Department of Planning Monitoring and Evaluation stands to benefit from best practice

ON THE 19th of September I was one of the panellists who participated at the launch of Geospatial Information Management Strategy led by the Department of Planning Monitoring and Evaluation (DPME). This was held at Diep in die Berg in Pretoria.

- Dr Pali Lehohla

Human activity manifests itself in space and yet the ability to capture this central and prime mover that defines and explains the trajectory of human interaction with their environment has not been at the center of interpretation of development.

Efforts over time have been partial and at times half hearted. Countries that advanced on this front were in Latin America and notably Brazil.

Its Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), established in 1936, was a key institution in the genesis of geographical data collection and analysis.

This laid the groundwork for GIS development and adoption in the country. Through its role in mapping, population counting, and economic analysis, IBGE generated the foundational data and spatial understanding necessary for later GIS applications, which were further influenced by the arrival of quantitative mathematical techniques and GIS specialists in the late 1960s.

Brazil had also embedded informatics in its statistical infrastructure. The informatics component, however, was dropped at a later date for reasons that will not be discussed. But informatics is an essential element of decision support in the world of big data, data revolution, and especially artificial intelligence.