Geographic administrative areas data discussion group

What are administrative areas?  They go by different names in different places, but examples are provinces, regions, districts, counties, sub-counties, municipalities, townships, constituencies, wards, villages.  They are often arranged in hierarchies.

What is the relevance of administrative areas for development?  Administrative areas are important for accountability and governance, with sub-national elected councils, elected representatives and appointed officials responsible for developments in their area, and accountable to people in that area.  They are important for data – data in sectors such as education, health, water, sanitation, agriculture and land-use is often collected by area, organized by area and presented by area, by citizens, government, statistical agencies, development partners, civil society and researchers.  Development indicators and targets can often include administrative areas – for example a target of one health facility per village. Administrative areas can be an important tool for data visualization and mapping – they can help data come alive and be understandable through colour coded maps based on administrative areas.

What are the problems and challenges?  In many countries, simply getting lists of the current administrative areas is a problem, especially going down to the smaller areas.  Then, even when lists are available, it is not easy for stakeholders to get the boundary data (shape files) which are needed for display of data in maps.  In many countries, the administrative areas change frequently, for example boundary changes, areas being split up or merged, and areas being moved from one “parent” area to another, and it is difficult to keep up with updates and compare data over time.  Sometimes the administrative area structure is different, or is coded differently, across different sectors in the same country.  Even contact details of public representatives and key officials of administrative areas would be useful for governance and accountability purposes but not always easy for citizens, or even other parts of government, to access.

What are the ICT aspects of this ? These problems can make life difficult for ICT4D practitioners.  Administrative area data is often a key input into software applications and data systems, and in the absence of up-to-date, accurate, lists and boundaries, software stakeholders end up wasting time trying to find this data.  Different software ends up with inconsistent and outdated administrative area data, which makes comparing and combining data from different systems and sources very difficult.  It is very difficult to display trends over time without data on which administrative area changed when.  A lot of potential for displaying data in easy-to-understand maps by administrative area is lost by the difficulty in obtaining boundary data (shape files).  Maps and data sets which contain “points” for example health facilities, schools or water points have to be manually worked on to figure out the administrative areas the “points” fall into, particularly when there are changes.

A vision for a way forward

Here in Tanzania, the Government and stakeholders have been discussing this problem and are now proposing an “administrative area registry”.  This would be a publically available data set on administrative areas, including hierarchies and lists of areas, coding systems, boundary data (shape files) and key contact details.  It would be accessible to the general public (human beings) but also to software which could “subscribe” to updates via an API.  It would store a history over time enabling data-users to analyse trends in their data by area.  The key challenge here is not producing this list, or making it available, on a once-off-basis (which has been done before), but maintaining it over time, and ensuring that governance processes are in place to update the registry whenever changes are made, to correct errors as they are identified, and to evolve the accuracy of shape files over time.

A request from the ICT4D community

Here at PATH, we are focused on the health sector, but aware this this is an issue which is broader than health, and interested in getting wider-than-health perspectives.  We would like to start a discussion group on this issue in collaboration with the Digital Impact Alliance (DIAL).  Have you experienced these issues in your work and in the countries you work in?  Can you give examples?  Is this not a problem in your country, and if so, can you share best practices?  Are there any initiatives in your country to solve these problems ?  Who are the key institutions and what are the governance processes in this regard?  And from the ICT side – what useful open source software platforms are there out there which could help solve these problems?  Are there software and GIS groups out there already working on this problem? 

Please get the ball rolling by posting a message to the group introducing yourself with your thoughts on the above issues !  Thanks for your participation !