Question NW1517 to the Minister of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development

Reply:

a) The Department of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development (DALRRD) has undertaken the following with regard to the implementation of the Spatial Data Infrastructure Act (Act 54 of 2003):

(i) The Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) Act was assented on 28 January 2004 as Act 54 of 2003 (Gazette No. 25973 published 4 April 2004).

(ii) The operationalization of the SDI Act was done in phases. This was to ensure that systems and processes are in place to avoid legal liabilities.

(iii) SDI Act sections 1-11, 13, 19-22 commenced 28 April 2006 (Gazette No. 28788 published 28 April 2006). Remainder of sections 12, 14 to 18 of the SDI Act came into operation on the 23rd of April 2015 (Gazette No. 38822 published 29 May 2015).

(iv) Regulations for section 5 were published to allow the Minister to call for nomination of the Committee for Spatial Information (CSI) (Gazette No. 29134 published 25 August 2006). The first CSI was appointed in June 2010.

(v) The second CSI was appointed in May 2016. Its term was extended until end of May 2020. The Department will soon release a call for nomination for the third CSI.

(vi) The Department published the Base Data Set Custodianship Policy and the Policy on the pricing of spatial information products and services as national policies for SASDI in 2015 (Gazette No. 38474 published 16 February 2015).

(vii) The SDI Regulations and the National Land Cover Standard documents were published in 2017 (Gazette No. 41203 published 27 October 2017 and Gazette No. 40919 published 15 June 2017 respectively).

(viii) With the assistance of the CSI, the Department has rolled out the implementation of the prioritized ten base data set themes. The themes include inter alia; the Administrative boundaries, Imagery, Geodesy, Land Cover, Land Use, Hydrology, Transport, Conservation, Social statistics and Cadastre, (please refer to Annexure A for more details). To date, the CSI has appointed 10 base data set coordinators who continuously contribute to the delivery of base data sets for the themes allocated for.

(ix) The CSI is currently reviewing the list of the themes to align with the fourteen Global Fundamental Geospatial Data Theme of the United Nations Global Geospatial Information Management (UN-GGIM) as adopted in 2018.

b) The Directorate: National Spatial Information Framework (NSIF) which is responsible for providing administrative support has a budget allocation of R5, 023, 000 for compensation of employees and other related support for the implementation of the Act.

c) Currently the Department has not quantified the savings with regard to the monitoring of spatial information contracts across the different departments and spheres of government. The compliance with Regulation 5 of the Act is still very minimal. Organs of state still continue to embark on exercises to capture spatial data and/or information without receiving the necessary permission from the CSI as required in terms of Regulation 5. As a result, the Department together with the CSI is engaging National Treasury to develop a cost-saving model that will be achieved by implementation of Regulation 5.