Sunday, 5 February 2012
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IT has provided the opportunities for governments to remodel the entire process of tax collection over the last decade. It is, however, a continuously evolving process and governments the world over need to constantly upgrade their tax systems to optimise their revenue workflows.
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The advent of social media has seen governments hopping onto the bandwagon in a bid to further engage citizens.
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Central Government, Government GIS
Singapore launches smart map portal
Sixteen government agencies in Singapore have joined forces to launch an intelligent online map portal. Built using web 2.0 technologies, ‘OneMap’ enables government agencies, citizens and businesses to mash-up geospatial data for their own purposes. The S$2.2 million (US$1.8 million) project is the first major product of the Singapore Geospatial Collaborative Environment (SG-SPACE) initiative, a whole-of-government push to spur innovation using map-based information.
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The Singapore government is in the process of converting much of the textual data that is available to the public into geospatial information, and developing applications to use this data. However, some public sector agencies are already using OneMap.
The Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) is using the service to determine the most suitable areas along Singapore’s coastline to reclaim land, while the Ministry of Education has used OneMap to launch SchoolQuery, which helps parents find nearby primary schools.
Other participating agencies include the Infocomm Development Authority, the Land Transport Authority, the Ministry of Information, Communications & The Arts, the National Library Board and the Singapore Land Authority, which spearheaded the project.
The service is also available on mobile browsers, including the iPhone. This prompted the National Parks Board to launch “Live”, a mobile-ready service that gives Singaporeans their exact location when navigating a national park, plus guided tours and nature facts. Other uses for OneMap include finding the best parking permit locations, bird-watching hotspots, family-friendly restaurants, driving directions, and location-based retail promotions.
“OneMap is an example of how the public sector continues to evolve in delivering services to the public in an era where Facebooking and crowd-sourcing is a daily occurrence,” K. Shanmugam, Singapore’s Minister for Law and Second Minister for Home Affairs, said at the launch ceremony last week. “OneMap is not intended to be the sole provider of geospatial information and services. It cannot and should not be so. We have designed it to provide the basic platform which public agencies, and the private and people sectors, can leverage to create their own applications. This will enable the power of every individual to be harnessed so that services can be identified, developed and delivered.”
Two types of Application Programming Interface (API) enable OneMap to be used to create new applications. A basic API enables a user to hyperlink to the OneMap service, which does not require the user to register their web site. This requires only a basic understanding of HTML. For advanced APIs, maps can be embedded on to a web site and the look and feel of the map application can be more greatly managed. To do this, a deeper knowledge of HTML and Javascript is needed.
The project was not without difficulties. A OneMap spokesperson told FutureGov: “The big challenge was to design the functionalities and interface of OneMap that users will find useful and user-friendly. The current functionalities and interface are the results of several user surveys and focus group discussions. We will continue to gather feedback for improvements in the future.”
Only “non-sensitive” information will be published on the platform, although what sort of data is considered sensitive was not specified. The spokesperson added: “In the future, more public agencies will come on board to contribute new geospatial information and services. Plans are underway to include facilities such as police stations, medical clinics and green buildings on OneMap.”
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