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The leading role of National Mapping Organisations (NMOs) is becoming less obvious as a result of unavoidable changes in their environment. One aspect of these changes is the growing interest in connecting and sharing distributed databases by means of a geospatial data infrastructure (GDI). Data users with access to this infrastructure - presumably via the World Wide Web - will be able to compare the products of various data producers, for instance by cost or quality. This implies that the NMO core data are no longer the only authority in this area. Still, NMOs have an opportunity to anticipate these changes and to play an initiating role in setting up a clearinghouse for a country's base data.
The chapter presents an exploratory inventory, by examining whether NMOs maintain a homepage on the WWW at all and, if present, by evaluating the topics presented on the web site. This inventory is compared with today's interactive and dynamic cartographic options the WWW has to offer. NMOs can use web maps as an index to both paper and digital map products; as the result of search actions for geographical objects, for instance with the help of an interactive gazetteer; as a guide to the geoinformation infrastructure; or, for instance, as promotion of services for customised data supply.
Currently, many NMOs in Europe, America, Southeast Asia and Oceania appear to be active on the WWW to some extent. Obviously, this map resembles a pattern equal to the global distribution of Internet users. From the web sites explored it is obvious that the web maps in use are all without exception either 'static, view only' or 'static, interactive'. Dynamic maps are hardly present - and if they are, then they serve demonstration purposes only.

Last updated April 16, 2002