Singapore, 10 February 2009 - The Singapore Government has embarked on its National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) initiative, announced chief executive of Singapore Land Authority (SLA), Mr Lam Joon Khoi, in his keynote speech at the ESRI User Conference 2009 held in Singapore from 20-21 January 2009.

2 The S$12-million initiative, named the Singapore Geospatial Collaborative Environment, or SG-SPACE, started in April 2008, and aims to provide an infrastructure, mechanism and policies to allow convenient access to quality geospatial information in usable form.

3 Jointly spearheaded by the Ministry of Law/SLA and Ministry of Information, Communication and the Arts/Infocomm Development Authority (IDA) of Singapore, the national initiative has received a development fund of $12 million over 3 years. The key deliverables of SG-SPACE include data, policies, institutional arrangements, standards, clearinghouse and applications.

4 In the keynote speech, Mr Lam also pointed out two major challenges of establishing a successful NSDI - Getting good authoritative data, and convincing decision makers to invest in geospatial applications and information. He highlighted the importance of creating a transparent and collaborative environment to give confidence to data owners to share their data, and to reap its benefits.

5 SLA hosted a breakfast talk for more than 40 top government officials and public agencies’ CEOs, CTOs and CIOs in conjunction with the ESRI Conference on 21 January at the NUSS Guild House at Suntec City, to gain more insights on GIS from a world-renowned professional in the GIS industry, Mr Jack Dangermond, President of ESRI.

6 Mr Dangermond shared the importance of establishing a spatially-enabled government to bring about many benefits in time and money, data accuracy, revenue generation and decision-making. While many agencies have integrated GIS into their work process, GIS has yet to become an integral part of it. Therefore, getting local public agencies more acquainted with the benefits of GIS and establishing an NSDI in Singapore is imperative to the success of SG-SPACE, he said.

7 The SG-SPACE committees have already started work on several pilot projects to engage the agencies that plan to adopt spatial information in their decision making and service delivery. They include the integration and discovery of potential applications of different type of data, eg. business data, people data and property data from different agencies, exploration of spatial analysis tools for public health policy planning, and spatially-enabling business data to make them available for business profiling for a wide variety of applications.

8 SG-SPACE aims to establish an interim clearinghouse by April 2009. Also to be completed by the same period are the framework on policies and standards for key datasets established, development of demonstrative applications and the strategy plan for communications and training. Eventually, SG-SPACE hopes to contribute significantly to achieving Integrated Government outcomes, and avoid duplications of efforts and addressing gaps, with the help of all stakeholders.

Issued by:
Singapore Land Authority (SLA)

Annex A: Screenshot of SG-SPACE
Annex B: Keynote address by SLA Chief Executive, Mr Lam Joon Khoi, at the ESRI User Conference 2009

About SLA
The Singapore Land Authority (SLA) is responsible for the administration and management of State land and properties. It is also the national land registration and land boundary survey authority.

SLA’s Land Information Centre (LIC) manages a land data repository and data exchange among public agencies. SLA also licenses land data for both online and printed street maps. It is also a key agency in a whole-of-government effort to establish a national spatial data infrastructure. Digitized information on Singapore's roads and MRT networks, properties boundary, outlines of public housing and industrial buildings are collated in Singapore's Land Data Hub. The digitised land information is disseminated to the public through the following services.

SLA provides free online map services at http://www.map.gov.sg/ for the general public. Such free services include street maps, State land ownership searches, and wireless hotspots searches.

SLA’s Integrated Land Information Service (INLIS) provides a one-stop internet portal which gives information on land matters such as road line plans, survey plans, and boundaries of properties. In addition, INLIS also provides information on property such as ownership of property, property transaction history, primary school listing and surrounding amenities.

For more corporate information, visit www.sla.gov.sg.