The effective implementation of SDIs requires governance, which includes the structures, policies, actors and institutions by which the infrastructure is managed pertaining to decisions made for accessing, sharing, exchanging and using the relevant available spatial information. While SDIs themselves are considered as initiatives contributing to good governance or effective governance, a key challenge in the establishment of SDIs is the governance of the infrastructure itself. Governance of SDIs is essential for the implementation of different SDI components in a coordinated and consistent manner. The central challenge of governance is reconciling collective and individual needs and interests of different stakeholders in order to achieve common goals. This aims to reduce gaps, duplications, contradictions and missed opportunities in the production, management, sharing and use of the information that tend to occur in a multi-stakeholder environment.
Governance can be facilitated through the use of appropriate instruments which extend to various levels of government and take into account the distribution of powers and responsibilities among different actors and institutions with an interest in the infrastructure. The governance instruments should coordinate the activities and contributions of, inter alia, data producers, users, added-value services providers, and other stakeholders. More complex and inclusive models of governance are required to cope with the multi-level nature of SDI implementations of the current generation of SDIs. Effective and inclusive SDI governance structures are needed, that are both understood and accepted by all stakeholders. Governance of SDIs also requires expanding the scope of stakeholders to include the private sector, research bodies and other actors outside the public sector including citizens, to actively promote bottom-up and participatory processes, and to find the appropriate mechanisms and instruments to enable the participation of these non-government actors.