18th
November 2021 is the World’s GIS Day. I knew about GIS day at the first time
when I came back from Indonesia in 2008. After being admitted to work for the Ministry
of Public Works, I went to know a Japanese advisor working at the Land and
Property, Ministry of Justice. I forgot on what occasion we became friends. I
was a fresh graduate at the time, so I took part in every event voluntarily for
the sake of learning after college. The advisor invited me, along with other
friends from government organizations, to prepare for the first GIS day in
Timor-Leste. At that time, the event was mostly organized by internationals
because the UN mission was still here in Timor. I think the GIS day was then being exposed to
public regularly thereafter.
This year, the
Ministry of Planning and Territory (MPT) where I am currently working at took
initiative to hold the 2021 GIS Day seminar after a long stop since 2009. The
MPT is a new Ministry, and it has responsibility of doing spatial planning
activities. So it is so much related to GIS. The event was organized by MPT,
specifically, from National Directorate of Geospatial Data. They are the
experts of GIS and other mapping stuff.
One of the
objectives of this year’s seminar is to gather GIS users from different
organizations to share thoughts, and ideas in order to establish NSDI (National
Spatial Data Infrastructure). According to the GIS experts talking in the
seminar, NSDI is very important. By the way, I need to learn more about what NSDI
is, and how it is related to spatial planning because I don’t know much about it.
As a GIS
user, I also participated in the seminar by presenting our Land Use Survey results
(Center of Dili Existing Land Use survey). We utilize GIS a lot in our surveys.
That is why our project is relevant for the seminar. Other presenters came from
Institute of Petroleum and Geology, Directorate of Statistics, Land and Property,
Ministry of Agriculture, National University of UNTL, and so on. The number of
participants was quite big compared to previous GIS day events that I have experienced.
Personally,
I thank the organizers because they prepared the event pretty well. There were
many participants from various organizations. The venue and the foods were LUXO.
I think I would like to see a better and more eventful GIS day in the coming
years. Particularly, actions of NSDI establishment should start now.
*Hope this
gives you an inspiration.
