The institutional issues are more complex since they cover the financial issues, 
the user requirements and the changing role of surveying and mapping agencies 
in the GIS/LIS environment. 
The main financial issue is the economic pressure placed on governments to 
reduce personnel costs, thus forcing them to embark upon rigorous and penetrat 
ing analysis of the activities performed by their departments and the costs incurred 
in performing them. 
The changing user requirements relate to the increasing demand for up-to-date 
maps and other information products under the pressure of urbanisation, the 
needs of resource exploitation and management, the development of agriculture, 
the protection of a livable environment and the need for security and political 
stability. Coupled to this is the increasing complexity that can be observed in the 
planning and decision making process and its greater decentralisation (more and 
more decisions taken at the level where the development takes place), leading to 
a requirement for more, faster, more current and more-to-the-polnt information on 
the one hand, and to more complex types of information (interrelations between 
information categories, consequences of actions) on the other. 
These demands are forcing surveying and mapping agencies to extend their focus 
towards the supply of geo-infonr»ation products, including traditional mapping. This 
requires firstly that agencies become aware cf the fact that they are in the informa 
tion business and not the surveying or mapping business and that they will have 
to go out and study v/hat users are doing and thereby anticipate what their infor 
mation needs are or will be. Secondly, national agencies must establish a rcie for 
themselves in the "information society" by, for example, acting as a focal point for 
the establishment of standards, monitoring that these standards are adhered to 
and coordinating the exchange of information between different systems. 
Finally, agencies must be aware that the usar community will expect the same ef 
ficiency and response to their geo-information queries as they receive in day to 
day life in telecommunication, banking, etc. 
More specifically, national agencies must adjust to these changed circumstances 
by: 
- learning to understand the nature of spatial data which other departments 
and users require and collect, process into usable information, inter-relate, 
and employ in the fulfillment of their mandates; 
- making available the cadastral, topographic, etc. data in such suitably struc 
tured forms that the work of other departments and users is facilitated and 
their temptation to engage in costly duplication of effort is minimised or 
preferably avoided.