Towards a governance assessment framework for geospatial data: A policy coherence evaluation of the geospatial data policy in Flanders

Abstract. Governance Assessment Frameworks allow the identification of implementation bottlenecks and they can propose answers to the identified challenges. However, no assessment framework has been developed to 1) understand how governance factors can affect the development and use of geospatial data (GD) and 2) to allow comparison across different governance contexts. Previous research proved that GD and governance are highly interrelated. Understanding the relevance of policy coherence, and aiming to address the aforementioned gap, we propose the Coherence Assessment Framework for Geospatial Data (CAFGD). CAFGD objective is to contribute to the GD governance literature from an implementation perspective. CAFGD is based on two existing frameworks: 1) the Framework to Support Institutional Arrangements in Geospatial Information Management (FSIAGIM) (Crompvoets and Ho, 2017, 2019) and 2) the Governance Assessment Tool (GAT) (Bressers et al., 2016a). CAFGD uses as governance dimensions the seven structural instruments of FSIAGIM, classified under the hierarchy, market and network governance approach and uses as evaluative quality coherence from GAT. In order to demonstrate the application of CAFGD, we have selected the region of Flanders in Belgium to analyze its GD policy coherence. Our results conclude that coherence is higher in the instruments related to hierarchy. Therefore, coherence is higher among the public sector actors when comparing with the private sector actors. The relation to this sector corresponds to the market and network instruments.