Land information systems and the policy process

There is a commonly held belief in the land information systems community that there is a strong causal link between the availability of reliable, consistent information and effective decision making processes; that the quality of this information bears directly on the quality of decision making and that the application of land information system based techniques to the policy process effecting the planning and management of land is superior, and somehow more proper than the normal social and political processes used to resolve such issues. These assumptions are questioned. The thesis suggests that there is little evidence to support these beliefs, that the benefits land information systems are delivering at the administrative and management levels are not extendable, except marginally, to the public decision making arena. It moves on to show that the structure and functionality of land information systems will need to be extensively modified and extended if these systems are to make a contribution to the policy process, as the land information system community believes it should. To defend this thesis, both land information systems and the policy and problem solving processes are examined from an information utilisation perspective. Firstly, the structure and operation of land information systems are reviewed in this light, as is the origin of the link between these systems and the planning and policy processes. Having established this nexus, the problem solving, decision making and public policy processes are examined for how formal, structured information of the type provided by land information system does, or could, interact with these processes. From this analysis, and the research findings from the knowledge utilisation field, it is concluded that land information systems will need to place its data into an extended contextual and value frameworks, introduce different data quality standards, and restructure its systems and functionality in a way that facilitates learning and understanding as opposed to decision making. How this may be achieved, and what role land information systems could reasonably expect to play in the policy process completes the thesis.