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PSMA Australia Limited from collaboration to success 1992-2005

Creating a national dataset
During the 1980s there was a significant investment in the conversion of analogue maps and plans into digital format. Cadastral, topographic and administrative features were being digitised by all government mapping organisations, and users were starting to embrace this revolution in data management to improve operational effectiveness.

One such organisation was the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). The ABS undertakes a Census of population and housing in Australia every five years, a daunting task especially in an analogue environment. In the late 1980s some innovative Australian Surveyors-General had been advocating the benefits which could be gained by ABS from using digital mapping techniques, and the messages clearly were received by the ABS.

On 31 January 1992, the first meeting of Surveyors-General took place in Canberra, to discuss the possible creation of a “national dataset including the Digital Cadastral DataBase (DCDB) and selected topographic data”. Even at this early stage, there were institutional considerations which required resolution. It was agreed that:

These decisions provided the basis to move forward in creating the national dataset; participants resolved to proceed, and committed to supporting the venture.

Numerous meetings took place and correspondence exchanged in the early months, and on 1 May 1992 “Public Sector Mapping Agencies Australia” (PSMA Australia) lodged a competitive expression of interest with the ABS to provide mapping support for the 1996 Census, resulting from an advertised tender by ABS. There were three broad facilities and services to be provided:

  1. hardcopy field maps for collection purposes (ideally generated from digital spatial data)
  2. digital spatial data (both statistical boundaries and base map features) for the presentation and analysis of census and other ABS data (in both digital and hardcopy form)
  3. the means by which statistical boundaries may be updated.

The mission was not an insignificant task…

The acceptance of PSMA Australia as the primary supplier of data was not a foregone conclusion. In July 1992, the ABS advised PSMA Australia that as it did not address all of the ABS requirements, PSMA Australia would not be invited to tender, notwithstanding ABS’s preference for PSMA Australia data. Rather than lose the initiative, the consortium engaged the Land Ministers in July 1992, in Darwin, to gain their support and political leverage. In September 1992, the Minister for Conservation and Land Management NSW wrote to the NSW Premier, requesting that the Premier write to the Prime Minister, other Premiers and Chief Ministers, to ask them to reaffirm their Land Ministers’ commitment to PSMA Australia and the ABS Project. Although this correspondence never took place, it was an indication of the tenacity shown by the consortium in attempting to ensure success. Frenetic activity during this period resulted in proof of concept, data validation, hardcopy output examples, costings and specification. A few days before Christmas 1992, the ABS confirmed that PSMA Australia had been chosen to supply base map data subject to satisfactory contract negotiations. The consortium engaged a legal firm to prepare draft agreements between the lead agency, the NSW Government, and the ABS. The agreement to supply data to the ABS was signed on 8 June 1993.

It is worth noting at this point that this was a commercial agreement, for which ABS would pay $3.4 million to licence the data from PSMA Australia for the purposes nominated in the agreement. PSMA Australia therefore had seed funding to perform the wide range of activities needed to provide the facilities and services required. The payment schedule was $1.4 million paid in 6×6 monthly instalments commencing in July 1993, and $2 million paid in 4×6 monthly instalments commencing in July 1996.

The agreement also provided a small royalty return to PSMA Australia from the retail sale of CDATA96 products, and an annual maintenance fee of $100,000. In mid-1993 a permanent project officer was appointed to manage the project on behalf of PSMA Australia. The term “herding cats” comes to mind when recalling the difficulties experienced in attempting to align all stakeholders in the project. Engaging the “right” people in each jurisdiction, reaching consensus with them, and convincing them of the national benefits from cooperation was no mean feat. Each jurisdiction had different priorities, high level of ownership and protectiveness of their data, and differing levels of quality coverage and availability of data. Each jurisdiction provided costings to bring their data up to the proposed “standard”, and the consortium funded these activities for the common good, contributing some $1.5 million of the project’s funds towards data upgrade and integration.

Other costs were the project manager’s salary, legal fees, verification satellite imagery, meeting costs, consumables and contingencies. All members were apprised of the very tight budget situation, and the need to contain costs if the project was to be completed without a requirement to call on jurisdictions for supplementary funding.

Establishing the groundwork
Quarterly board of management meetings were convened, held in different states to enable local stakeholders to be engaged and be informed of the activities of PSMA Australia. Naturally there were utterances of disquiet from some quarters that the supply of data to PSMA Australia was a distraction, that the data may in some way be degraded by its incorporation in the national dataset, or that the custodian might lose the intellectual property rights of their data.

During the organisation’s establishment phase, these, and a host of other issues were debated vigorously. Some of these issues were:

It is a credit to all members that all issues were resolved without dishonour or animosity.

Formal meetings commenced in Sydney in February 1993. Deliberations were recorded, and copious minutes produced. Progressively the organisation’s governance was refined, and terms of engagement understood and adhered to.

It was during this time that the private sector showed interest in gaining access to the national dataset, and discussions commenced with one organisation who wished to become a value-added reseller of the national digital dataset. Commercial reality brought a new set of issues to resolve: licensing, pricing, restrictions, data supply, maintenance and so forth.

Whilst PSMA Australia was focussed clearly on satisfying its contractual obligations with its primary client, ABS, parallel activity was being undertaken with potential private sector clients. It was becoming clearly apparent that PSMA Australia was obliged to establish mechanisms to make the data available for many other applications and innovators.

Expanding and incorporating
In July 1997 PSMA Australia signed its first Value Added Reseller (VAR). This marked the beginning of PSMA Australia’s delivery of national datasets to end users via a value adding supply chain, and a four year transformation into a governments-owned company, focussed on the assembly and distribution of framework national geospatial datasets.

The scope of this transformation was defined by a comprehensive management and structure review of PSMA Australia which included options for the future development of the organisation. These options were considered by PSMA Australia and the Australia and New Zealand Land Information Council (ANZLIC) and the option adopted was to form PSMA Australia Limited – an unlisted public company limited by shares and owned by the governments of Australia.

The advantages of such a structure were seen to be:

While the decision to corporatise PSMA Australia was made in December 1997 and endorsed by Ministers in early 1998, PSMA Australia continued to operate under the 1993 arrangements while the documentation (establishment agreement and company constitution) were drafted, reviewed by the nine governments involved and ultimately signed off.

Five years after the decision to develop PSMA Australia as the vehicle to coordinate the assembly of and facilitate access to fundamental national geospatial datasets, PSMA Australia Limited was incorporated in June 2001.

The key aspects of PSMA Australia Limited are:

As with all companies, appropriate governance arrangements were established, and board protocols determined. PSMA Australia decisions are made by consensus, and vigorous debate is encouraged around the board table. To assist in the development of options for board consideration, committees of directors operate to consider technical, audit and operational issues. Technical experts are engaged to assist committees as appropriate, and workshops of stakeholders convened to source input into evaluating opportunities for extended or enhanced datasets or themes.

Linking supply and demand
In Australia, prior to the availability of the PSMA Australia national datasets, the supply chain for spatial data was fragmented. Geospatial information is by and large available via the mapping agency in each of the states, territories and Commonwealth. While the markets for geospatial products and services remain contained by the borders defining these jurisdictions, the local mapping agency was able to meet demand. However as markets expanded it became necessary for organisations to negotiate with multiple government mapping agencies to access the geospatial information necessary to meet the demand. The market rapidly expanded to include the whole of Australia, and organisations found the task of negotiating data access and pricing with the nine governments complex and time consuming. Added to this administrative burden were the technical difficulties associated with integrating disparate geospatial datasets – various coordinate systems, varying accuracies, different data models and contrasting technologies and data formats. There was a geospatial information supply “bottleneck”. Without access to high-resolution national datasets, national products and services were difficult or impossible to offer. Indeed few if any organisations managed the task of negotiating ongoing access to all nine governments’ mapping data prior to the creation of PSMA Australia in 1992.

PSMA Australia is the crucial link between the supply and demand sides of the market. The organisation eliminates the difficulties of negotiating multiple licence agreements and the problems of integrating the data into a seamless consistent national dataset. Furthermore the existence of PSMA Australia minimises the duplication of effort within the market for organisations wishing to access national data.

The position held by PSMA Australia is a delicate balance. As a governments-owned company, it is not the intention of the organisation to compete with the existing industry players. On the contrary, the organisation actively seeks industry participation and support, and endeavours to be an industry stimulator of growth by ensuring the availability of critical and timely framework national datasets. To this end, PSMA Australia does not generally deal with end users but rather with organisations that develop products and services for end users through a process of value adding.

As noted previously, PSMA Australia does not receive any government funding and is required to ensure that its activities i.e. maintaining existing national datasets and investigating and developing new national datasets, are fully funded from data licensing and data supply contracts. This requires the organisation to define a data access and pricing policy that sets the data price not to maximise returns but to cover existing costs and projected future activities whilst not imposing a barrier to access.

Building and managing relationships
PSMA Australia is lean and focused. Its core business is not the manipulation of data. PSMA Australia is a collection of people, technologies and policies necessary to coordinate assembly of and facilitate access to national framework geospatial datasets. In reality, PSMA Australia’s core business is the management of relationships – relationships with data custodians, relationships with data managers, relationships with value added resellers and relationships with stakeholders. Without doubt, PSMA Australia’s greatest achievement is not so much its assembly of national datasets but facilitation of ongoing, high-level productive relationships with the nine governments of Australia responsible for the mapping of Australia. It is in this area of relationship development, partnership building and cooperation that PSMA has excelled. There is no secret formula, however those representing each of the jurisdictions do share a strong commitment to a common goal and enthusiastically espouse the vision of PSMA Australia and its importance throughout their jurisdictions.

For PSMA Australia, the principal objective is to facilitate broad, yet sustainable, access to PSMA Australia data. Partnerships with the private sector are encouraged and data distribution is facilitated through licence arrangements with VARs.

The basic principles underpinning the PSMA Australia Data Access and Pricing Policy are:

Pricing of PSMA Australia data reflects the value of each dataset in different applications. The intention is to ensure that high value products are reflected in the pricing matrix, whilst also facilitating opportunities to have the data used ubiquitously in low price digital products.

A dual fee structure applies to access to PSMA Australia datasets. Annual access fees and royalties are based on a matrix of data type, data volume, user applications, and number of users.

Making a significant contribution
The importance of geospatial information in decision making is well understood. Discovery of the appropriate information to assist in that decision making can be as much of a challenge as the decision itself. The concept of a geospatial data infrastructure is the means by which the appropriate information is discovered and employed in that decision making process. That mechanism is often described as a collection of people, technologies and polices. The infrastructure is the supply chain.

As seen in the Australian experience, the demand for geospatial information drove the assembly of national framework datasets and a mechanism by which to access them. PSMA Australia is a geospatial data infrastructure albeit one fashioned around traditional business concepts rather than the much espoused technological models.

The ultimate goal of PSMA Australia, even from its earliest days, is to make a significant contribution toward the achievement of the Australian Spatial Data Infrastructure (ASDI) through the assembly of standards compliant national datasets. Today this objective is embodied in the company’s vision – the creation of a national asset of comprehensive, quality and accessible spatial knowledge.

The challenge for PSMA Australia in the years ahead will be to not just continue to develop national datasets of significance to Australia and maintain those datasets, but to apply the advancing technologies to the development of its existing delivery mechanisms – the data infrastructure – to ensure greater availability and usability of the geospatial data held by the governments of Australia, and other appropriate sources.

The commercialisation of the “ABS dataset”, which had the cumbersome internal title of the Reduced Output Spatial Dataset (ROSD) first occurred with its incorporation by the ABS in its CDATA96 product on CD ROM. Discussions with the private sector eventually resulted in the dataset being licensed for value-added purposes. All licences were non-exclusive, and defined approved uses, terms, conditions, and mutual obligations. The revenue flows from Value Added Resellers has been growing steadily since 1997, and reflects the importance of accessibility to reliable data for this emerging market sector. The applications to which the dataset has been applied are boundless, stretching from handheld devices to full geographic information systems. Location based services are developing exponentially, far beyond any use which could have been envisaged when the dataset was created.

The board members decide annually on a work program for the upcoming year, which is predicated on the quantum of funds to be reinvested in new datasets, or distributed back to jurisdictions by way of royalty.

This cash flow has enabled PSMA Australia to scope and produce additional services and datasets to further populate and enhance the ASDI. A close relationship has been fostered between PSMA Australia and the Intergovernmental Committee on Surveying and Mapping (ICSM), and ANZLIC in the areas of national standards and strategic direction. This cooperation has further enhanced the national focus of the PSMA Australia “model”, ensuring that datasets developed have universal application.

Buoyed by the success of its initial venture, and the fact that the directors agreed to retain part of accumulated revenues to create additional national datasets, other products were scoped and market tested. As state and territory governments were custodians of the digitised cadastre, investigations took place as to how a national cadastral dataset might be created. Market research was commissioned through the private sector which lead PSMA Australia to scope a “reduced content” dataset, which would provide a graphical representation of all registered land parcels in Australia, with basic attribution which would facilitate access to the rich content held by jurisdictions. The dataset was named “CadLite®”, and its production through the private sector was entirely funded by PSMA Australia.

The PSMA Australia board of management had been scoping a geocoded national address file (G-NAF®) for some time. It was quite apparent from research undertaken that this would be an incredibly important dataset. The partner/scope/manage/achieve model was implemented, and initially it was intended that identified partners would contribute equal shares of funds to create the dataset. This was not an issue to any partners, however it soon became apparent that in this instance the future ownership of the dataset’s intellectual property was a difficulty. Also, as equal partners, several members wanted to become board members, and to lobby for design features which aligned most with their aspirations. PSMA Australia decided that these factors, especially the governance model, would create unnecessary complications. The board agreed to fund the creation of the dataset from retained earnings, thus ensuring that PSMA Australia retained the intellectual property exclusively, and the dataset design would be such as to optimise its utility to a majority of users. This did not eliminate the partnership model, however. Several key stakeholders agreed to provide their data to PSMA Australia to allow cross – matching and “cleansing”, on the agreement that improved quality data would be returned to them, for internal use by their organisation, at no charge. PSMA Australia was then in a position to license the dataset to other organisations according to policies developed and approved by the board.

PSMA Australia now offers five datasets comprised of 11 themes:

Delivering widespread benefits
By not competing with the private sector, and engaging with them to develop the industry, PSMA Australia has been supported in its endeavour and positively acclaimed. PSMA Australia is seen as the mechanism to unlock data held by governments in different formats and availability, and produced datasets which has facilitated the private sector’s business growth in existing and new markets. The private sector is incorporating PSMA Australia datasets in and ever-expanding range of business solutions in markets quite different from what was considered “traditional” only a few years ago.

Benefits to member jurisdictions have been significant. Data quality has been improved and passed back; technical workshops have been undertaken and knowledge shared; technology diffusion has been accelerated; software, systems and procedures acquired as a result of creating national datasets have been made available; royalties have been returned; and collaboration between states, territories and the Commonwealth has been enhanced immeasurably.

The forming/storming/norming/performing cycle has now been truncated to include only norming and performing. New ideas, datasets, models etc are debated and scoped with little dissent because of the understanding that has developed over the life of PSMA Australia. Board directors have been provided with professional development in corporate governance, and contribute collegiately to the effective performance of the company. The company does not call on member jurisdictions for resources, except the leadership of the directors. The PSMA Australia National Office is staffed by a small team of professionals, whose major challenges revolve around relationships building and project management. Operations are generally outsourced to the private sector. On the technical level, this includes dataset assembly, software development, product distribution, dataset management, quality assurance, research and marketing. On the management level, this includes human resource management, finance, audit, building leases, legal services and staff development. The office in endowed with state of the art policies, procedures, governance and performance management.

PSMA Australia Limited is now a vital component of the spatial information industry in Australia, and internationally. Several international VARs now access PSMA Australia’s datasets, and new or enhanced datasets are under investigation.

PSMA Australia is proof of the power of relationship building. It is a model which can be applied to almost any endeavour where the vision is based on a desire to collaborate to benefit all stakeholders.

1 + 1 can be greater than 2.

PSMA Australia Limited
December 2005