The Three Pillars of NGDF

1.Collaboration

Identifying key players e.g. data and service providers, systems suppliers, consumers;
Identifying key sources of geospatial data;
Persuading and facilitating; sharing experience and knowledge;
Encouraging new partnerships and collaborative ventures for data exploitation

2. Standards

World-wide experiences demonstrate that it is easy to create meaningless data sets at great expense by data linkage: results may be totally erroneous and misleading unless the data sets are well-documented and adhere to agreed and published standards. NGDF will set a framework for defining business driven standards, best practice and specifications for data and services, drawing on existing national, international and European work.

3. Access

Access to data is often limited by the sheer difficulty of obtaining it. Sometimes cost is an inhibiting factor; sometimes exclusive and restrictive agreements stand in the way of data availability; in other cases, would-be data users simply don’t know that the data exists. NGDF will encourage the development of ‘many-to-many’ relationships among data suppliers, data brokers and consumers.