Obstacles to efficient data-sharing in a digital land information databank

Abstract

Land data are being collected by different agencies at the Federal, State and local government levels. These data are expected to meet certain attributes e.g. accuracy, precision, currency, accessibility etc., to be able to serve the purposes intended. But, at these levels of collection and even within the levels, there are duplications and no particular standards or specifications. With the emerging technologies with various
accuracies and precisions, the enthusiasm in data-sharing is very high but certain things must be taken care of. An exploratory investigation into efficient data-sharing in a digital
land information databank was carried out. Our findings showed a lot of obstacles exist for efficient digital data-sharing. Such obstacles include: multiple and inaccurate control network, lack of feasibility studies, archaic nature of existing survey laws and regulations, poor enabling infrastructures and many others. These obstacles, it was found made datasharing very difficult. Digital data were collected and are still being collected in different formats both in terms of instrumentation and techniques. Therefore, for efficient datasharing, some of existing laws and regulations should be up-dated, multiple and inaccurate reference framework must be corrected and unified. Also, Nigerians must change their present behaviour and be filly disposed to reforms in the system.