In 1994, the Remote Sensing Section of the Survey Department with the assistance of the Swiss-Sri Lanka Remote Sensing Project conducted the first National Seminar on Geographic Information Systems on 15th and 16th March 1994 at ARTI Auditorium in Colombo. At this national seminar on policies on spatial data, which was attended by the then Hon. Minister and a large number of top Government officers and University staff, the idea to create an Inter Agency Committee was first discussed. It took quite some time to clarify which Department was to take the lead in this, but finally a paper on it was submitted to the Cabinet later, in 1996. The Cabinet approved the formation of the Inter-Agency-Committee and gave it a mandate to coordinate the GIS activities under the Ministry of Agriculture, Lands and Forestry. However not much headway happened on this Inter- Agency Committee and unfortunately this was not pursued. 04-05-2017