During the latter stages of 1997 the Directorate: NSIF decided to form a Sub-directorate: Policies and Standards in an effort to address the vital need for the adoption and adaptation of Standards and Policies in the South African Geo-spatial community.

In the past people or organisations used different methods for acquiring, storing, processing, analysing, and viewing spatial data. Geographic features were classified differently by different organisations. Various standards were used by different organisations and spatial data and information were stored in different formats. Spatial data formats tend to be very complex and proprietary in nature (Depending on the software application). This resulted in the duplication of data capture and cost organisations and the state millions of Rand.

Today, exchanging, sharing and integrating spatial data from various sources has become increasingly important. This is due to the growing environmental concerns and pressures on governments and businesses to perform more efficiently as well as budgetary constraints. It is therefore important to develop a common standard that will facilitate the sharing and exchange of information between the public and the private sectors.

However, developing a common standard alone can not ensure the free flow of information from one organisation to another unless institutional issues are addressed. Access to personal and spatial information depends in law, economics and culture as well as technology. Law and the legal process determine the extent of disclosure or confidentiality of data and information. It is therefore imperative to address institutional issues such as policy development.
  
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Sub-directorate Policies and Standards

The main goals of Policies and Standards can be summarised as follows:

• To oversee the development of policies for data exchange

The activities to achieve this goal include:

• Research into National and International policies

• Drawing up and facilitating of discussion documents and discussions

• The organising of Task Teams and Task Team Co-ordination

• The general overseeing of Policy Implementation

• Research into the effects or impacts of policies

• To oversee the development of Standards of Data Exchange

Activities needed to achieve the development of Data Exchange include:

• Research into National and international Standards

• Identification of the Core data Sets

• Determination of the minimum content of these core data sets

• Feature Classification Systems

• Standards terminology’s

• Compilation of a Data Dictionary

• Facilitating Workshops on ISO documents

Task Teams

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