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FROM “BUILDING CAPACITY” TO “BUILDING ON CAPACITY”
- Towards an international network for capacity building in geo-information science and earth observation -
Sjaak J.J. Beerens
International Institute for Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation - ITC
P.O. Box 6. 7500 Enschede
Tel. + 31 53 4874225 Fax: + 31 53 4874200 E-mail: beerens@itc.nl
THE NETHERLANDS
KEY WORDS: capacity building, joint education, accreditation, quality assurance, international cooperation
ABSTRACT:
Since the founding of ITC in 1950, its capacity building activities through educational programmes. delivered in the Netherlands.
have served almost 16,000 mid-career professionals from over 160 countries. In response to changing international conditions and an
increased need for flexibility in post-graduate education among its target groups, ITC has continuously upgraded the contents of its
educational programme. In addition ITC has also continuously changed its education delivery policy. More recently a new strategy
has been initiated, transferring part of the delivery of the educational programmes to the home countries of ITC's clientele through
joint educational programmes with qualified partner organisations. In doing so, ITC aims at developing a global international
network of educational organizations that accept and accredit each other's education. The network, which currently includes six
partner institutions - and countries (besides ITC) with joint programmes conducted partly in these countries and at ITC in the
Netherlands is to cover about 20 partners in 2010. One of the main challenges ITC faces with these joint programmes, is to maintain
quality standards at the same level as applied in the Netherlands for ITC's regular programme, while simultaneously meeting the
national criteria of its partners. From the start of these joint educational programmes onwards, quality assurance measures are
incorporated; during the development of the curricula, the training of trainers, establishment of assessment criteria, exchange of
lecturing staff and joint assessment during and upon completion of the programmes concerned. The latest stage in these efforts is the
establishment of a network of multilateral equi-partnerships called GI-NET. Preliminary assessment has shown that this strategy is.
from a financial-economic point of view, more efficient for both the Dutch Government and participants (and those who fund their
participation in ITC's programmes).
1. INTRODUCTION 1.2 Changing instruments
1.1 The ITC mission Initially ITC's efforts were directed at individual candidates
(with a number of years of professional experience — so-called
ITC was established in 1950 with the primary aim to build mid-career professionals). Efforts then gradually shifted to
capacity in remote sensing techniques and applications for the
purpose of economic development of the then still referred to as
"developing world".
The main instrument to do so has been through an educational
programme that addresses the capacity requirements in technical
and conceptual skills and land-related applications.
Achievements to date have been impressive. Since its founding,
over 16,000 mid-career professionals from over 160 countries
have graduated from ITC.
Figure 1 Countries of origin ITC alumni 1950-2003
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addressing the manpower requirements of entire professional
organisations. It became rapidly clear, however, that the
demand in terms of capacity requirements would never be met
by limiting capacity building efforts to the Netherlands.
Strengthening that capacity building capability in the recipient
countries themselves then became a major focus of ITC’s
activities.
A first initiative in this direction took place in India where in
1966 the Indian Photointerpretation Institute (IPI) was founded
by the Indian Government with support from ITC (d’Audretsch,
F.C., 1973, Sinha, Col. J.N., 1976). This initiative actually
originated from the personal contacts between ITC's founding
father (and former Dutch Prime Minister) Prof. Dr. W.
Schermerhorn and India’s former Prime Minister Pt. Jawahar
Lal Neru, who during a visit to the Netherlands in 1957 became
so impressed with ITC that he decided to start a similar
initiative in India. IPL since renamed as Indian Institute of
Remote Sensing (IIRS), is one of the best-known institutes in
Asia that caters for the needs of both Indian organisations as
well as those of other Asian countries.
Similar initiatives followed in among others Nigeria, Colombia.
Indonesia and China to form the ITC sister institutes. By 2000
the network of capacity building institutions associated with
ITC one way or another had grown to over 20.
