ITOCHU Corporation and NTT DATA Corporation have received a contract for a project to create the National Geo-spatial Data Infrastructure Networking System from the Indonesian National Coordination Agency for Surveys and Mapping, known as “BAKOSURTANAL.”
This system has been developed to enable Indonesian government agencies to manage natural resources, social infrastructure, regional development plans and so on, and will allow multiple government agencies to share spatial data to make administrative work more efficient and more sophisticated. Work on creating the system is scheduled to start in January 2011, with operations commencing in May 2013.

Background

As Indonesia undergoes remarkable economic development, government agencies and research institutions are rapidly upgrading national spatial data, with the objective of managing natural resources, social infrastructure (such as roads), regional development plans and so on. On the other hand, this national spatial data is not being shared efficiently, and so avoiding the duplication of work and investment has become an important issue. This was the background to the decision by BAKOSURTANAL (the National Coordination Agency for Surveys and Mapping) to create this system, in order to make administrative activities that involve the use of national spatial data more efficient and more sophisticated.
This kind of initiative is underway in a number of countries, under the concept of “National Spatial Data Infrastructure” (NSDI). In Japan such initiatives began in earnest in 2007 with the Basic Act on the Advancement of Utilizing Geospatial Information (otherwise known as the NSDI Act).

Sequence of events

This project is to create a network system as part of the National Spatial Data Infrastructure Development Project that was approved as an ODA project by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) on March 29, 2007. NTT DATA and ITOCHU Corporation worked together to plan their bid for this project as a joint operation. The contract was concluded on December 6, 2010, with the project starting formally on December 15 following approval by JICA. NTT DATA will be responsible for overall project management and system development, while ITOCHU Corporation will be in charge of administrative work such as collecting fee payments.
In the past, NTT DATA has been involved with numerous systems that use Geographic Information Systems (GIS), which is one of the technical elements of this project. A key factor in the decision to award the contract was NTT DATA’s experience and expertise in creating this kind of GIS system, as well as their expertise in creating projects that involve large-scale systems.

Project overview

Objective
　　The objective of this project is to create a mechanism for managing national spatial data continuously and efficiently for the entire Indonesian government. This includes strengthening the center for managing national spatial data held by the BAKOSURTANAL and providing training on data management methods to the government agencies that deal with national spatial data, as well as the key work of creating the network system.
System users
In addition to the BAKOSURTANAL, this system will be used by ten government agencies that use national spatial data as part of their work. The system will also be created as an open system that will be made freely available to general users via the Internet.
System functions
　　The system will provide users with the following kinds of functions:
　　　　・A function for registering national spatial data with the system
　　　　・A function for finding and downloading national spatial data that has been registered on the system, based on search conditions specified by users (searching by map locations, the institution that created the data, the date when the data was created, and so on)
　　　　・A function for charging fees based on the content of the national spatial data downloaded and the number of downloads.
　　　　・A function for managing each item of national spatial data based on its disclosure level (such as publicly available, internally available, not available)

Future developments

This will be the first time that NTT DATA has created a system for the Indonesian government, and NTT DATA plans to actively submit proposals to the Indonesian government for Geographic Information System (GIS) applications based on the infrastructure provided by this system. There is also an increasing need in many countries to improve systems for sharing national spatial data, and NTT DATA also plans to take advantage of the expertise and achievements from this initiative for the Indonesian government to laterally expand solutions for other countries in South East Asia.
ITOCHU Corporation will also actively work towards infrastructure development projects in various countries, as developing nations in Asia continue to show strong economic growth.

• The National Geo-Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) Development Project : Component 2-(1): Development of NSDI Networking System (JICA Loan No. IP-544)