Multi-headed Dragons - Part II

In my previous post I talked about how the Provincial government handles coming up with a common policy direction by being process driven and how problematic this can be within the ICIS family. I also noted that the Provincial government is a complex creature that requires a large degree of process to actually get anything done - all be it slowly. In the end, the Provincial government does have some mechanism to speak with one voice - this is not the case for local government.

Notwithstanding the Union of BC Municipalities which is supposed to be the coordinated voice of local government in BC, rare is it that local governments can work out a process to agree on policy direction. The autonomous nature of local government means often that 187 (and counting) local governments will yield 187 different opinions on how an issue should be handled.

There is a real practical impact to ICIS with respect to the diversity of approaches from local government. ICIS, being a data sharing organization, functions best when the data it receives is standardized. Standardized data fits with other data and is easily shareable between different agencies. Since the primary data collection and maintenance agency for cadastral data in BC are municipalities and there are no standards for mapping this data by local governments you end up with potentially 187 different mapping standards.

The tragedy, from a data sharing perspective, is that there is no real business need for a local government to have a mapping standard that satisfies any other need than for its own purposes. Consequently, any effort to standardize data by an outside agency would be met with skepticism at best or outright condemnation by a local government. In fact, this rational has been used by local governments for not participating in ICIS in the first place: "if it doesn't benefit me why would I play?"

The lack of process on the part of local government is frustrating, to say the least, from a Provincial Government perspective. Their needs span jurisdictional boundaries and require a high degree of integration to function. This is difficult, if not impossible, to achieve without a high degree of process and standardization that is often not present in local government other than the very large cities (and even they are not consistent). Is it any wonder that the Province and local governments often find it hard to relate to one another.

Up next. . . the utility companies.