Mr. Colin Bray:

It was a number of factors. The justification on the Prime2 project was threefold. One was sustainability. As an organisation we are one of the most technologically advanced national mapping agencies in the world. We have been within the digital environment for close on 30 or 35 years. The standardisation of that digital database for the State, conceptually, was nearly 30 years old. As a national spatial platform it was coming to end of life. From a sustainability point of view, therefore, we needed to create a new industry-standard database which will be one of the forerunners within Europe. That enables us to create new products and services from that.

The second factor was productivity and efficiency. Because the system is standards-based and a single data holding - a combination of three existing databases - we have been able to rationalise maintenance flow lines. We have been able to reduce the amount of effort required by us in maintaining that database. That is the justification for that.

In terms of business growth, we now have an opportunity to create products we could not have created heretofore, including detailed road centre line products and enhanced web services. In terms of web service provision, this involves provision by us of digital information as a service over the Internet. By removing the overhead from the end user, they are able to access, stream and use our data. The functionality and detail of that web service is dependent on the quality and intelligence of the data with Prime2, which enables us to do far more in this environment. Enhanced opportunities and revenue from web services is-----