users to access said sibalbids will be invited for publicprivate partnerships to begin to load digital maps for various utilities already some mapmaking companies are in contract to develop urban maps which will be ready soon enough the pilot project on chandni chowk has shown that even crowded places can be accurately reconstructedthe government has also been able to finally sew up an agreement on standards for a metadata protocol that will allow information placed within various servers to be accessed by the nsdi centre at delhi and run through programmes which will allow individual and institutional users to utilise it there is now a grid to link different servers to the central nsdi computer but while india has begun well with nsdi it has some concerns for one institutions that are to supply information are still not enthusiastic about it explains balakrishna who has worked closely with the formation of nsdi and also edits a magazine on geospatial datathese institutions are not even asked to list what information they have and what they are ready to share its left completely to their discretion dr balakrishna argues he gives the example of water resources data in india where states refuse to share it even with the centre at times the problem is large private interests can circumvent the system but public and smaller entities remain out of the loop he points outthe sharing of information through nsdi hinges on the new mapping policy which has been criticised for further complicating the process for accessing maps digital or otherwise the new mapping policy imposes a central transaction registry where anyone who uses and shares the map has to constantly log in and record details then the maps cannot be copied and used which restricts the real use of the maps by researchers and other groupsexperts aver that such restrictions are quixotic as all spatial data is easily available outside india reliance ada group bought imagery from ikonos a private satellite before the government made it mandatory for nrsa to be the sole supplier to any indian user of these highresolution images we did it before nrsa came in and therefore were legally allowed to explains k m jagdish of the reliance digital world groupdr mohammad irfan ullah at atree bangalore says its the smaller player the ngos and smaller research groups that will be scared of using data which comes encumbered with so much procedure and licensing wrangles those who have the money will manage nsdi is the backbone for sharing geospatial data and though issues of access remain it would be a big first step if reams of data under wraps in official files are brought out into the bright light of public scrutiny