Chile: Open Standards, Open Source, and Open Data

17 November 2009 Geoff Zeiss

I have been in Chile most of last week in Santiago, where I gave a presentation at the International Cartographic Conference (ICC 2009).  This is my first time in Chile, and I am extremely impressed by the natural environment, the Andes on one side and the Pacific Ocean on the other, and secondly by the quality of the infrastructure, especially the electric power network, I have seen here in Santiago.

SNIT_logo_home_0 I have had the opportunity to visit several government and commercial sites.  One in particular I found particularly interesting. I met Ivan Alonso Lienlaf Nova of SNIT (Sistema Nacional de Coordination de Informacion Territorial), which is a federal government organization that was created in 2006 to coordinate geospatial data among eleven ministries of the federal government.  From a technical perspective they have created a data catalog for all government geospatial data.  The national catalog currently contains metadata and references for 10 000 geospatial
products in diverse areas such as agriculture, biology, administrative
boundaries, roads, educational institutions, and cadastre.  SNIT is reaching out to other non-government sectors as well, including private companies and universities.

Open Standards

SNIT supports open standards including OGC and ISO standards, and in particular the ISO 19115 and 19139 standards for metadata. 

Open Source

GeoNodo is SNIT’s web-based application portal, that is designed to allow developers to build web-based applications for accessing the SNIT metadata catalog and indirectly government geospatial data.  GeoNodo is based on
open source geospatial tools,  MapServer, PostGIS, and Apache. The Regional Government of the Region del Los Rios has developed a web site using GeoNodo.

Open Data

Chile’s freedom of Information bill was passed in 2008, after a decade long campaign by Proacceso,
Chile’s right-to-know movement.  Ivan Alonso was optimistic that the bill will result in free and open access to government geospatial data, perhaps in a similar way to the November, 2008 decree published in Brazil that established the principle that federal government geospatial data should be made available without cost to Brazilian citizens.

Geoff Zeiss

Geoff Zeiss

Geoff Zeiss has more than 20 years experience in the geospatial software industry and 15 years experience developing enterprise geospatial solutions for the utilities, communications, and public works industries. His particular interests include the convergence of BIM, CAD, geospatial, and 3D. In recognition of his efforts to evangelize geospatial in vertical industries such as utilities and construction, Geoff received the Geospatial Ambassador Award at Geospatial World Forum 2014. Currently Geoff is Principal at Between the Poles, a thought leadership consulting firm. From 2001 to 2012 Geoff was Director of Utility Industry Program at Autodesk Inc, where he was responsible for thought leadership for the utility industry program. From 1999 to 2001 he was Director of Enterprise Software Development at Autodesk. He received one of ten annual global technology awards in 2004 from Oracle Corporation for technical innovation and leadership in the use of Oracle. Prior to Autodesk Geoff was Director of Product Development at VISION* Solutions. VISION* Solutions is credited with pioneering relational spatial data management, CAD/GIS integration, and long transactions (data versioning) in the utility, communications, and public works industries. Geoff is a frequent speaker at geospatial and utility events around the world including Geospatial World Forum, Where 2.0, MundoGeo Connect (Brazil), Middle East Spatial Geospatial Forum, India Geospatial Forum, Location Intelligence, Asia Geospatial Forum, and GITA events in US, Japan and Australia. Geoff received Speaker Excellence Awards at GITA 2007-2009.

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