GeoPortalNetwork: More process catalyst than project

Narrating national geo information infrastructures: Balancing infrastructures and innovation

This paper examines narratives relating to the development of National Geo Information Infrastructures (NGII) in eth-nographic research on a Dutch NGII project which was monitored throughout its course. We used an approach which focuses on narratives concerning the environment, groups and practice to elicit sense-making processes. We assert that...

Building a NGII: Balancing between infrastructure and innovation

A multitude of studies has been published on how National Geo Information Infrastructures (NGII), also known as Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI), should be designed, set up and monitored. Scientific research on day-to-day experiences, on what is really happening in NGIIprojects is hard to find. We propose a narrative approach to elicit...

Balancing Infrastructure and Innovation in Geoinformation-infrastructure projects

Spatial information is increasingly exchanged between organizations within a National Geo Information Infrastructure (NGII). While a lot has been written on implementation strategies, yet little is known what really goes on in concrete projects. In this paper an ethnography is presented based on a narrative approach of a Dutch project, in which...

Building geoinformation-infrastructures: Utopian and Myoptian storyboards regulating the narrative anchor

Implementation processes of geoinformation-infrastructures are generally seen as problematic and unsuccessful. Implementers are inclined to value organisational aspects of NGII development using design rules, borrowed from political science, economics and management science. A big gap exists between on the one hand the wish to implement SDIs...

The narrative anchor as the decisive element of geoinformation infrastructures

Efforts to build a geoinformation infrastructure using technological innovations have not always been succesful, at times they even can be problematic. In this paper three Spatial Data Infrastructure- (SDI-initiatives are being compared, trying to explain succes and failure by giving an ethnography of everyday practice regarding creation,...

Taming Technology: The narrative anchor reconciling time, territory and technology in geoinformation infrastructures

It is often assumed that innovative technology is an essential resource for the establishment of an information infrastructure. This study on geoinformation infrastructures convincingly demonstrates that technology is an important and far more complex factor than much geoinformation practitioners want us to believe. Three Dutch cases were...

Thinking in circles: How national geo-information infrastructures cannot escape from the temptation of technology

The social construction of public infrastructure

Disclosure of governmental map related information is increasingly being conceptualised as management of inter-organisational National Spatial Data Infrastructures (NSDIs). Until now, studies have been published on how NSDI projects should be designed, set up and monitored. While these approaches have gained some recognition when applied in...