LEGALAND POLICY FRAMEWORK

The government of Bahrain has long recognized thesignificance of spatial information to the planning, governance of the nationand provision of public services. This has resulted in the formation of theNational GIS Steering Committee in compliance to the decree issued by the PrimeMinister in the year 2004. The GIS Directorate, CIO at the helm of theinitiative, with directives from NGISSC has taken several progressive stepstowards the implementation of Spatial Data Infrastructure in the Kingdom toaddress the issues pertaining to geospatial data, standards, copy right,licensing, data liability, data security, 5 cost coordination and recovery.BSDI is aligned with the Kingdom’s broader policies rather than just immediateproblem solving and supports Bahrain 2030 vision in developing a world classinfrastructure links to Bahrain Global economy. A strategic plan was developedwith a purpose to "Implement Bahrain Spatial Data Infrastructure (BSDI) bycreating the national GIS data clearinghouse and foster the development of afully integrated GIS system".

The following specific steps are being conducted:

·Prototype implementation

 ·Building on the Foundation

 ·Strengthening the Community There is a significant level of co-dependenciesamong the components and tasks.

 These hasbeen identified and reflected in the development of the plan refinement and anassociated work breakdown structure (WBS).

 A phased planis conceived, as follows:

Phase 1 - Initiation (June 2004 to June 2005).

Phase 2 - Building on the Foundation (June 2005 toJune 2007).

Phase 3 - Strengthening the Community (June 2007 toJune 2009). 6

Phase 4 - Creating a unified and integrated NationalSpatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) that supports all Governmental andNon-Governmental bodies in Planning, Decision-making and day-to-day management(2009 – 2011).

Phase 5 - Fully operational SDI database satisfyingPublic & Private Sector end users (2011 – 2012).

Phase 6 - Increasing role of Private Sector inGeospatial domain (2012 – 2013).

Phase 7 - Operational cost recovery (about 40%, 2013– 2014).

Phase 8 - New Bahraini citizens qualified graduatesto supplement market needs in GIS (2014 – 2016).

The fundamental policies that has been documented inthe “Bahrain Data Exchange Policy” and that relate to the access anddistribution of Geospatial data for the Kingdom of Bahrain includes thefollowing

 ·All geospatial stakeholders and users should have easy, efficient and equitableaccess to fundamental datasets through the BSDI portal where technology, dataformats, institutional arrangements, location, costs and conditions do notinhibit its use.

 ·Highly specialized data of a sensitive or proprietary nature may not be madeavailable to all stakeholders. It would be the responsibility of the Custodianto mention these details when sharing data. Sharing of these data may howeverbe subjected to copyright and licensing restriction while distribution withprior consent from the Custodian.

·Data produced and shared by Government Organizations should be made availableto all other Government Stakeholders free of charge. For Private entitiesrequesting access to the kingdoms spatial datasets, a reasonable fee may belevied on data sharing.

 ·Commercial data including satellite images would be procured by CIO and wouldbe provided free of charge to all Government Entities participating in BSDI.However a reasonable fee decided and approved by NGISS would be charged toprivate organizations that require access to these data.