A bill to establish a National Geospatial Data Authority would be introduced in the budget session of Parliament, Union Minister of Science and Technology Kapil Sibal announced here on Tuesday.
The bill was being discussed at inter-ministerial meetings and would be introduced once the Cabinet approved it, he told reporters after inaugurating a four-day meet of Geospatial World Forum, 2011.
Geospatial technology was a priority area. It was a powerful tool that ‘rationalises and contextualises information,' he pointed out.
Mr. Sibal said the proposed Authority would facilitate the setting up of an independent regulator for issuing licenses and regulating the activities of the geospatial sector. The Survey of India had embarked on a project of creating a national topographic database on a 1: 10,000 scale for rural areas. Simultaneously, the project would generate 1:2,000 scale maps for 800 cities and 1: 1,000 scale maps for metros. The exercise, to be taken in a public-private partnership mode, would be completed in three years.
The Minister declined to answer any question on the 2G spectrum allocation scam. He said the four round-tables on telecom policy would end in three to four weeks.
Earlier, addressing the delegates at the Forum, he said the geospatial technology was not an end in itself. It was an enabler meant for public welfare. Subject to meeting security concerns, he said, the Government of India believed that 75 to 90 per cent information could be put in the public domain.
The former chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation, K. Kasturirangan, said the Planning Commission was thinking of establishing a National Geographic Information System (GIS) System to synergise geospatial data and provide a seamless system to aid planning process. A committee was looking into building geospatial capacities at the school, university, higher education and research levels to create awareness on GIS.
Secretary in the Ministry of Earth Sciences Shailesh Nayak and Emeritus Professor Fraser Taylor, Chairman of the United Nations International Steering Committee for Global Mapping (ISCGM), spoke.
Earlier, Mr. Sibal gave away the Lifetime Achievement award of the Forum to Dr. Kasturirangan.
The other organisations/ individuals to receive GIS Development awards are: Premier Mapping Agency: Natural Resources, Canada; Education/ Capacity Building for geospatial technology: Department of Geography at the University of California; Geospatial Personality of the decade: Vanessa Lawrence CB, Director General and Chief Executive, Ordnance Survey, United Kingdom; Leading Professional Society: International Cartographic Association and World Leaders in Geospatial Technology: Rolta Group.
