INTRODUCTION

The last decade of the 20th Century has seen the public sector in any part of the Asia Pacific soared in leaps and bounds towards office automation and computerization within their respective government departments. In Malaysia, particularly in Sabah, the government has responded promptly to the rapid development of Information Technology and Master Plan and committees have been put in place to ensure cohesive advancement towards greater IT development. One committee formed to play active roles in coordinating and ensuring that such goals are achieved in a specified time frame was the so-called SGDC (Sabah Geographic Data Coordination) working committee 1 . It has its roots in the State Remote Sensing Committee (SRSC) , which was organized in the 1990s and has been coordinating remote sensing projects statewide. SGDC was designated the role which encompasses all the issues related to the use of digital spatial data sets and its institutional implications. The mission of the committee is to provide the lead in the efficient and effective management and use of land information by:

• Addressing all land related, geographic or spatial based data issues that affects the state.
  
• Support and promote the development and implementation of a national geographic information guideline and standards.
  
• Providing a forum for the sharing of experiences in geographical information management.
  

The demand for data in any part of the world, Asia Pacific for that matter, geographic information market is growing as Geographic Information System (GIS) applications come into the mainstream, and economic development activities become more international and competitive. However, there is the lack of awareness of which data sets are available, the quality, and the means to obtain them. Without knowing which geographical data sets are available, data providers (typically government departments) tend to duplicate the data capture work at a high and unnecessary cost. Thus NaLIS ( National Infrastructure for Land Information System) Sabah has been conceptualized by Kementerian Tanah dan Pembangunan Koperasi (KTPK- Ministry of Land & Cooperation Development in Kuala Lumpur-Malaysia) , to construct an infrastructure to facilitate data sharing among the Land Related Agencies such will minimize cost and efforts in the capturing and maintenance of digital geographical data.

With these in place, NaLIS was established to address the aforementioned issues under the supervision of SGDC . With the dawn of the Internet, NaLIS is making full use of this advanced technology for users of Land Information to be able to get on-line real-time access to land information existing in the various ten (10) land related agencies using single window facility provided by the system through a network of computer systems that connects all these land related agencies and users of land information. Intergraph Corporation with its subsidiary reseller in Malaysia (Antaragrafik Systems Sdn. Bhd.) was endorsed the responsibility to develop the system in coordination with SGDC.

THE TECHNOLOGY

Currently, all data that is kept by the land related agencies exist in different computer systems and in different GIS platforms and formats. As such, Intergraph Corporation was endorsed to provide an Open-GIS platform/environment in order to enable users to share and use the data from these platforms. Data interfaces/standards were developed to enable these data to be communicated among them. With the interfacing and networking facilities provided under NaLIS, Users were able to browse through the data directory and data dictionary to select and request the information that they need from these different platforms of the land related agencies. The technology, Intergraph's GeoMedia Web Map, is built on an Open System platform that can evolve to meet the requirements of Users and the available technology. Meaning, it can adapt to the latest technology as and when they are made available (as spelled out in the Government Tender Specification). This is to ensure that Users can continue to use their existing system without having to migrate to another new system to ensure that the data, being the most valuable asset that existed in their systems, can continue to be used while taking advantage of the latest technology that is made available, like the Internet.

Intergraph's GeoMedia Web Map, being an Open-GIS software, provides the capability to connect 'live' to the Land Related Agencies' legacy GIS systems including:

• Arc/Info
  
• Arc/View
  
• MGE
  
• MapInfo
  
• Oracle (SDO)
  
• SQL Server
  
• Read the legacy systems' spatial and non-spatial data in their native format
  
• Extract data from the legacy system into Access spatial database

NETWORK & SECURITY

Since NaLIS is based on the Internet and Intranet environment, the challenge is to deliver the solution without compromising the security of the network.
All the Land Related Agencies (LRA's) were required to have a system that has the ability to control and manage the information entering and leaving their network. Protecting their network and the information it contains begins with a secure, scalable firewall that can provide for Virtual Private Network (VPN).
At the same time, the Windows NT operating system also provided a comprehensive security environment. Hence, it addressed some of the security issues to protect the system from unwanted activities. Having such a security system, the NaLIS (Sabah) is secured from unwanted activities and all the records are protected and accessed only by authorized group of people.

APPLICATION SOFTWARE SECURITY

At the same time, the system was designed in such a way that certain groups of people are only allowed to view and access certain land related records made available by all the Land Related Agencies (LRA's).

The WEB-based application was designed with a login page that will authenticate users for access rights verification. Contents of the menu, data directory and search facilities were customized to control access rights in a manner where the contents of the data varies between different User Category and Data Category subscription.

NaLIS IMPLEMENTATION GOALS

Under the NaLIS Project, ten agencies related to land were involved, namely:

• Lands & Survey Department
  
• Department Of Agriculture
  
• Department Of Forestry
  
• Town & Country Planning
  
• Roads & Transportation Dept.
  
• Department Of Fisheries
  
• Department Of Irrigation & Drainage
  
• Kota Kinabalu City Council
  
• Department Of Statistics
  
• Department Of GeoScience
  

The ten agencies, together with NaLIS, formed a special interest group on the Internet to allow continuous discussions on implementation issues and report of progress and events. A web-based mode was developed to generate these reports faster and better coordination.

All ten (10) land related agencies, under the NaLIS Project, captures and maintains land related data at very high accuracy and in large scale maps like 1:1,000, 1:2,500, 1:12,500, 1:25,000. This formed part of the so-called Natural Resources Data Hub, whereby control of access to these data are still bound to their own respective legal regulations for each of the ten (10) Land Related Agencies who holds the custodianship to their data, this is in line with the policy of NaLIS.

Therefore, to realize the goal towards the so-called Natural Resources Hub, the following are some points for thoughts deliberated by the committee:

• Direct Link To Ministries from individual Land Related Agencies:
  Ministerial level have links to the Land Related Agencies' data kept in the centralized data hub for more efficient reporting; decision-making and, of course, achieve a true paperless environment. For example, Lands & Survey department can link to Natural Resources Office for better and faster decision making on applications for state land and title lands, city planners can have easy access to the data hub for overlay of land parcel from the Lands & Survey department with their base maps for planning.

• Inter-departmental / Inter-Ministerial Linkages:
  Inter-departmental / Inter-Ministries Linkages are now non-exhaustive and also revolutionize the undesirable working system and culture such as overlapping approval of state lands, practiced by some of these Land Related Agencies. Again, having the infrastructure in placed, a one-stop payment center for collection of land revenue, assessment fees, utilities bills and other payments can be realized in a single stop for the public.
  

• Links to research Institutions:
  Institutions for higher learning can now have a greater interest in the data belonging to the government for research purposes. Local universities, like University Malaya Sabah, has coordinated many researches related to natural habitat and marine, and such linkages are facilitated in a more balanced views and gives the government feedback on whether a certain policy is most adequate.

• Allowing Public Access:
  Yes, we are now in a new generation whereby the public knows the power of information and is willing to pay for such access. For example, Lands & Surveys Department can now allow certain land parcel search on the land data and also allow submission/issuance of land titles electronically.
  

CONCLUSION

Though information age presents a new set of problems, challenges and issues that are never around before, with these infrastructure in place, all Land Related Agencies are now well equipped to face the challenges of the Internet era, able to communicate to the public in a more efficient and convincing style that may enhance public confidence to these land related agencies.