The Full Picture

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all aspects of observations and data access, development of data

analysis and interpretations skills, etc.

Cross linkages

– to governance and/or coordination mechanisms

for component systems

Cross linkages to documented experience

– pilot studies, published

experiments and success stories, mentoring opportunities

Mechanisms

– to enable GEOSS to support effectively information

and service delivery systems at international, regional and local

level.

The full benefits of GEOSS will only be achieved when member-

ship is global and when the data, systems and experience of each are

shared with all others. To this end, the effort expended in making

it as easy as possible to participate in GEOSS as a contributor and/or

user of data, via the interoperability framework will be repaid many

times over. Alongside this, the GEOSS principles of system owner-

ship remaining with members and of system mandates being

undisturbed by GEOSS (except by mutual arrangement) should be

continually reinforced.

One challenge of defining an effective interoperability framework

is ensuring that barriers to entry are reduced to the lowest level;

that technical guidelines and standards reflect the range in socio-

economic circumstances and technical capacities of all members. It

is important, for global participation, that none are disenfranchised

by the bar being set too high for them to participate. Importantly,

this relates not just to their capacity to access and use data and

systems contributed to GEOSS by others, but also to their own

capacity to contribute their data and systems to GEOSS.

The scope of GEOSS, as laid out in the GEOSS

Ten-year imple-

mentation plan

, is aspirational and will take the full ten years to get

close to achieving what it ambitiously set out to achieve at the Third

Earth Observation Summit in Brussels in February 2005. The inter-

operability framework, in all its dimensions, is critical to providing

the “overall conceptual and organizational framework to build

towards integrated Earth observations to meet user needs,” and it

will need to be supported and to evolve long after the ten years are

up if GEOSS is to continue to meet user needs.

Future governance model for GEO and GEOSS

The intergovernmental Group on Earth Observations

(GEO), comprising its members and participating orga-

nizations, was established in February 2005 on a voluntary

and legally non-binding basis, with voluntary contribu-

tions to support its activities. It is supported by a

Geneva-based secretariat and guided by an elected exec-

utive committee.

The driving forces behind establishing firstly the ad hoc

GEO and then the intergovernmental GEO were clearly

the founding members, who vested significant national

effort and resources into turning the concept of a compre-

hensive, coordinated and sustained system of systems into

a living implementation plan. The governance model that

was adopted reflected the desire to move forward at a rapid

pace, without the encumbrance of a UN-style bureaucracy,

and to record early successes for GEOSS. While the ability

to directly engage interested parties and individuals and

to respond quickly and without the overheads of bureau-

cracy may have been key factors in the early progress, it

was not long before GEO plenary decisions more explic-

itly embraced open and transparent recruitment, reporting

and review processes.

A key challenge for GEO in the future, as well as for the

established international organizations and around 200

countries that contribute to, and benefit from, the existing

global Earth observing systems, will be to maintain the

momentum and consolidate a high level of cooperation

and coordination. It is not clear whether all the individual

countries that contribute to the existing systems will ever

choose to become members of GEO per se, but as contrib-

utors nonetheless to the system of systems, their needs

and voices are inextricably intertwined with the future of

GEOSS.

As discussed above, the critical value that GEOSS adds

to the component systems is through the interoperability

framework that facilitates more effective access to, and

utilization of, observations to inform decision-making

across many sectors, societies, regions and the globe.

While the GEOSS mandate aims to vest ownership of any

new systems back to the Members themselves, it is

inevitable that there will be a sense of collective GEOSS

ownership of some systems, such as the GEONETCast

system and the developing capacity building and outreach

programmes. Supporting, developing, maintaining,

communicating and promoting the interoperability frame-

work on an ongoing basis will be an essential task of GEO

that will require sustained secretariat effort and engage-

ment by the membership.

Whether the current governance arrangements will

remain appropriate in the long term is a key question, and

one that must be kept under periodic review if the GEOSS

vision is to become an ongoing reality. Recognizing the

objective of global participation and benefits, a robust

future governance model may be provided by borrowing

from the experiences of existing long-lived global observ-

ing systems. Some of them have been in operation for

more than 50 years and have evolved to respond to chang-

ing requirements, technologies and societal circumstances.

Data rescue

In Samoa, as in many developing countries, much of the historical data

record that is critical to understanding current environmental issues, such as

climate change, are retained only as fragile paper records. GEOSS, through

its interoperability framework and effective data rescue programmes, can

remove barriers to sharing such data for the benefit of users nationally,

throughout the region and globally

ATIONAL

& R

EGIONAL

EPORTS