Institutional & Organizational Barriers to Effective Use of GIS by Community-Based Organizations
Institutional & Organizational Barriers to
Effective Use of GIS by Community-Based Organizations
(Version 7/3/07)
Ann Margaret Esnard
ABSTRACT: This research was sparked by a general observation that community based organizations (CBOs) do not use GIS effectively for community and land redevelopment initiatives even when software, hardware, training, data, formal partnership agreements and access to GIS services are all in place.
A sample pool of CBOs was surveyed to gather information about their community planning and land (re)development work, staffing, missions, geographic boundaries, GIS capacity, and perceived barriers to effective use of GIS.
Several findings and barriers are reported in the paper, including lack of a mission statement that promotes use of IT use; difficulty in applying technology to existing projects; the mismatch between actual and known applications of GIS, and the ability of CBOs to survive without GIS. A revised GIS implementation framework focused on organizational capacity, context and analysis, instead of the traditional “hardware, software, data and people” components, is proposed in the final section of the paper.
