Evaluating the performance of large scale SDIs: two contrasting approaches

In the last couple of years there have been two very different attempts to evaluate the performance of large scale spatial data infrastructures (SDIs). The first of these was in the United States of America where the Coalition of Geospatial Organizations (COGO), a consortium of professional organisations, set up an expert panel to produce a report card of the performance of the US NSDI. The second evaluation was in the European Union where the European Commission carried out its own evaluation of its Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe (INSPIRE) Directive the requirements of the European Commission. The main features of these two contrasting approaches to evaluation are described in the opening sections of this paper while the final sections consider the similarities and differences between the two outcomes of the two exercises and put forward a simple typology that can be used in other evaluation studies of the implementation of large scale SDIs.