Management of Geo-information in Organisations
The course tries to raise the awareness of how geo-information should be organized and promoted in the real world. It emphasizes on why geo-information should be used and how that is possible. The course relates to Module 4, although in this case geo-information is embedded in an organization; it is business driven rather than project driven. The course comes with many deadlines and thus simulates real world business.
Themes 
- GI as department in organizations
- Managerial aspects of GI
- Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI)
- Policies, legal and jurisdictional issues
Course objectives
The student will be able to:
- Remember key GI-organisations, their differences, their roles and their scale level of application.
- Remember and understand the principles of management science and management information sciences and apply the organisational resources (Software, Hardware, ‘Humanware’, ‘Dataware’ and ‘Orgware’) to GIorganisations.
- Understand the concepts, processes and main components of spatial data infrastructures and their requirements to support data sharing between GIorganisations.
- Apply the main methods and tools for organisation (infrastructure) planning, development and management through the application of a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats), and a cost-benefit analysis.
- Evaluate the existing management of GI of an organisation.
- Create and present a business plan for the management of a GI-organisation.
Content
The main objective is to be able to write for a specific GI-organisation a management strategy (business) plan that focuses mainly on the incorporation of SDI-facilities to improve the data sharing between organisations, based on internal resources and external conditions using business methods and tools for organisation (infrastructure) planning, development and management.
The module deals with several types of GI-organisations, which differ in role (governmental vs. industrial; GI-Producer vs. GI-User oriented) and scale (Global, Regional, National, State, Local and Corporate). When planning, developing and managing a suitable environment for a specific GI-organisation, GI-managers should focus on several organisation-internal resources (hardware, software, humanware, dataware and orgware) and on several external conditions, such as legal, cultural, technological, economic and institutional aspects. Special emphasis is put on spatial data infrastructures, intented to improve and to support data management. To support the decisions made, several business methods and tools exist for organisation planning, development and management. Application of these knowledge and methods/tools in a management strategy (business) plan is core business of this module, so that GI-managers are able to make efficient use of available (desired) resources.
The course is split in five parts:
- Concepts of GI-organizations
- GI-Organization development and management aspects
- SDI-Concepts/Nature and hierarchy
- SDI-Components (technical components)
- Application (Creation) of SDI-GI-Organization integration
Type of education
This distance learning module will include:
- Lectures
- Distance learning
- Writing of business plan
- Literature research
- Supervisor discussions
- Distance presentations
- Presentation
- Evaluation
Assessment
- – Individual (sub) case presentations, attendance all group members required
- – Individual exercise (Statement Explanation)
- – Individual SWOT Analysis
- – Group’s management strategy (business) plan
- – Individual exam
Literature
- Reeve, D. & J. Petch (1999), GIS Organisations and People, A sociotechnical Approach. GIS for beginners. London: Taylor & Francis.
- Further to be announced in the description of this course module
Entry requirements
Letter of acceptance of the master programme Geographical Information Management and Applications.