Congratulations! CGIS-NUR Receives its Second Small Grant Award for 2009/2010 from the Global Spatial Data Infrastructure (GSDI) Association

Congratulations! CGIS-NUR Receives its Second Small Grant Award for 2009/2010 from the Global Spatial Data Infrastructure (GSDI) Association

Title of Project

Development of a Spatial Data Sharing Policy Document

Introduction and Background

Awareness for the use of spatial data in Rwanda is very high as at an increasing rate, various institutions, especially the government ministries are aspiring to use spatial data in their day-to-day activities. Efforts in this direction include having different categories of their staff trained in GIS basics, for example, and producing spatial data relating to their domain of concern. The GIS and Remote Sensing Centre of the National University of Rwanda (CGIS-NUR) has being involved in the production of the majority of spatial datasets existing on Rwanda. Consequently, it sees itself as playing a pivotal role in facilitating having a National Spatial Data Infrastructure in place for Rwanda. As an academic institution, it is acting as a catalyst for SDI cause by providing leadership as far as SDI related expertise is concerned.

Realizing that access to a properly developed metadata cataloging system is the cornerstone of any SDI, the CGIS-NUR implemented a project funded by the Global Spatial Data Infrastructure (GSDI) and the Rwanda Development Gateway Group (RDGG) (see http://www.cgis.nur.ac.rw/geonetwork/srv/en/main.home ). The focus of the project was on spatial data inventory and metadata management for CGIS spatial data holdings. An inventory of existing spatial datasets was conducted and the current state of their metadata was assessed with the aim of improving it. The first-of-its-kind metadata search facility for Rwanda, the Rwanda Metadata Portal (RMP), was used which uses the GeoNetwork opensource platform.

Brief Project Description

The focus of the proposed project is the development of a policy document which will be applicable not only to CGIS-NUR but also other national organisations. Data sharing is very necessary now seeing there is bound to be an increase in the request for spatial datasets from users of the RMP as access is now possible over the internet. Up-till-now, no such policy exist in any organisation in Rwanda and in its absence, it will be difficult to properly respond to such requests. Alongside producing a data sharing document, outreach is planned to ministries, especially to see the gaps in their capability to share the data they produce.

By Gisele