News from PCGIS
1 June 2009, by PCGIS Team
GIS Practitioners Workshop
On May 20th and 21st a workshop for GIS practitioners working in local and provincial government authorities was held in Lusaka, at National Survey Department. It was organised by German Development Cooperation (GTZ and DED) to share lessons learnt from the SDI Programme and to establish and improve connections between practitioners of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in Zambia.
It addressed technical officers from various local government institutions who want to improve delivery of services to citizens by using GIS. The aim was to achieve a better understanding of how to effectively use this new technology. The workshop shall also be the first step in establishing a network of GIS users to overcome challenges and to share lessons learnt.
Participants came from Kitwe City Council, Mufulira Municipal Council, PCGIS Livingstone, Chipata Municipal Council, Lusaka City Council, Mazabuka Municipal Council, Kalomo District Council, Sinazongwe District Council; additional resource persons came from Ministry of Lands (Survey Department), Ministry of Local Government and Housing, Ehlanzeni District Municipality (South Africa), Swedesurvey and GIMS South Africa.
The first day (20th) started with welcoming remarks by Bernd Eversmann, coorganiser of the workshop, as well as Mr Moyo, Assistant Surveyor General.
The first presentation was given by Ronny Dobbelsteijn, DED expert at Ehlanzeni
District Municipality, Nelspruit, South Africa, about their web-based GIS. His
presentation underlined the role of GIS for local service delivery and revenue
management, as well as the need of data exchange between state institutions.
Especially the last point is of great importance for Zambia, as ministries, public
administrations and others are often not cooperating.
In a series of presentations, the district councils of Mufulira, Mazabuka, Kitwe,
Chipata and Lusaka, as well as of PCGIS Livingstone showed examples of their GIS activities. One of the main topics was the mapping of informal settlements for the city councils that requires a lot of GIS mapping, but also analysis. Through our wide field of participants there was even an example for the mapping of informal settlements in the Brazilian city of Curitiba.
The second day offered a whole range of dicussion topics regarding from decentralised GIS service delivery to issues of data management as well as software and GIS capacity building.
Presentations can be downloaded here:
- The GIS project at the Mufulira Municipal Council [51KB]
- Presentation from Brazil [1MB]
- Introductory Presentation to the Workshop [106KB]
- Presentation of Mazabuka Integrated Development Plan (IDP) [211KB]
- Lusaka Component C - LIMS [1MB]
- Lusaka Project Overview General [915KB]
- GIS usage in Ehlanzeni District Municipality in South Africa [427KB]