About WALIS

WALIS is a dynamic partnership of government agencies working with business, education and the general community to manage and promote the State’s geographic information.

Established by the WA Government in 1981, WALIS is responsible for coordinating across-government access and delivery of the geographic information held by WA Government agencies.  WALIS achieves this through committees and the WALIS Office.

The mission of WALIS is to build networks of people and technology to share land and geographic information, and to continually improve the data’s usefulness and accessibility.  Hence, WALIS is not a single centralised source of geographic data.

Click here to view the audio-visual file (What is WALIS?)

The WALIS Community

What Does WALIS Do?

Through WALIS we build networks of people and technology to share the power of geographic information and to continually improve its usefulness and accessibility.

WALIS also provides the framework that enables co-ordination of the State’s geographic information, and establishes policies and standards that ensure the effective management of this vast collective resource.

Above all, we are committed to making it easier for Western Australians to find and use quality geographic information over any part of the State for their own needs and interests.

The WALIS Office, the central hub around which most activities are organised, formulates strategies and produces general standards and policies for data management and access. It also provides core services – the WA Atlas and Interragator, which is the definitive land information metadata directory for Western Australia.

Formal membership of WALIS currently comprises State government agencies with representation from the Commonwealth and Local Government, and an increasing number of private sector organisations, industry advisory bodies and community organisations.

Government agencies traditionally collect high quality geographic information for their own needs and in so doing develop an immensely valuable resource for other agencies, business and the community.

The recent impetus on sustainability and other government policy initiatives is indicative of a growing requirement for social and economic information to be integrated with geographically related information.

Historically, WALIS’ activities have centred on land and land related initiatives within the government sector. However, with the recent impetus on sustainability and other government policy initiatives, there is a growing requirement for social and economic information to be integrated with geographic and related information.

WALIS Valuation Project

In 2004 Acil Tasman were contracted to undertake a project to establish the ‘Value of WALIS’ as part of the WALIS Valuation project.  The findings of the project are available here in PDF format WALIS Valuation.

WALIS History to 2000 and beyond

The history of the WALIS office and it's various incarnations up to the year 2000 gives an interesting insight into the way that the office runs today.  Since 2000 until present, the major emphasis has been on evaluating the WALIS office's role (see WALIS Valuation above) and developing the Shared Land Information Platform (SLIP).