Three Appeals to Joining ICIS

I have been privileged to be part of much recent debate among the GIS and Administrative community of local governments about ICIS and the new Data Sharing and Licensing Agreements. Intuitively, sharing the data we have each assembled makes sense and could be argued to be a “common good”. ICIS was created and exists to share spatial data. What surprises me is that there are still a lot of misconceptions and misunderstanding about ICIS and especially the benefits to local governments, to being part of the society and sharing their spatial data with the society’s membership. To facilitate the broad dialogue here are some three appeals to joining ICIS.

Appeal to the Rationalist:

The primary appeal to rational argument is addressing the five key issues that local governments gave ICIS in 2005. These issues, and their resolution are outlined in the table below.

Local Government Concern / Resolution
Provincial Government “ownership” of the Cadastral Fabric / The Ministry of Agriculture and Lands signed a new DSLA with ICIS in June 2006. In that DSLA, the Ministry signed all title and right of ownership to the Integrated Cadastral Fabric (ICF) over to the Society “in its entirety”. The precise wording of the agreement is on our website.
Download Access to Provincial Government Data / All ICIS members, including local governments, can now download provincial government data sets specified in the provincial DSLA: The Crown Lands Parcels, Administrative Boundary data and TRIM I and TRIM II data are included.
A BCeID is required and ICIS has the authority to grant ICIS members a BCeID to access the provincial government data sets. ICIS and the province are constantly reviewing data sets to see what more can be added to the data available to members.
Improvement in Utility data accuracy / A letter is on our website from the founding and regular members of the utilities shows their commitment to improve the accuracy of their data, relative to the cadastral data they receive from local governments.
Acknowledgement of Maintenance Costs / ICIS is launching a program in 2007 that will provide some funding back to local governments who provide ICIS with a regular, current and accurate set of cadastral data. You MUST BE A MEMBER OF ICIS TO PARTICIPATE IN THE FUNDING PROGRAM. Some concepts on the funding mechanism and principles are contained in our most recent newsletter, available on our website.
Business Rationale for joining ICIS / In addition to all the points listed above, BC Assessment reminds local governments that by providing the cadastral data to ICIS, BC Assessment assessors and administrators can more easily and accurately validate and audit the assessment roll, making it and the resulting tax roll for local governments less susceptible to revisions by appeal. A 1% reduction in appeals in your area is worth membership. (this is an individual choice and perhaps we shouldn’t tell LGs that charge for data that they are failing to recognize the obvious – they simply have a different business model.).

Finally, from a rational perspective, the investment in GIS mapping of the cadastre and even of municipal infrastructure has often been compared to other basic infrastructure and is described as a basic data infrastructure required by local government to carry out their responsibilities . Local governments do not “charge” people to drive their roads or walk on their sidewalks. We don’t stop out-of-town visitors from driving through town and making use of the infrastructure that the local government taxpayers had to pay for, to have a township in the first place. Do we “stop” BC Hydro or Telus, or Shaw or Terasen service trucks from driving the roads in a community to serve their customers – or the RCMP, fire engines or ambulances from neighbouring communities beyond our borders from making use of our road infrastructure to respond to emergencies?

Basic infrastructure is paid for by the taxpayer, developed and maintained and managed by the Custodians of the infrastructure, for the benefit of those taxpayers and society at large. Digital representation of land parcels and local government infrastructure is simply that – a representation of BASIC INFRASTRUCTURE. The rational approach would be to OPTIMIZE the use of that infrastructure for the benefit of the taxpayers and society at large. By sharing your data with other bona fide public – and private sector – organizations through ICIS, a local government is simply optimizing the use of that infrastructure.

Appeal to Politician and Local Government Advocate

The appeal here is a simple one and can be described in one word “union” and one phrase “there is strength in numbers”. The 184 local governments in BC command a tremendous scope of services, budget, human and technical resources. They are a focal point for political interest from their constituents, and are often the springboard for the politically minded who wish to “make a difference” in other levels of government.

Local governments, when acting in unison and in concert can have considerable influence on society, laws, economy and culture. When local governments are fragmented on an issue, stance or motivation, other agencies, levels of government, and influences can take advantage of this fragmentation for their own purposes.

At the time of this writing, ICIS has over 150 of the 184 local governments represented under signature as “members”. But, other factions in government at the provincial or federal level, or large private sector interests, use the inability of local governments to act unilaterally – even in the form of being represented - as a means of leveraging influence away from local governments of the very resources, funds, infrastructure or data, they need to perform their administrative responsibilities.

The need for a province-wide integrated land database has been recognized. This database will be built. The question becomes – Who will build and manage the data? ICIS can be the instrument to make it happen. In the creation of the common database, the opportunity exists for local governments to influence the governance and control decisions. If ICIS is not adopted by the local governments as a voice for the common database, the next initiative may exclude or marginalize the influence of local governments.

If you believe that local governments’ influence should not be marginalized by other agencies, recognize that having ALL local governments as members of ICIS is the one way, at least, to ensure the greatest influence for local governments in the field of spatial data use and expenditures.

And remember, all this influence and it costs nothing for local governments to join the society.

Appeal to the Explorer & Scientist

The last appeal is frankly the one I like the best. If you were to ask me what good can come of having all local government, utility and at some critical provincial government data available in “one place”, through one organization and “portal” – by best answer is “I DON”T KNOW – YET!”. That is, we just don’t know what analyses, what insights into society’s workings and influences, what services can be created and services we can render back to our citizens, until we get all the data in one place and start to use it as a complete resource it to our benefit.

We do have some inklings. The provincial government’s CIO office has modeled a future scenario based on the avian flu outbreak in the FraserValley in 2004. Simply having all the spatial data available in “one place” AT THE TIME of an emergent outbreak, could reasonably be expected to curtail the spread of the outbreak considerably, and shorten the time from initial notice to final containment from several months to mere weeks – or even less.

Having all the spatial data of the province, including infrastructure, available to geomatics programs and researchers in the post secondary education system alone could provide significant benefits, yet unforeseen, to society at large. New data services, new understanding of how urban and rural life is impacted by the geographic location of services, emergencies, industry, infrastructure, land issues, conservation and ecological initiatives, demographic features, etc. –we just don’t know how many uses can be made of the data.

For those who are concerned about such enthusiasm in “unknown and unpredictable outcomes”, keep in mind that all of the data that ICIS hosts has already been collected, has already been paid for by the taxpayer or utility consumer – we are simply enabling and facilitating the USE, the SHARING of that information by bona fide organizations among us, and NO PERSONAL data is distributed to ICIS from its members. The collected data available to ICIS members represents several hundred million dollars of sunk cost in GIS and digital mapping resource. The ability to tap that resource is like setting foot on a new continent or on the foot of a mountain – the possible horizons just cannot be seen from where we are – but they will never be reached at all if the assembled data is not easily accessible by the best and brightest of us.

It is interesting to see how something like Google Earthc has caught on and is used by many people in applications that were not contemplated when the maps were being assembled. ICIS can have this same influence in British Columbia.

ICIS makes sense from the perspective of saving time, optimizing human and data resources worth hundreds of millions of dollars. ICIS provides local governments with an opportunity to leverage their influence with industry and the provincial government in a solid, uniform block. And ICIS provides the opportunity for individuals and organizations alike to “think beyond the box” to create new services, new data products, and new insights into our selves, that cannot be attained without those assembled resources and committed will.

Join ICIS and be part of something bigger than yourself!

Pete Flagg,

General Manager

Integrated Cadastral Information Society