Nancy Vanstone, Manager, NSLUPC Secretariat Land Registration and Information Service Council of Maritime Premiers P.O. BOX 2254 Halifax, Nova Scotia B3J 3C8
and
Mary Ogilvie, Manager, NB Surveys & Mapping Committee Secretariat Land Registration and Information Service Council of Maritime Premiers P.O. BOX 6000 985 College Hill Road Fredericton, New Brunswick E38 5H1
INTRODUCTION
Unlike other parts of Canada, the development of land information systems and, in particular, the introduction of GIS technology in the Maritimes have occurred primarily through interprovincial and regional initiatives rather than on a provincial basis. Through the Council of Maritime Premiers, two regional agencies -- the Land Registration and Information Service (LRIS) and the Maritime Resource Management Service (MRMS) -- have played a critical, catalytic role in the application of GIS to the management of land and water resources in the three Maritime Provinces.
Since 1973, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island have entrusted the production of their base and property mapping and control surveys to LRIS. MRMS has provided a regional service in the display and interpretation of thematic information, both through conventional cartography and digital methods. In 1988 the Council of Maritime Premiers merged these two groups and they are now collectively referred to as LRIS. This coordinated regional approach has offered many advantages to the three provinces through economies of scale, strengthened information exchange and pooled resources.
Similarly, within each individual province, there are obvious benefits to a coordinated approach to land related issues. Information about land is not confined to any single department. Government actions affecting land and water resources occur routinely in a multitude of departments. GIS policy must respond to the needs of a wide variety of departmental users.
Establishment of the Committees
In the mid 1970's there was a growing public interest in land use matters. Regional planning was enjoying a period of good favour and several municipalities were initiating local planning programs. There was, as well, a desire to maximize the benefits to Nova Scotia and New Brunswick from federal economic development programs, many of which tied to land use planning. In Nova Scotia the establishment of a Deputy Ministers' Committee on Land Use (LUPC) was seen as a means to tackle land use issues in a coordinated, systematic way.
LRIS performs an important role in these committee structures by providing secretariat-type staff support. However, it is important to stress that these are not LRIS committees. They are provincial committees and, while there are similarities, the structure and mandate of each committee reflects the unique institutional situation of each province. The approach has provided an effective mechanism for interdepartmental coordination and improved communication in land-related matters. In that regard, they may serve as a useful model for other jurisdictions.
This paper describes the interdepartmental committee structure in each province. It concludes with a discussion of the merits of the approach and recommendations for the effective application of this mechanism to develop GIS policy.
NOVA SCOTIA - LAND USE POLICY COMMITTEE
The Nova Scotia Land Use Policy Committee's primary concern is provincial policy respecting the management of land and water resources. It has an active interest in land information but more as a tool for policy development than-in a technical sense. The Nova Scotia Land Information Committee operates as a subcommittee of the Land Use Policy Committee. The development of land information policy occurs within the broader context of the management of land and water resources. In terms of GIS in particular, this paper is somewhat premature as Nova Scotia does not currently have a provincial GIS policy but work is currently under way to develop a corporate provincial approach to GIS. Both the Land Use Policy Committee and the Land Information Committee have active roles to play in its implementation.
The Cabinet approved a proposal to establish a LUPC in 1976. It involves the eleven departments with an interest in land and water resources.
An interdepartmental committee was favoured over the establishment of a centralized agency or “superdepartment” to develop provincial land use policy. Past experience in Nova Scotia had demonstrated the pitfalls of the centralized approach which alienated line departments. It was also agreed that participation would be voluntary. There is no legislation that requires that all land use matters be vetted through the LUPC. Thirdly, it was decided that the LUPC should have an independent staff support, not tied to any one department but exclusively dedicated to providing administrative and professional support to the LUPC. These three decisions have been critical to the success of the LUPC.
Committee Structure and Operating Style
The LUPC is charged with reviewing all matters related to land use and the development of land use policy and to give advice to government on land use matters. It operates on the basis of consensus. As mentioned above, participation is voluntary - issues are brought to the committee by a line department and recommendations are forwarded to Cabinet through the line department. Implementation is left with the relevant departments.
The LUPC actually consists of three tiers of committees. The Deputy Ministers' committee is supported by a working level committee comprised of directors representing each of the eleven departments involved. This group meets monthly and reviews all material going to the Deputy Ministers' committee.
These individuals serve as the contact point on land use policy matters within their respective departments.
The Committee decided early on to deal with issues rather than attempt to prepare a province-wide land use strategy. Over the past ten years, over twenty ad hoc committees, referred to as issue groups, have been established. These involve staff from the relevant departments and report to the Deputy Ministers through the working group of directors.
A few of these issue groups actually operate as standing sub-committees. However, most are disbanded once their recommendations are accepted by the Deputy Ministers or Cabinet. At present there are eight active issue groups:
Water Resources
Wildlife Habitat
Land Information
Agriculture Land
Environment and Economy
Community Development
Parks, Heritage and Outdoor Recreation
Soil and Water Conservation
In total, over 80 members of provincial departments are currently involved with the LUPC through its various sub-committees.
The LUPC operates as an internal committee to government. Consultation with groups outside the government is handled through the appropriate line department.
Staff of the Committees
Staff support is crucial to the effective operation of the LUPC. The committee has a small coordinating staff -- two full time planners and a secretary -- provided through LRIS. This provides a neutral perspective which would have been difficult to achieve if staff reported to a particular department. Through the issue groups, the committee draws heavily on departmental staff in developing reports. Essentially staff play the role of “facilitator” to the committees.
Type of Activities
The scope of the LUPC activities over the past 12 has been very broad. Following is a brief list of the type of activities:
Interdepartmental Coordination - to provide coordinated staff response within a short time period on specific issues.
Policy Development - in areas of interest to more than one department. Current work on the development of provincial land use policies under the Nova Scotia Planning Act is a prime example.
Program Review and Coordination - such as a 1985 review of the LRIS base mapping program which led to the coordination of map sequencing across the province at a potential cost saving in the order of $2 million over the next 5 to 10 years.
Review of Legislation - and development of draft legislation.
Development of Guidelines - to improve consistency in the way departmental staff-apply policies and regulations.
Public Information Materials - such as the Nova Scotia Resource Atlas.
Negotiation and Conflict Resolution - by providing a forum for resolving disputes among departments representing varied mandates.
Research - by co-ordinating provincial expenditures in the order of $800,000 annually in conventional and digital resource mapping. In fact, it has been through access to this budget allocation over the past five years that most Nova Scotia departments were introduced to GIS technology.
The Land Information Committee
Of particular interest is the Land Information Committee. This sub-committee of the LUPC was formed in 1984 and has been very active in the development of land information policy. Seventeen departments are involved in this committee. Policy and program specifications have been developed on an interdepartmental basis in such areas as base mapping and control survey maintenance. A successful land information seminar attracting over 350 participants is hosted annually by this committee. The Land Information Committee was instrumental in the development of the Terms of Reference for a consultant study currently underway to develop a corporate provincial land related information strategy. It is represented on the project management team and once this study is complete it will play a role in the development of an interdepartmental implementation strategy in response to the consultant's recommendations.
Strengths of the LUPC
The most important strength of the LUPC structure is that it provides a mechanism to break down the sectoral approach to land related issues. Communication between members in different departments is opened up, and decisions reflect the interests of several resource users. This is particularly important in areas where no single department has a primary responsibility.
The LUPC structure improves the cost-effectiveness of government activities relating to land resources. By bringing existing staff resources within the province together, it can move a long way toward coordinating work and avoiding needless duplication. The LUPC represents a process - a process which builds stronger awareness, discussion and negotiation among departments which can only improve the quality of decision making.
When speaking specifically of land information and GIS issues, the LUPC structure can help to ensure that expenditures are not only better coordinated but also driven more by the needs of the resource managers and policy makers than by the technology.
However, there are always areas for improvement. There is a need for a stronger linkage between the Deputy Ministers Committee and the political decision makers. The Deputy Ministers' committee introduces its recommendations to Cabinet through the Minister of the lead department on any given issue and success has varied from issue to issue. The establishment of a comparable cabinet level committee to which the LUPC could report would improve awareness and communication between bureaucratic and political levels on land use and resource matters.
Also the voluntary nature of the LUPC means that there are limitations in what comes before the committee. If the lead department does not want an issue considered by the LUPC, it can keep it off the agenda. To respond to this the LUPC must be able to demonstrate the benefits of interdepartmental coordination to the line departments.
NEW BRUNSWICK - THE SURVEYS AND MAPPING COMMITTEE (S&M)
New Brunswick's first formal committee to deal with land related matters was formed in March of 1980. At this time the New Brunswick Advisory Committee on Surveys and Mapping was formed primarily to provide a formal mechanism to advise provincial members of the LRIS Board of Directors of the needs of the province. Prior to the establishment of this committee, the Board members received advice through informal communication. The Chairman of the Committee was a member of the LRIS Board of Directors.
The advisory committee reported to the “Officials Committee on Economic Development”. In 1981, the relationship between this committee and several others which had recently formed was clarified. The New Brunswick Remote Sensing Committee became a technical Subcommittee to the overall Mapping Committee.
In 1987 the Committee was reconstituted and the number of subcommittees reporting to the Overall Committee was now three. It was to report to Department of Municipal Affairs and Environment because there were plans to amalgamate all provincial surveys and mapping related activities to a new unit in this department. Its membership was formalized to include senior managers from specified departments. It was planned that the new unit proposed for the department of Municipal Affairs and Environment would provide staff support to the committee.
The newly constituted Committee was to be called the Surveys and Mapping Committee and it was responsible for:
advising the Department of Municipal Affairs and Environment on all matters related to Surveys and Mapping;
subject to budgetary approval, recommending annual plans for survey and mapping work to be done by the Surveys and Mapping Branch of the Department of Municipal Affairs and Environment;
recommending policies and standards by which all surveys and mapping activities are performed;
assessing and advising on all technology acquisition (hardware and software) prior to purchase by any department;
recommending courses of action for the acquisition of purchased surveys and mapping services;
recommending New Brunswick's position in its involvement in the LRIS agency of the Council of Maritime Premiers; and,
assisting in integrating information produced by surveys and mapping activities with the land and water use policy development and planning process.
The Committee had by this time subcommittees on surveying, mapping and remote sensing. The Surveys and Mapping Branch of the Department of Municipal Affairs and Environment did not materialize. The Committee then reported to cabinet secretariat. When cabinet secretariat was phased out, the committee continued to advise LRIS board members, to set priorities for the use of mapping resources and to act as an information exchange among the members. At the present time, there are subcommittees dealing with mapping, surveying, remote sensing, GIS standards and a digital terrain modelling (DTM) project.
Staff of the Committee
In June of 1988 the New Brunswick members of the LRIS Board decided to allocate some of the LRIS funding to the provision of staff resources to the Committee and its subcommittees. The staff provides agenda material, takes minutes and participates in some of the projects overseen by the committee and its subcommittees.
Committee Activity
The committee meets monthly, discusses activities of the subcommittees and keeps track of quite a wide range of projects in the province. Examples of the projects are:
York Sunbury Digitizing - This is a proposal to digitize the parcels in these two counties, maintain the data and to use the resulting digital property map for the City of Fredericton as an interim base for utility overlays.
GIS Standards - This project will develop a framework for establishing standards for provincial data collection, storage and distribution. The final draft will be presented to the Committee on March 15, 1989.
GIS Course - The Committee solicited proposals from private firms to put on a 2 day course for middle and upper management on GIS.
Base Map Maintenance - There is considerable digital data at the 1:10,000 scale already collected for New Brunswick but procedures are not yet finalized on how to maintain this data. This project will develop these procedures.
Base Map Priorities - Priorities for collecting digital planimetry, digital elevation models, property map conversion and large-scale digital data were set in 1983 and are currently being reviewed by secretariat staff.
Control Network in Southwest New Brunswick - There are some problems with the SWNB control network that should be corrected by length remeasures and readjustment. Details on the funding and methods for carrying out the project will be finalized at the end of February, 1989.
LANDNET 2 - This project will review the LANDNET concepts, update the data, and define and cost a pilot project to test some of the recommendations. It is due for completion in June 30, 1989.
Ten Year Plan for Control Network in the Province - A private sector firm will be asked to speculate on possible advances in technology in the coming years, anticipate what impact these changes will have on private surveyors and on any network in place to serve them, and to propose what should be done to prepare for these changes. A report is expected in the fall of 1989.
Pilot Projects in Government Departments - Transportation, Agriculture, Mines
DTM - Under the federal-provincial MOU on GIS, New Brunswick received partial funding for a project to produce DTM's for two locations in the province and to analyze the different software available to determine its effectiveness and ease of use. The project should be completed by the end of March.
Strengths of the Surveys and Mapping Committee
As in Nova Scotia, the Interdepartmental Committee in New Brunswick performs a special role as a coordinator of ideas and actions among the different departments. It acts as a forum for the exchange of views among the various departments. It provides an opportunity for updates on departmental progress in land information areas. It serves, as well, as an effective means of making the New Brunswick LRIS Board members aware of the concerns of various government departments.
The advent of staff resources to the committee has had a significant impact on its ability to deal effectively with land related matters. Prior to setting up the secretariat, the committee found it difficult to explore issues in depth. With the availability of staff resources and access to funding for contract projects, this handicap has been largely removed.
There are some weaknesses in the structure, however. Some committee members are nervous about endorsing projects when the committee itself has no project budget. There is no real compulsion to have projects or activities vetted by the Committee. However, there appears to be considerable good will among the committee members and most relevant initiatives are indeed brought before the committee.
CONCLUDING REMARKS
Regardless of the provincial departmental organization, all interests in land use planning, and more specifically land data management, cannot be confined within one agency. Interdepartmental co-operation is essential. The interdepartmental committee structure can break down the traditional vertical flow of information through a departmental hierarchy and encourage the horizontal exchange of information and views on areas of interest to several departments.
The two provincial committee structures reviewed in this paper have several similarities. In each case, the province decided to use an interdepartmental “voluntary” committee rather than a legislated centralized agency or “superdepartment” to coordinate policy development.
The Nova Scotia and New Brunswick examples have demonstrated success in the form of:
The focus, however, must remain on coordinating activities rather than on usurping departmental functions. Control should remain in the hands of the line departments and not with the committee or its secretariat.
There are also significant differences between the Nova Scotia and the New Brunswick approach. This is to be expected as the Committees are not the product of LRIS but of the province in which they operate.
The Nova Scotia Land Use Policy Committee established a committee of Deputy Ministers to advise government on land use policy and has approached land information and GIS matters within that context. On the other hand, the New Brunswick Surveys and Mapping Committee evolved from a technical committee to coordinate the collection and distribution of data on land. In time the New Brunswick Surveys and Mapping Committee may develop a strong link with the New Brunswick Interdepartmental Committee on Land and Water Use to ensure that GIS policy better reflects the collective needs of land and water resource managers.
It should also be noted that the Nova Scotia Land Use Policy Committee has been in place and staffed by MRMS/LRIS for over 12 years. The New Brunswick Surveys and Mapping Committee has had staff resources available to it for only one year.
The Committees and subcommittees in Nova Scotia are comprised entirely of provincial civil servants while the ones in New Brunswick have representation from private industry and municipalities as well. The Nova Scotia members are at the deputy minister level or director level and New Brunswick committee members are at the director level. The Committee in Nova Scotia addresses issues while the one in New Brunswick is most likely to discuss projects. Both make possible the rational deliberation of land related matters even when there is no single departmental focus.
Although the committees were formed in the absence of a provincial focus for land information, it is quite likely that they would continue to exist even if a central department were created. Interdepartmental cooperation and goodwill is facilitated through the regular discussions and would be needed perhaps even more if there was a central department with some clout.
Our experiences have shown that the interdepartmental committee can be a very effective mechanism for exchanging views and arriving at a consensus on land related issues. The model could be successfully applied to any issue which involves a variety of departments. Certainly the development of GIS policy would fall into such a category.
If other jurisdictions are contemplating an interdepartmental committee approach, careful consideration should be given to the following recommendations:
Make the membership comprehensive - don't leave relevant departments out;
Require that members be fairly senior civil servants so that the decisions taken have a better chance of implementation. A system of staff level sub-committees can be used to bring technical expertise to senior policy makers;
Provide “neutral” staff resources to the committee for meeting work and for some project and research work. The Secretariat should be kept small to ensure that the focus stays on coordination and avoids any tendency to tread on departmental mandates.
