18 August 2011— GeoSpace, a portal for government agencies to share and access geospatial data, has won recognition internationally since it was launched in April 2011 by the Singapore Land Authority (SLA). In the most recent MIS Asia IT Excellence Awards held in August 2011 in Singapore, SLA picked up an award in the Best Business Enabler category for bringing in true business enablement, efficiencies in work processes and showing potential for further growth. Earlier last month, the same inter-agency project swept up the Special Achievement in Geographical Information System (GIS) Award at the Esri International User Conference 2011 held in July in San Diego, California.

Best Business Enabler

2. GeoSpace emerged as one of the top six winning organizations out of 21 shortlisted finalists from the public and private sectors from diverse industries such as banking and financial services, construction, education, energy & utilities, government, information and communications, logistics, manufacturing, oil & gas, public transport and health care across Asia. The MIS Asia IT Excellence Awards are given out annually to acknowledge and recognize the high quality of IT management practice and of the overall professionalism of enterprise IT in Asia.

3. In the Best Business Enabler category, GeoSpace impressed the judges as it unlocked the vast potential of public sector data and allowed public agencies to share, discover and access spatial data in an efficient and flexible way, bringing the benefits of technology to a new level.

Special Achievement for vision, leadership and innovation

4. SLA was selected from more than 300,000 organizations worldwide to receive the SAG Award for its vision, leadership and innovative use of Esri's GIS technology in creating and implementing the GeoSpace portal. More than 30 public agencies had contributed over 300 layers of data for sharing in GeoSpace. The types of data shared include geo-coded addresses, buildings, roads, transportation, environment, administrative boundaries and environmental health data.

5. Ng Siau Yong, Director, GeoSpatial Division of SLA, said “It is an honour for SLA to receive the awards from MIS Asia and Esri. With the roll out of GeoSpace under the SG-SPACE umbrella, we are a step closer to achieving our vision of becoming a spatially-enabled nation.”

A national spatial data infrastructure initiative

6. GeoSpace, one of the major projects under the Singapore government Singapore Geospatial Collaborative Environment (SG-SPACE) initiative, serves as a data clearinghouse and forms the backbone of SG-SPACE, Singapore’s national spatial data infrastructure initiative. Started in 2007 and jointly spearheaded by SLA and the Infocomm Development Authority (IDA), the goal of SG-SPACE is to unlock the potential of public sector geospatial information for better decision making and for the creation of innovative applications not just within the public sector, but in collaboration with the private sector and the community.

International recognition for whole- of- government spatial data initiative

7. The SG-SPACE initiative also won the Singapore government Esri’s Enterprise GIS Award 2011, presented each year by Esri to an organisation that give GIS a wide reach. SG-SPACE was help up as an excellent example of an initiative where geographical information created and owned by various government agencies is shared and used by other government agencies through a collaborative framework.

8. Major strides have been made by SG-SPACE since it was first implemented with the launch of GeoSpace and OneMap, a common map platform where government spatial information and location-based services are shared with the public. Collectively, GeoSpace and OneMap anchor Singapore’s efforts to promote the use of GIS and geospatial information in policy-making and help to create a more spatially-aware citizenry.

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About SLA

The Singapore Land Authority (SLA) is a statutory board with the Ministry of Law. Its mission is to optimise land resources for the economic and social development of Singapore. SLA is a key agency in a whole-of-government effort to establish a national spatial data infrastructure and spearhead the development of the use of geospatial information. It also manages the land data repository which facilitates data exchange among public agencies. As the custodian of 14,000 ha of state land and 5,000 state properties, SLA oversees land sales, leases, acquisitions and allocation, developing and marketing land-related information, and maintaining the national land information database through digitised land information services. SLA also functions as the national land registration authority for property transactions, and manages and maintains the national land survey system.