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fig- 1: Model of the key functions in a production organization for map and 
geo-information, including the major groupings of operations. 
As far as the GIS/LIS Courses and especially the Cadastre Course is concerned, 
the changes that have been incorporated since the first courses were run and 
which can be verified from the new course programme (enclosed as an annex to 
this paper) concern mainly the re-orientation of the emphasis of the course from 
LiS technology to LIS applications. This reduction in the emphasis on technology 
arises not only from the increased user-friendliness of the integrated systems 
available nowadays whereby less time is needed in learning how to use them but 
also from the perception that more attention has to be paid to the methodology of 
system design, and especially the optimisation of data structures to facilitate the 
extraction and manipulation of data by different user groups. 
Prerequisites for this are that more attention is paid to other GIS/LIS application 
fields, including urban planning, rural development, etc, and to the identification of 
users and the analysis of their information requirements. 
5 Future prospects 
The most important prospect is undoubtedly the introduction of an M.Sc.Course in 
LIS Cadastre next year, this in cooperation with the Delft University of Technology. 
A further important prospect is that of extending the present programmes towards 
decision support systems in multi-disciplinary environments. This will obviously 
also lead to a further integration of the three seperate courses, but also requires 
that considerable effort will have to be spent in developing geo-information theory 
such that the systems developed can tackle the problems faced in satisfying users 
information requirements.