The use of GIS Maps could greatly help improve the frequency with which better decisions are made. It can minimize the irrational and unjustified demand regarding establishment of new school and providing financial support like MPO to non-deserving institutions. It makes geographical perspectives to education more readily available. Educational planning and scenarios are made simple through the map itself, assuming that an ocular visit to the area could not be made; information about the features are clearly marked with symbols or signs. Present and future requirements can be determined as one goes through the map including the appropriate and comprehensive characterization of the area and its relationship to the other features of the map.

Developing a GIS for education was a challenging task. BANBEIS took it up for these reasons or activities :

After deciding to build a GIS system for education for it's own, BANBEIS took several steps:

For a GIS system, building set of data fall into two broad groups: The set of spatial data, (e.g. location of schools, physical barriers, roads, rivers etc.) and the sets of attribute information (e.g. demographic statistics, enrolments, teachers, basic information of school, etc.).

Then how did BANBEIS collect/gather the Spatial and Attribute data of education? There are five recognized ways to obtain spatial data : getting the data in digital form from someone else, digitizing maps, scanning maps, translating satellite images and Arial photographs and by using Global Positioning System (GPS) to record co-ordinates on the ground. BANBEIS took the simple and economic way. It was mentioned earlier that BANBEIS developed a questionnaire for collecting data.

Attached to this questionnaire were a set of basic questions related to GIS Information. It collected hard copy and digital version of all rural thana maps mainly from LGED. From the field, each of the enumerator pinpointed the location of the educational institution of his enumeration area on the supplied hard copy maps. After the survey, BANBEIS started putting all the point features of educational institutions on the digital maps. It compiled all the location maps for each of the institutions. BANBEIS also digitized some thana maps which were not available. BANBEIS also used GPS for identifying accurate location of schools on sample basis. After establishment of GIS school mapping system for the post primary education institution in 2000. It has been updated annually to digitize new institutions. GIS school mapping system also integrated and linked with the Databases.

1. Identifying Computer Hardware and Software Requirements

In all aspects, BANBEIS has provided the basic inputs to the establishment of an Educational GIS.

BANBEIS is equipped with computer hardwares. From the early 80s, BANBEIS was computerized. In the MIS division of BANBEIS there are 3 (Three) PC servers with Windows 2000 Advance Server as operating system. These server are connected with a LAN of 126 Nodes. Now this division has about 40 PC's which are connected with LAN. There are 4 Network printer, 2 color Leaser printer, one AO size calcamp color plotter, one AO size Digitizer Board, One A1 size scan jet printer and one MAP copier.

For Server- NT 4.0 is running.

For the large volume of data processing, BANBEIS is using Oracle ai RDBMS software for back-end and for the front-end Developer 6i, Access, Visual Foxpro, SPSS, and others tools/ software. For the spatial data entry, data management and data analysis, it is using the most powerful and widely used software Arc/INFO and ArcView GIS from ESRI.

In order to use the GIS effectively, it needs to be placed in an appropriate organizational context.

Fig.11.1 Organizational Aspect of Educational Geographical Information System (EGIS)

It is simply not sufficient for an organization to purchase computer and its peripherals, more sophisticated software and to hire or retrain one or two enthusiastic individuals and then to expect instant success. To do this properly requires not only the necessary investments in hardware and software, but also in the retraining of personnel and managers to use new technology in the proper organizational context. For this, BANBEIS took various steps to train up it's officials. All the officers of the computer unit are trained in GIS programming and some of them are highly trained from AIT (Asian Institute of Technology. Bangkok, Thailand). All the operators and other officials from different offices, about 40 of them, attended the user training of Arc/View GIS organized by BANBEIS.

The benefits of GIS depend on linking different data set together. Information integration is the process of making different data sets compatible with each other, so that they can reasonably be displayed on the same map so that their relationship can be analyzed sensibly. BANBEIS built its database with relational databases structure so it is very easy to integrate one table to another and spatial and non-spatial analysis easily can be done. Through the ODBC ArcVIEW software can retrieve necessary information from Oracle server which is well running in BANBEIS.

School mapping for all rural and urban/metropolitan thana maps have completed and published reports on upazila infomaps. The upazila info maps are now available in BANBEIS in A3/A4/AO size, multicolored and easily understandable. Use of GIS Info maps are increasing regularly. Ministry of Education is the major user of Info maps for recognition and permission of a new institution. Different education Boards are also using Info maps in this regards.

BANBEIS has been updated the info maps from time to time. All post primary educational institutions has almost been be covered in school Info maps. Additional information will be added to make the databases more comprehensive. All educational institutions will be digitized by the help of GPS co-ordinate system. If the education managers/planners decide to collect additional data, the school Infomaps can be updated accordingly. Morevover, it will endeavour also to serve as the central depository of GIS information and production of Infomaps covering all the post primary education institutions. In this regard, BANBEIS has expressed its intention to the government to provide technical services to other offices under the Ministry of Education and also to MOPME. Now BANBEIS has taken the initiative to integrated GIS school mapping system (In PDF) and database with basic information in the web-site of BANBEIS. This will help to the potential users for their purpose. Inspite of these, BANBEIS requires technical assistance from different donor/international agencies to build its GIS with GPS survey and database system more comprehensive and upto-date and to establish an education data network system so that the users and policy makers can easily access through the GIS and Database system developed in BANBEIS.

Information collected from the post-primary education survey throughout Bangladesh have been processed in computer using GIS. The location of all government schools and colleges have been shown in the map of Bangladesh. As a sample output of GIS school mapping some upazila infomaps are presented herewith.