At its tenth session, the United Nations Committee of Experts on Global Geospatial Information Management (UN-GGIM) noted the global significance of the Integrated Geospatial Information Framework (IGIF), which serves as a key umbrella for the many activities under the purview of the Committee of Experts, including the regional committees and thematic groups of UN-GGIM, which could be applied to any country to guide transformational change, and which would be a living and usable document to be reviewed and refined through an iterative process, on the basis of the practical implementation experiences of Member States. In making decision 10/103, UN-GGIM at its tenth session, endorsed the establishment of a dedicated high-level group of experts, with balanced geographical representation and expertise, as a mechanism to provide strategic leadership, coordination and oversight in order to ensure the sustained success of the IGIF, and to mobilize the resources necessary to maintain the momentum and refinement of the IGIF as a continuously evolving process.

The High-Level Group of the Integrated Geospatial Information Framework (HLG-IGIF) aims to: provide the strategic leadership, promotion, coordination, planning and oversight to successfully sustain the uptake and implementation of the IGIF; explicitly demonstrate the societal value and impact of the IGIF, and associated progress towards enabling the achievement of the SDGs; provide expertise and advice to assist countries in their implementation of the IGIF at the country level; and mobilize needed resources for implementation and to maintain the momentum and evolving refinement of the IGIF with Member States and other key stakeholders.