Guillermo Umana Macquarie University ENVG390

Challenges and Futures for Public Participation GIS (PPGIS) in Local Government
Introduction

Public Participation GIS (PPGIS) is still an evolving concept arising from the increasingly tight relation between spatial technology and planning. The term PPGIS aims to make geographic information systems accessible to the public and this way reinforce the concept of participatory planning, or democratization of governance. But the fact that PPGIS covers such a broad relation between technology and democracy has led to a misconception of what it really is. Scholssberg & Shuford (2005: 15) argue that PPGIS is emerging as a distinct subset of two previously separate activities: technology-based spatial analysis and participatory democracy. This evolving relation is a result of the historic moment that the planning profession is undergoing. Democratization of processes is taking over the positivist and rational approach to planning that ruled 20th century planning.

But who is the public that is referred to in the acronym PPGIS? This paper will demonstrate that public is not a rigid concept, and that there are a multiplicity of examples in which public takes different forms. Nevertheless, the concept of PPGIS should remain between the boundaries of democratic decision making together with GIS technologies; it should not become a term used simply because a non-technician is involved (Scholssberg & Shuford, 2005). The challenge then is to make GIS technology adaptable to an almost infinite number of public participation possibilities ranging from non-governmental local scales to scales of national and international significance. Public participation in GIS can be then defined as people, culture and technology put together by individuals engaging in specific activities and processes (Scholssberg & Shuford, 2005). This article will focus on the way local governments can make PPGIS projects a success story for both the local community and the government.

The use of PPGIS can reinforce the credibility and efficacy of processes, as well as support a welldefined theoretical background for decision-making. In local government this is especially important, because spatial decision making at a local level affects the resident community in a more direct way 1

than decisions made at other levels of government. This is why the role of PPGIS in local government is increasingly important, as local government processes become more participatory. This paper will draw conclusions on the future of PPGIS for local decision-making processes and argue that local processes come in all sorts of shapes and colours, and therefor PPGIS must adapt to the different needs that different local government processes require. GIS2, as it will be argued, is becoming the future of PPGIS, combining communication technologies with participation and spatial tools to give communities real decision-making power. Challenges and successes of PPGIS in local government will be analysed starting from the fact that PPGIS is still a developing concept and that there is a lot to do to make PPGIS a tangible concept in local governance because GIS is only one part of the equation to effective public participation.

History of PPGIS

The term PPGIS originated at the National Centre for Geographic Information and Analysis (NCGIA) (Sieber, 2006). Since then, the definition of PPGIS has become broader and today the role of PPGIS is totally context-dependant. In local government, PPGIS can be part of the official council GIS strategy, or can be part of the council sustainability department or as processes of partnership with NGOs. Every case is different in the context of PPGIS, but understanding the origins of the technology is important to look towards the future of public participation and spatial technology, a future in which democratization and accessibility are in the centre of the table. In the 20th century, geographic information systems were developed under a positivist theoretical background. The developers of GIS worked within specific institutional environments (largely white males employed in academic and governmental institutions in North America and Europe) (Obermeyer, 2000: 2). The limited choices of participation that the creators of GIS had, did not allow for a participatory approach to spatial technology, and this is why participatory GIS has taken such a long time to evolve. In the late 20th century and beginning of the 21st century, a postmodernist approach replaced the positivist approach to GIS. Increasingly, planning is seen as a democratic process and less as a technocratic profession. McIntyre (2007) explains that today public

participation is considered an essential tool for local government planning, especially for environmental planning in which the community has a great interest. The need to incorporate local knowledge and allow for interaction between different stakeholders has made local planning processes become process-driven not outcome-driven, so that both the local government and the external stakeholders can benefit from the use of GIS (McIntyre, 2007). This way, the community

gains legitimacy in decision-making, local decision-making becomes efficient and the government ensures that obstruction from unexpected stakeholders will not happen at later stages. Sieber (2006: 491) explains that in recent years, the use of GIS has been furthered by members of the public and the private sectors who believe that computer tools and digital data forms are essential for an informed democracy. It is possible to observe the importance of social construction for PPGIS in this statement. As many other technologies in the past, attributing empowerment to GIS is a slow process, that swings between rationalism and real engagement. Like the telephone or the internet, spatial technology started as a technology that existed only for the most hierarchical technicians; today the telephone and the internet are both symbols of public access to communication. PPGIS can also become a symbol of democratic freedom, but the use of this technology can take two opposite paths: to become an illusion of control for communities when the real control remains on the governing class or to become a real community engagement tool (Sieber, 2006).

The truth is that both top-down and bottom-up approaches to community participation are possible through PPGIS in local government. McIntyre (2007) provides an insight to two local government case studies with completely different approaches: The Kiama LEP community review and the Land Care Illawarra GIS Project. The Kiama LEP community review used GIS as a top-down approach, in which a community panel was formed and GIS information, including maps, were presented to the panel for decision-making. On the other hand the Land Care Illawarra Community GIS Project was a local initiative to support environmental land care that the local council could not budget; participants of this project were taught how to use GIS tools and were able to manipulate data, through a bottom-up approach. As a conclusion to the analysis of both case studies McIntyre (2007) argues that both case studies are successful cases of PPGIS and that the success of both of them relied on the training in GIS usage provided to the community participants. PPGIS is then a good tool, valued by the community and by local government but education on how to use the technology is important for its success.

The Different Shades of Participation

It is important to understand that PPGIS can be used throughout a wide range of public participation purposes, from real empowerment of the community to just a matter of informing the public about decisions already made. Figure 2 below shows multiple shades of public participation presented by different authors.

Figure 2. Comparison of Public Participation Purposes (Scholssberg & Shuford, 2005)

From tokenism to real community empowerment, GIS can be used by local government depending on who is identified as the relevant public and what method of participation is chosen. Together with participation, comes accessibility because participation cannot be completed without real contact with the appropriate technology (Tulloch, 2003). Participation and accessibility to technology can be understood as ladders, in which the bottom of the ladder is manipulation, education or information and the top of the ladder is complete citizen control, joint decision making, prevention and ongoing involvement as shown in figure 2. It is evident that a combination of ladders or shades of participation and accessibility generate an infinite number of contexts in which PPGIS can be applied in local government. In some cases complete citizen control is not the best method, in some others joint decision making is the best option.

Challenges of using PPGIS

Educating the stakeholders in the technical aspects of spatial technology is the greater challenge for PPGIS. Because PPGIS combines technology with participation, the need for technical knowledge is essential to generate meaningful information, and this aspect can make GIS processes undemocratic (Obermeyer, 2000). On top of this, most GIS data is created by the public sector, and this creates a barrier for non-governmental organizations to use up-to-date GIS information (Sieber, 2006).

Politics play an important role in terms of data availability and PPGIS. In regards to local government, the need to generate local reliable date presents a huge cost for local councils due to the lack of free reliable public data available for local government purposes. The current PPGIS movement seeks to develop GIS that will be more adaptable to extraorganizational input from regular citizens and other non-official sources and therefore contribute to local government data-base renovation (Obermeyer,

2000). The big challenge here is how to make community input meaningful for the purposes of local government. There is a great variety of ways in which PPGIS can become a success in regards to data generation. One of this is the nature of the project itself. Controversial issues will always attract a varied array of stakeholders, and this will genuinely generate interest from the community to have an input in the process. Sima, Densham & Haklay (20009) explain a situation in which wind farming in a local government area led to multiple advocate collaborations in the decision-making process of the wind farm location. GIS in this case was a success because wind farming has a really localized impact that generates interest and becomes the trigger for PPGIS implementation. Another way in which PPGIS inputs can be thrived is by making PPGIS a responsibility for government from the point of view of democratic participation. Ishfaq & Lodhi (2012) explain that one of the successes of primary health planning in Britain using Geographic Information Systems is due to health being a main social equity issue in the country. Because the issue of health has been seen as a priority for local government for a long time, GIS has been a really good tool to engage the local communities of Britain with the health issues of their localities. Foley (2002) adds to this by explaining a case study in which the assessment of GIS awareness in the city of East Sussex in England was carried out by interviewing local managers across a number of local agencies to generate a spatial database of health services accessible by the local community. Irrespective of the local project, process or situation, it can be seen that PPGIS is available as a malleable tool, which can be bended to fit the nature of the situation it is used in.

Conclusion The future of PPGIS in local government

As it has been observed, spatial technology and democratic participation can work together to achieve local government goals, either as top-down processes in which GIS acts a medium of communication between the government and the community or as bottom-up projects in which the community has the possibility to manage GIS data and generate outcomes. However it is looked at, PPGIS starts from the fact that spatial planning cannot be the enterprise of a sole person, instead it must result from a collaborative process (Sima et al., 2009). This collaborative process depends on the way data is communicated, because as a process in which multiple stakeholders are involved, communication becomes essential for all parties to acknowledge each other.

GIS/2 (or sometimes called GIStoo) is a set of methods which are oriented towards communication about representations in a context-dependant and varied set of ways, from guiding missiles to improving water provision to rural communities (Halkey, 2012). It seems like this new way of

understanding GIS technology will become the future of PPGIS. GIS/2 plays through four themes: place and people, technology and data, process and outcome and evaluation (Sieber, 2006). It takes into account specific contexts, stakeholders, and other actors as well as the general public to communicate data efficiently and appropriately. Many organisations are getting on the boat of GIS/2, making it increasingly recognised as the way to go in regards to spatial technology. This way cooperation and collaboration become central to the implementation of PPGIS and allow for better public participation outcomes in local government. At the end, GIS is only part of the equation to public participation in local government (Brandt, 1998). The technology needs to be accompanied by proper communication strategies and a proper atmosphere for real and honest participation.

References

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Foley, R., 2002, Assessing the applicability of GIS in a health and social care setting: planning services for informal carers in East Sussex, England Social Science & Medicine, Vol.55(1), pp.79-96

Hakley, M, GIS/2 + 10: Has new GIS emerged?, Department of Geomatic Engineering, UCL, accessed 10 November 2012, <http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/5187/1/5187.pdf>

Ishfaq, M., Lodhi, B., 2012, Role of GIS in Social Sector Planning: Can Developing Countries Benefit from the Examples of Primary Health Care (PHC) Planning in Britain?, Community Health 37, pages 372-38.

McIntyre, E, 2007, Evaluating the use of GIS by Public Participants in Environmental Decision-Making Processes: A case study approach, University of Wollongong Thesis Collection Year 2007.

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