GSDI - The Way Forward to 2020

On 9 October 2014, the GSDI Association Board adopted a new GSDI Strategy and Strategic Plan 2015-2020, focusing on activities in five areas:

• SDI capacity building

• raising  awareness of SDI challenges for implementers, users and beneficiaries of SDIs

• sponsoring research into SDI issues

• dropping the IGS ‘brand’ to create an all-inclusive membership association

• streamlining the infrastructure and administration of the Association.

Capacity Building

The Association’s current capacity-building work focuses on the following:

• The GSDI Small Grants Program, which sponsors workshops, seminars and projects mainly in developing nations, with support from URISA’s GISCorps

• The GSDI SDI Cookbook and various publications, which provide guidelines for implementing SDIs

• Targeted training activities, such as the two-week GIS training offered free of charge to selected GSDI members in Taipei each year

• Information on webinars related to SDIs, from both member and non-member resources

• Reports and studies related to SDI, in the GI Knowledge Network spatial documents depot

• The Community Registry, which includes details of more than 700 industry professionals and organisations, to offer wide networking opportunities.

Raising Awareness

The Association publishes the monthly GSDI SDI Regional Newsletter, with global coverage of SDI-related news, and the GSDI Global Newsletter covering member activities. It maintains an extensive online calendar of events, and news items are posted almost daily to the GSDI website. GSDI officers and members also regularly participate in conferences and meetings around the globe.

SDI Research

GSDI World Conferences are drivers for professionals globally to focus on research relating to SDI. Since 1996, 14 conferences have been held and GSDI 15 is scheduled for the first quarter of 2016. All conference proceedings are available online as open access documents. In 2015, the Association will introduce ‘SDI White Papers’, the first of which will be an analytical comparison of SDI best practices from regions around the globe. The final report will be available to members, the wider community, and the UN-GGIM initiative, as partial fulfilment of the Association’s responsibilities under its special consultative status with the UN.

GSDI as an All-inclusive Organisation

The Association’s Bylaws initially provided for membership for organisations only. In 2009, the Association opened membership to individuals, creating the International Geospatial Society (IGS) as a separate ‘brand’ within the Association. In order to reduce confusion among current members, sponsors and the geocommunity, from 2015 GSDI will drop ‘IGS’ as a separate name, while reaffirming to all individual members that they are, and always have been, Association members and will continue to enjoy the membership rights and privileges. The Association will also be seeking members from outside the usual geocommunity.

Streamlining the Infrastructure

From 2015, the GSDI Board will be reduced to enable it to react more quickly in providing guidance to GSDI’s officers. Committees will be replaced by projects, with targeted deliverables and named project leaders, to deliver tangible benefits to members and the geocommunity. The goal is to permit more resources to be used in producing meaningful member benefits, more easily and more efficiently.