MalaysiaGIS.com

The nationwide implementation of the National Infrastructure for Land Information System (NaLIS) project will only be completed by 2010, and not earlier as initially planned.

The project, which comes under the Land and Co-operative Development Ministry, is designed to facilitate the sharing of geospatial information (GI) among Government land-related agencies, regardless of physical location and scheme of geographical database, through the NaLIS home page.

According to director-general of the Public Services Department Datuk Jamaluddin Ahmad Damanhuri, the delay in the implementation of the NaLIS project can be attributed to a number of factors, including lack of dedicated manpower and a longer time needed to develop policies, which is necessary for different Government agencies to share and exchange GI.

He said another reason for the delay is that time is needed to address the issue of different computing systems being used, format of data used by various federal and State agencies, and data update.

Jamaluddin was speaking at the launch of the Federal Territory Kuala Lumpur NaLIS in Kuala Lumpur on Monday.

The launch is part of the first phase implementation of NaLIS, which kicked off in 1995, that also includes Sabah. A total of RM10 million was spent in this phase.

The next (second) phase of the NaLIS project will cover Perlis, Malacca, Kedah and the Federal Territory of Labuan.

NaLIS allows land -related agencies to publish their GI in the intranet and hence giving users access to the data. This helps to avoid the cost of producing the geospatial data themselves, and eventually allows analysis of the data to be carried out.

The NaLIS system runs on the GITN network which comprises Windows NT-based systems, Oracle databases and geographic information system technology. Currently, about 50 percent of land-related data needs to be done manually as the data changes over time. Among the NaLIS users are Agriculture Department, Public Works Department, Drainage and Irrigation Department, Minerals and Geoscience Department, Statistics Department and Forestry Department.