Last Friday I was fortunate to attend several very interesting presentations at MapAsia 2006 in Bangkok. Among them was a presentation by Abdul Ghapar Othman and Kausar Hj Ali from the School of Housing, Building and Planning, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang, Malaysia about PEGIS, which is a GIS developed by the government of Penang State. To me it was interesting because Mr. Othman outlined a fairly typical evolution from an expensive, complex GIS requiring high end work stations and experts and focussed on producing printed maps to a modern web-based geospatial server that anyone with a web browser can use for manipulating geospatial information.
Background
PEGIS was established in 1992 and was the first statewide GIS in Malaysia. It started as a two-year pilot project, and was designed to address issues arising from land scarcity, rapid land development, and increasing demand for land related data from the public and private sectors. The objectives were to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of data management, develop an automated tool for spatial database development and the dissemination of data and to translate various social, economic and infrastructure plans into action plans, and to improve the decision making process.
Traditional GIS
It started as a two-years pilot project managed by the ECS Consortium and Universiti Sains Malaysia. The study area consisted of some 74 sq km on the mainland, for which over 30,000 land parcels were digitized. Access to the the PEGIS database was restricted to government agencies. It contained information such as cadastral map/cadastral sheet index, land use, vegetation, soil types, hydrography, zoning, demographics, but also infrastructure including electricity, telecommunication, transportation, sewer, and water networks and buildings.
The implementation was a traditional GIS using ArcInfo on HP workstations running HP-UX with peripherals such as digitizers and electrostatic plotters. By the end of 1994, the project was successfully implemented and handed over to the Penang State Government. The key success factors were strong support from the State Administrator and good cooperation among government agencies.
In the succeeding years 1994-1999, the project was extended to include all of Penang State. The database for the entire state was completed in 1999. It is interesting that the concept of centralized data was not favored by most data providers, and data providers continued to create, maintain and populate their own data.
Although PEGIS was successful in achieving its immediate goals, several issues became apparent.
First, users had to come to the PEGIS Centre which severely restricted access to PEGIS. Secondly, data dissemination was in the form of hard-copy maps only and printing costs were substantial, US$14 per A0 map just for ink and paper not including labour costs. Map preparation using Arcplot-UX was not user friendly so the people who could use the system productively was restricted. The process for requesting maps was highly bureaucratic. In addition, PEGIS staff often had to work under intense pressure to respond to requests from the state legislature that bypassed the standard map request procedure. The cost of setting up a "GIS terminal" was high, starting at US$30,000 for a PC, A0 color plotter, A0 digitizer and GIS software. It cost more if networked with the PEGIS database (UNIX OS). This was a severe financial limitation for most local governments. Another problem was the limited awareness and understanding among government officers of GIS. As was typical of Unix-based GIS's at the time ArcInfo-UX was not user friendly which meant that it was difficult for a non-GIS educated user to grasp, so in essence it required a GIS professional.
Web Mapping
The Penang State Government began adopting Internet access in 1997. Network and computer
infrastructures and computer facilities were upgraded and by year 2000, all government agencies were equipped with Internet lines.
By 1999 a web mapping application (using Autodesk MapGuide) had been developed and launched. In a nutshell the advantages of web mapping were several; it provided users with low cost access to the PEGIS database, it was accessible to any user with Internet access, and it took less than 15 minutes for users to become familiar with the application.
Web mapping solved major problems that had been identified with the traditional approach to GIS. First of all, users didn't need to be GIS professionals familiar with how to use a traditional GIS. They simply needed to be familiar with the operation of a web browser. Secondly, they didn't need to come to the PEGIS Centre, all that was required was Internet access. Thirdly, printing costs were dramatically less. In fact, users often didn't even
need to produce paper maps. The cost of setting up a "GIS terminal" were reduced to the cost of simply setting up a PC with a web
browser and Internet access.
From the perspective of improving government efficiency, web mapping has meant that the cumbersome bureaucratic procedures for requesting maps were no longer required.
Finally and perhaps most importantly from the perspective of improving governance, web mapping has broadening access to the PEGIS to include the public. Although initially it was targetted on internal government users, web mapping turned out to be so successful in enabling users with no IT or GIS skills to manipulate PEGIS data , that limited access for the public has now been implemented.
In summary, web mapping has meant that the number of users who have access to PEGIS data has been dramatically broadened, the cost of providing access to PEGIS data has been reduced, and a foundation has been built for open government, for providing transparent access to land data and land management processes.
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