GIS management is a demanding yet rewarding career. GIS doesn’t come ready-to-use, right out of the box. Every GIS is a custom system built with data, hardware, software, apps, and a team of GIS professionals—each with their own role to play. The GIS manager is the glue that holds this system together.
GIS managers must focus on the ethics of their teams’ work and the industry as a whole. The GIS Code of Ethics—originally developed by the Urban and Regional Information Systems Association, or URISA (now the Geospatial Professional Network, or GPN)—requires GIS practitioners to be proactively ethical with regard to society, employers and funders, colleagues, the profession, and individuals.
It comes pretty naturally to be ethical toward employers and funders. But how should GIS managers address other ethical obligations?
The Hazards of Data Protection
People generally entrust money and power to government agencies so they can provide benefits and services to society and the individuals who live within it. Many GIS operations support these benefits and essential services. This means that many GIS departments manage large databases that contain lots of data about society, plus people’s personal information.
Danger abounds. Have you ever received a letter from a law firm stating that you are a member of a class action lawsuit? Put “largest 2025 data breaches” into a search engine or an AI-powered chatbot and see how many personal records were compromised. This happens to government agencies, too. A data breach can cost a local government millions of dollars. There are now consulting companies whose sole business is to advise agencies and companies on how to respond to data breaches and regain public trust.
A variety of national and intergovernmental regulations apply to GIS. The European Union has the General Data Protection Regulation that strengthens individuals’ data rights and unifies data protection laws. Canada has the Personal Information and Electronic Documents Act that regulates how organizations collect, use, and disclose personal information. And the United States has a variety of laws and agencies—including the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and the Red Flags Rule—that aim to safeguard personal data.
GIS managers, especially those who work in government, need to be proactive about protecting data. That’s where the Locus Charter comes in.
What the Locus Charter Is—and Why It Matters
The Locus Charter is a proposed set of international principles that support ethical, responsible practices when using location data. The charter’s 10 guiding principles enable organizations to commit to the ethical use of location data across all their activities.
The Locus Charter evolved from an initiative of the American Geographical Society’s EthicalGEO project called the Benchmark Initiative. Benchmark consisted of 10 workshops, held from 2019 to 2020, that brought together thought leaders from around the world to draft the Locus Charter. Launched in March 2021, it states:
The Locus Charter proposes that wider, shared understanding of risks and solutions relating to uses of location data can improve standards of practice, and help protect individuals and the public interest. We hope the Charter can improve understanding of risk, so those can be managed, and the many benefits of geospatial technologies can be realized for individuals and societies. “Locus” is the Latin word for “place.”
The Locus Charter proposes the following guiding principles:
- Realize opportunities
- Understand impacts
- Do no harm
- Protect the vulnerable
- Address bias
- Minimize intrusion
- Minimize data
- Protect privacy
- Prevent identification of individuals
- Provide accountability
These principles, if implemented and acted upon, allow GIS practitioners to meet their GIS Code of Ethics obligations to both society and individuals.
Who Supports the Charter, and Where There Are Gaps
GIS departments usually manage the largest databases and information systems for a typical local agency. GIS managers are in a strategic position to be agency leaders in establishing policies and practices for safeguarding data. The Locus Charter can be a great tool for elevating the discussion of data protection.
The Locus Charter Engagement Letter, available on the website, helps with this. An entity that signs the Locus Charter Engagement Letter commits to joining other Locus Charter supporters to
…promote responsible practice in the use of location data across all sectors including public, private, educational, and not-for-profit contexts. We seek to inform and improve practice across all scales including individual projects and organizational mandates.
Current Locus Charter supporters include the following:
- Professional organizations, such as the GPN, the Association for Geographic Information, EIS-Africa, OSGeo, the Open Geospatial Consortium, the World Geospatial Industry Council, and the Royal Geographical Society
- Industry leaders, including Esri UK, Albedo, and Celantur
- National government agencies such as Mexico’s National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI) and the United Kingdom’s Ordnance Survey
Even my little GIS consulting company is a Locus Charter supporter. But who is missing? Local and regional government agencies, plus state and provincial government organizations are lacking—even though they maintain large amounts of personal location data.
This is where the benefits of responsible location data management will have the greatest impact on society, including for you; me; and your friends, neighbors, and family members. This is not abstract—it’s local and personal.
The Call to Action
All GIS managers—especially those who work for government agencies—must advocate for and implement the Locus Charter across their organizations.
Who should sign the charter? Ideally, your agency’s leaders should sign. But if that’s not possible, you can sign it and join the Locus Charter community. This is the best way to ensure that you meet your GIS Code of Ethics obligations.
The Locus Charter offers a great way to start a conversation about data privacy with your organization’s chief information officer, your city’s mayor, the county executive, and your local council. Its guidelines make it easier to explain the potential pitfalls of tracking and holding people’s data and should convince organizational leaders that supporting the Locus Charter is good for their constituents and protects their administrations.
Locus Charter supporters meet online periodically to discuss their development of Locus Charter use cases, the wider adoption of the charter, and related activities. If you want to learn more, you can attend a meeting.
For more information about joining the Locus Charter as a supporter, or if your organization is ready to sign the Engagement Letter, email Ivana Mowry-Mora, the initiatives and special projects coordinator at the American Geographical Society, at imowrymora@americangeo.org.
I hope to see you at a future Locus Charter meeting.
