Recognition of the need for financial tracking of geospatial investment is not new. In 1934 a six-month intensive review was conducted of 28 federal agencies engaged in surveying and mapping in the United States. This study noted a disturbing proliferation and duplication of activity resulting in waste of funds. Federal surveying and mapping activity was found to be "enormous in volume, of confusing variety and to have developed independently and often without correlation in many different executive agencies."

Lessons Learned
In 1972 a US Federal Mapping Task Force chaired by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) completed another broad study of federal mapping, charting, geodesy and surveying, to determine how best to use resources to meet overall national requirements. The first step was to determine amounts of federal expenditure. Although the Task Force found that funding was spent in a piecemeal fashion and without an overall national plan or strategy, no concrete action was taken to improve efficiency in carrying out mapping programmes.
Another twenty years passed before OMB conducted another, cross-agency financial review of geospatial investment. In 1993, OMB asked federal agencies involved in the management of geographic data to provide details of expenditure equalling or exceeding US$ 500,000. Agencies were meant to list budgetary resources under the categories of data collection and data management. From the response OMB determined the amount of federal spending on geographic data acquisition and management; but this information was not fed into an overseeing function at OMB, so that the review proved ultimately to be simply an exercise. Again, no concrete measures were taken to improve budgetary efficiency.
A similar exercise was repeated ten years later, in 2003. This time no minimum investment thres-hold of US$ 500,000 was set and a different geospatial investment classification was used. However, there was limited response from agencies and support from OMB and the effort came to a halt. But then, in 2004, another study got underway to quantify costs and benefits of the E-government Geospatial One-Stop programme. The Geospatial One-Stop team is currently discussing the development of a mechanism to automate financial data collection and updates with state and local government.

Budgetary Mechanism
Despite the long history of tracking of geospatial investments in the US, no mechanism for budgetary co-ordination or oversight has resulted. A June 2004 congressional hearing report entitled ‘Geospatial Information: Are we really headed in the right direction or are we lost?’ highlights the current predicament in the US. The General Accounting Office admits that much remains unsatisfactory: "A complete and up-to-date strategic plan (to co-ordinate geospatial investments) is missing… federal agencies are not consistently complying with OMB direction to co-ordinate their investments… and OMB’s oversight methods have not
identified or eliminated specific instances of duplication." According to Karen Evans, OMB administrator for e-government and IT, "We need to get to the issue of accountability and managing information strategically."
It is interesting to note that one organisational alternative proposed in the 1973 OMB report was to institute a federal mapping co-ordinator at OMB to provide guidance on trends and priorities, facilitate communication on plans and programmes and identify voids and overlaps. Perhaps OMB is getting closer to assuming this role. There is a precedent: OMB already has a chief statistician charged with annually overseeing statistical spending. An explicit statutory basis for the OMB council of statistical agency heads was provided in 1995 by the Paperwork Reduction Act reauthorization (44 U.S.C. 3504 (e)(8)). Known as the Interagency Council on Statistical Policy (ICSP), this group enables OMB to obtain more direct participation from the agencies in planning and co-ordinating federal statistical activities. It would not seem such a tall order for something similar to be implemented for geospatial expenditure. If there is a chief statistician at OMB, why not have a ‘chief geospatial officer’ as well?

Homework for Africa
Obviously, as this brief historical narrative has shown, conventional budgetary processes have thus far not been sufficient to constrain the fragmentation of geospatial investments in the United States. The homework for African countries is to establish mechanisms for:

• annual tracking of geospatial investment
  
• metadata/clearinghouse for planned data collection and acquisition
  
• budget oversight, with a designated person at Ministry of Finance
  
• user requirements well articulated and collected systematically
  
• incentives for agency participation.

• Freihage, J. and M. Robinson, 2003. Geospatial investments review. Federal Geographic Data Committee, USGS, Reston, VA.
  
• Mayo, E., 1933. The human problems of an industrial civilization. MacMillan. New York.
  
• OMB, 1973. Report of the Federal Mapping Task Force on Mapping, Charting, Geodesy and Surveying. Washington, DC.
  
• OMB, 2004. Statistical Programs of the United States Government: Fiscal Year 2004.
  
• Science Advisory Board, 1934. Report of the Committee on Mapping Services of the Federal Government. Washington, DC.

Yola Georgiadou is associate professor in the Department for Planning and Geoinformation Management, ITC, The Netherlands. She is a geodetic engineer by training and holds a PhD from the University of Stuttgart.