The Rise of Internet Sourcing The acquisition of data and applications through the Internet will become increasingly common and greatly expand existing markets as well as open new markets. The Integration with Information Technology Systems Geomatics is becoming a core information technology increasingly linked to the general information systems of organizations. Government Geographic Data Governments throughout the world have collected an enormous amount of data, which can be beneficial for many geomatics applications. In fact, most of the digitised data readily available for geomatics has been collected by governments in industrialised countries. High-resolution imagery is not yet commercially available forcing data collection to be mostly vector based.
Data collection is the most expensive part of the geomatics process.
As governments have been mandated to balance budgets and to operate more in line with the private sector, many agencies who collect data are beginning to charge the public for usage. The cost and licensing agreements for use of the data varies from country to country and between agencies within countries. Of course since so many government departments collect geomatics data, there are no standard methodologies for examining or purchasing. It is expected that the Internet will alleviate many of the acquisition and sourcing difficulties, but the policies for government data distribution will likely be a patchwork for the foreseeable future. Another issue relating to government data is its usefulness for specific applications.