through spatial background and come up for finished touches as several of the information contain such location reference adjusting information on globe, GIS can disclose imperative novel information that guides for better supervision decision. GIS can change existing digital information and in such forms it can distinguish and use of required data. For example, such digital satellite graphics and images are analyzed in order to create GIS maps of digital order for example regarding land utilization and cover up. The following graphics below integrates and shows how GIS process are being used and applied by certain government agencies.
Figure One: Example U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) digital line graph (DLG) data of roads
Figure Two: Example USGS geologic map
Figure Three: Example part of a census data file containing address information
Figure Four: Example part of a hydrologic data report indicating the discharge and amount of river flow recorded by a particular stream gage that has a known location
Thus, GIS makes it possible to integrate data that can be hard to connect through some alternative ways and GIS approaches will use groupings in form of mapped variables in building and analyzing crucial variables for a purpose
Figure Five: Example Data integration is the linking of information in different forms through a GIS
The GIS system designers can generate GIS for sole users and partial purpose and can plan multi systems in combining the data and objectives of variety users and can design GIS mainly for professional use or make accessible to professional people and to the general public. GIS can center on system installation and complicated database administration within the government presentations because the defining processes are narrowing the choice of outcomes for technology innovation matters.
IV. Conclusion
Therefore, there needs to use GIS to improve planning and change the way people think and work and effective implementation require changes in institutional arrangement and responsibilities of planning government agencies. For example, the capability to forecast different growth scenarios that would result from alternative regulatory policies (1992) and permits planners to play a more active role in the development of regulatory policy with planning commissions and that planners may have a more important role at the state level than they have had in the past and the opportunity to implement innovative strategies for interactive citizen involvement in ongoing policy discussion.
Aside, in order to make more effective progress in the future, academic researchers must also give serious attention to the strategic tasks. The researchers can help by first codifying existing practices and documenting and explaining successes and failure and may build a framework for practitioners to apply in the overall innovation effort. The research will be most effective in resolving the difficult problem of achieving compatibility between GIS and planning if it can use the language of practice, rather than concepts primarily meaningful to computing experts. The creation of GIS that empower planning will require the joint efforts of planners, systems designers, researchers and theorists who span the intellectual boundaries between computing applications and planning theory. If not already well on the road to e-government, they should start at once as the countries and regions will make them look like laggards. The governments form such a crucial part of the business environment that, when all is equal and people may prefer to go where the benefits of e-government are available as the e-government requires profound changes in the culture, the processes and the relationships that define government as an entity. The prong is the establishment of a secure government intranet and central database that reaches across all departments and enables them to work together. The intranet must also have resilient, high capacity interfaces with public sector agencies and local and regional government bodies.
The creation of a government e-marketplace where departments can advertise their requirements, authorized suppliers can bid and post tenders for high-value purchases and public servants can purchase low-value goods quickly, efficiently and at centrally negotiated prices. Then, there must have digital democracy as governments and politicians must use the web to make it transparent and accountable to the voters, evolve new methods of consultation and eventually offer online voting. The one important reservation is efficient governments will also know vastly more about each and every one of their citizens. The exponential increase in the ability of e-governments to gather, store and mine data about people will raise well-founded worries about privacy and civil liberties and placing the GIS in the realm of perception contributes to the use of GIS and representing a significant departure from current uses of GIS in government planning, the GIS has evolved into a discipline with its own research base known as geographic information sciences. An active GIS market resulted in lower costs and continual improvements in GIS software and data as the developments will lead to effective application of the technology throughout e-governments and industrial business sectors. The GIS and linked technology will help analyze large datasets that allows better understanding of worldly process and human activities in order to recover financial vivacity and ecological excellence.
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