ABSTRACT
Organisations are run by data; they collect them, analyse them and, from these analyses, determine how they might be run more effectively. In the 1980s, as more organisations adopted geographic information systems, it became known that the cost of the hardware and software needed for a GIS often represented only approximately 30 per cent of the final costs of implementing the GIS project; the majority of the budget was being spent on data collection and conversion. These percentages are changing as the commercial data market starts to operate efficiently in the GIS arena. The 70:30 ratio is now only representative of high value, low volume situations involving start-ups of operational systems such as utilities.
