ConsultingWhere Wins NSDI Contract for IGIF Support

Norway's national mapping agency has contracted the UK's ConsultingWhere to accelerate NSDI development in Georgia, Moldova, Kyrgyzstan and Ukraine using the IGIF.

ConsultingWhere, a UK-based geospatial consultancy company, secured the contract with Norway's national mapping agency (Statens Kartverk) through a competitive tendering process, to provide support in the development of long-term implementation plans for National Spatial Data Infrastructures (NSDIs) to four of Norway's cooperation partners.

The objective of the contract is to accelerate NSDI development in Georgia, Moldova, Kyrgyzstan and Ukraine using the jointly developed and newly approved United Nations and World Bank Integrated Geospatial Information Framework (IGIF). The project will be delivered remotely by the ConsultingWhere team working with cooperation partners and local consultants over the remainder of 2021.

Geospatial information to realize socio-economic benefits

Kåre Kyrkjeeide, director of international services at Statens Kartverk, commented: “We look forward to a successful collaboration with ConsultingWhere that will be of great importance for the institutions/countries involved and in addition contribute to the implementation and further development of IGIF.”

Andrew Coote, chief executive of ConsultingWhere, added: “As the world emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic, there is a great opportunity to help countries realize significant socio-economic benefits by integrating national geospatial information into digital transformation, land reform, disaster risk management and other national strategic policies and priorities.”

About the Implementation Methodology

The IGIF is intended to take the concept of a National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) beyond a focus on technology and data by considering governance, policy, financial, innovation, human capacity, and communications perspectives. The image illustrates the methodology used by the World Bank to operationalize and implement the IGIF.

The symbology shows the analytical tools (in orange), key inputs (in blue), important information flows (arrows) and outcomes (in green).

Summarizing, this methodology is applied as follows:

Step 1: Baseline Assessment

A single integrated tool is used for this purpose:

Analytical Tool 1 - Current State Diagnostic: this provides an assessment of the current state of geospatial information and spatial infrastructure in the country. A Baseline report is produced to summarize the results.

Step 2: Impact Assessment and Action Plan

Three tools are used to build a prioritized, cost-justified roadmap for the SDI:

Analytical Tool 2.1 – Strategic Alignment to Government Policy Drivers: this tool is used to relate Government’s strategic objectives and international commitments to specific geospatial use cases and prioritize them based on how they support and accelerate achieving these objectives.

Analytical Tool 2.2 - NSDI Socio-economic Impact Assessment: this tool delivers an assessment of the business case (justification) for investment in SDI from both qualitative and quantitative perspectives.

Analytical Tool 2.3 - Country Action Plan: builds on the previous deliverables to create a costed roadmap for SDI enhancements, presented as a series of interdependent policy interventions and implementation projects.

Step 3: Investment and Implementation

Once the Action Plan is approved in terms of scope and priorities, then work will commence to identify sources of funding and create a sustainable business model for the SDI with Key Performance Indicators.