As provided in the Statistics Act, No. 9 of 2011, the NSA is mandated
to establish
the National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) as the national technical and
institutional framework to facilitate the capture, management, maintenance,
integration, distribution and use of spatial data. Spatial data or information is
data that identifies the location of constructed and natural features on Earth
with associated characteristics of such location. Example of spatial data which
are generally found in maps are buildings, boundaries, roads, vegetation, land
use, mineral deposits, etc.
Namibia has taken a simplified strategy to develop a functional NSDI following
international best practices and standards. The strategy comprises four (4) major
components which must be held together by sustainable funding. These components
involve setting up institutional arrangements for developing spatial
information; developing requirements for creating and maintaining spatial
information; setting up mechanisms for making spatial information accessible
and available and; strategic development of technology and applications.
To set up mechanisms for making
spatial information accessible and available, the NSA is developing a national
geographic portal (geoportal) to fulfil the requirements of the Statistics Act
of making spatial data more accessible. Section 47(3) of the Statistics Act
states that the Minister (in Namibia Minister responsible for Statistics
Honouable Tom Alweendo) may establish an electronic metadata catalogue as a
component of the NSDI.
A geoportal is a type of web portal used to find and
access geographic information and associated geographic services using
the Internet. The online system to be hosted at the NSA will derive data
from the various Offices, Ministries and Agencies of government. With this
milestone, the NSA is repositioning itself to be a relevant national central
repository of official statistics as per the Statistics Act.
The NSA is expected to launch the online national portal in August
2017. A national stakeholder appraisal workshop of the map viewer of the portal
system was held in Windhoek on 07 June 2017. More than
15 government agencies appraised and
provided inputs as to the data content of the Portal.
It
is important to note that the usefulness of the portal will heavily depend on
the availability of quality and up-to-date data and continuous maintenance.
Therefore all the responsible government data custodians shall unremittingly be
organised to maintain their datasets that will feed into the national spatial
infrastructure.
