First this presentation will review national and global trends in spatially enabling government. It will highlight the growth, use and importance of spatial information and the spatial industry in a period of economic downturn.

It will discuss some of the major challenges facing government in becoming spatially enabled, such as the need for national data sets based on an aggregation of state and territory data, the importance of land administration and parcel information in spatially enabling government and the challenge to integrate land administration data within a spatial data infrastructure.

The presentation will then take a broader view to highlight the role that spatial information plays in supporting sustainable development and globally the Millennium Development Goals of the United Nations.

The presentation will finish with a brief description of how the Centre for Spatial Data infrastructures and Land Administration at the University of Melbourne is addressing these challenges through collaboration with government and the private sector, from a research perspective.