Journal of Global Positioning Systems (2004)
Vol. 3, No. 1-2: 242-250
GNSS Coordination at the National Level: the Australian Experience
Donald H Sinnott
Department of Transport and Regional Services, Canberra ACT, AUSTRALIA
e-mail: [e-mail] Tel: + 61 8 8264 4515
Received: 15 Nov 2004 / Accepted: 3 Feb 2005
Abstract. In May 2000 the Australian Minister for
Transport and Regional Services, advised by his
Department, established a non-executive stakeholder
body, the Australian GNSS Coordination Committee
(AGCC), with terms of reference aimed at national
coordination of GNSS application. This initiative
responded principally to perceptions of potential for
economies and efficiencies from national-level
standardising and investment-sharing of equipment and
services, especially in GNSS infrastructure and
augmentation. In the event, in its first three years the
AGCC was little able to exert significant influence in
such market-driven areas. Rather, it successfully
developed for government endorsement, in August 2002,
a wide-ranging national GNSS policy and also addressed
priority applications issues concerning GNSS jamming
and interference, spectrum licensing, legal
positioning/timing matters, and national and international
connections, including with GPS and Galileo program
management. Following a performance review in 2003
the AGCC’s mandate was extended to 2006, with revised
terms of reference. This paper critically examines the
experience of the AGCC in national-level coordination of
GNSS application. As in many countries, Australia does
not control sources of GNSS signals and applications are
pervasive within a free-market economy. No single
government agency or industry sector has general GNSS
control or policy mandate. The degree to which, in this
environment, a non-executive body like the AGCC can be
effective in its role is discussed. The experience and
future plans of the AGCC reported in this paper raise
topics of relevance not only for Australia but for other
countries as well that seek a degree of national
coordination and efficiency in GNSS application
Key words: Coordination, Australia, national,
government, jamming.
1 Introduction
The Australian Global Navigation Satellite Systems
coordination Committee (AGCC) was established for an
initial three-year term by the Deputy Prime Minister and
Minister for Transport and Regional Services in May
2000. Its establishment came from work of an interim
committee that researched the value of having such a
body of GNSS stakeholders able to advise government on
cross-sector issues relating to the uptake and application
of GNSS in Australia.
There were multiple motivations for the establishment of
the AGCC and these have mostly proven enduring over
its initial term and into what is now the first year of its
second term. As is outlined below, the AGCC has found
more tasks than it has resources to address and new areas
for consideration continue to be added to the AGCC’s
interest-list, with current considerations such as Galileo,
GPS modernisation and the relentless development of
GNSS applications technology raising a series of issues
of national importance to Australia.
The most visible outcome of the AGCC’s first term was
the drafting of a significant national policy document,
Positioning for the Future, (AGCC, 2002) which the
Minister released in August 2002. The policy document
was developed by a team established by the AGCC that
canvassed all major stakeholder groups and Federal
government Departments for concurrence before seeking
Ministerial endorsement and release. It is a challenging
and forward-looking document.
A description of the first three year’s activity of the
AGCC, structured against the major headings of
Positioning for the Future, was given at SatNav2003
(Sinnott, 2003) and will not be repeated in detail here.
Suffice it to say that, in addition to the focus provided by
development of Positioning for the Future, specific issues
of GNNS jamming and interference, spectrum licensing,
legal issues attached to GNSS reliance for position and
timing and international programs in GPS and Galileo
were major themes. Some commentary under these and

Sinnott: GNSS Coordination at the National Level: the Australian Experience 243
other headings follows in subsequent sections of the
present paper.
At the time the SatNav2003 paper was prepared a formal
external review of the AGCC was under way but its
findings were not available. The review was released in
mid-2003 so now, a year on, it is timely to reflect on both
internal and external perceptions of the AGCC’s
performance and its potential for the future.
2 Maturing of the AGCC’s terms of reference
The initial terms of reference for the AGCC have been
revised to some extent as a result of the review of 2003.
To some extent the revisions were a reflection of
experience and an assessment of what is reasonably
possible to expect from such a group. But the real
underpinning for any terms of reference must come from
the why and what questions – why is GNSS important to
Australia and what can a non-executive advisory and
consultant body deliver?
2.1 The GNSS market environment in Australia
A key factor on which the existence of the AGCC was,
and is, predicated is expectation of sustainment and
growth in demand for GNSS services in Australia. This
demand is in turn driven by important economic activity
for which GNSS is a crucial infrastructure element.
There are no readily accessible figures for market
penetration or projections for growth of GNSS in
Australia but some international comparisons are
informative. Based on figures developed by DSTL UK,
global sales of GPS-based products grew at a
compounded annual rate of over 30% from 1996 to 2003.
This growth projection is the economic driver for
European investment in Galileo.
Notably, the European market assessment is that personal
location services – mobile phones and in-car telematics –
will be a major component of GNSS growth projections.
In a recent European market analysis (Styles et al, 2003)
gross annual product revenues from GPS/Galileo enabled
mobile phones were estimated to grow from €23B in
2010 to €92B in 2020. In-car systems, currently a
negligible market, are estimated to deliver gross annual
product revenues of €40B by 2020. Location-base
services of these types comprise a sector largely
unexploited as yet in Australia. Past experience has been
that Australians are fast adopters of new technology so
modelling rates of penetration of new GNSS applications
on those of the US and Europe is broadly valid.
With the appearance of Galileo, and an increasingly
competitive market place for augmentation services,
some of the constraining features associated with current
GPS services will be set aside, thereby encouraging
further GNSS applications. Integrated GPS/Galileo sets
will have access to a combined constellation of over 50
satellites, providing high levels of accessibility, precision
and integrity as well as avoiding many of the current
issues attached to multi-path and restricted angles of sight
attending operations in urban environments. Advances in
GNSS user equipment and, potentially, higher power
GNSS transmissions will allow more reliable use of
GNSS in shadowed and indoor environments.
As projected globally, new markets in Australia in
personal location-based services can be expected,
including applications that rely on a higher tolerance by
the public for personal surveillance and localisation that
may be sourced in community concerns about
international terrorism. The penetration of RFID tagging
for freight and inventory control will, far from displacing
GNSS location logging, work in synergy with GNSS
technology where the inherent short-range nature of
RFID logging can be creatively augmented with the long-
range capability of GNSS/GSM position logging. And
while there have been some initial Australian moves to
exploit GNSS technologies to monitor maritime and land
transport vehicles (for example, the VicRoads Intelligent
Access Program, as described by Koniditsiotis (2003))
there remains far more scope for potential exploitation of
such technologies in Australian transport applications,
such as for tolling (Kallweit, 2003) and traffic congestion
management.
Further, the Australian market is as open as any in the
world so it is not expected that growth rates will be
impacted negatively by government controls: the
introduction and application of new technology is
essentially left to the free market. Australian federal
governments of any persuasion are unlikely to intervene
to constrain or manage penetration of a new technology
for reasons other than equity (as in guarantees for a level
of services judged to be a universal entitlement, such as is
the case for telecommunications) or civil rights and
privacy (as in prohibiting interception or jamming, again
by analogy with telecommunications).
There are two areas in which legislative actions may
work to encourage GNSS penetration in Australia.
• It is likely that, eventually, Australia may introduce
requirements on mobile communications carriers to
provide a means of localisation of emergency calls
made from mobile phones. In the US the E911
mandate and in Europe the somewhat softer
provisions of the E112 reporting requirements are
already driving industry to develop localisation
techniques, predominantly GNSS-based, and single-
chip GNSS receivers, costing less than $US10 in
bulk, for embedding in new generation handsets.
• A different type of intervention mirrors that of many
governments of capitalist economies, which promote

244 Journal of Global Positioning Systems
competition through means such as anti-trust
legislation and competition policy (as in Australia’s
Trade Practice Act). It can be expected that
Australia’s competition policies will remain
substantially unchanged and will continue to be
enforced with vigour. This is likely to have a
positive rather than constraining impact on growth of
GNSS applications.
However, it has also been pointed out (Perez, 2002) that,
historically, states act to standardise and consolidate
commercial practices in a technology regime once it has
encountered a mid-life turning point where rebalancing of
individual and social interests within capitalism is called
for. This is arguably typical of the current state of the
ICT revolution in which GNSS development is
established. On this basis, albeit circumstantial, the
possibility for some government involvement in
regulating or controlling aspects of GNSS application,
and thereby impacting market projections, cannot be
ruled out.
The conclusion of this sketch of the future is that
Australia can expect markets for GNSS technologies to
expand at a rate close to 30% pa for the next decade in a
free-market environment. While the Federal government
is unlikely to be drawn to intervene in this market-driven
growth there may be some areas where equity, security or
privacy issues, among others, could drive some
legislative intervention. It is in such areas where
government recourse to a body such as the AGCC, from
whence independent and balanced cross-sectoral advice
can be sourced, is likely to be critically important.
2.2 What can the AGCC reasonably be expected to
achieve?
Before passing on to more specific issues it is important
to underline what a non-executive body such as is the
AGCC can realistically be expected to achieve. Australia
does not control sources of GNSS signals and has no
realistic ambition to do so. It relies on the provision of
such signals by major countries and power blocks and
seeks to encourage applications based on this technology
that return national benefit within a free-market economy.
No single portfolio agency or industry sector has control
over GNSS applications or a specific policy mandate for
it in Australia (except that Defence has an agreement with
the US on military aspects of GPS and there are GNSS
implications in international aviation and maritime
navigation agreements to which Australia is party).
Accordingly, a body such as the AGCC has a quite
limited locus of control and must see itself as primarily a
consultative and advisory body. Nevertheless, as is set
out in what follows, it can fulfil a valuable role if its
advice is sought and valued on the basis of the informed
base from which it comes.
2.3 The AGCC business case – initial terms of
reference
In September 1999 an interim AGCC prepared a business
case for formal establishment of the AGCC. The interim
committee noted the fact that GNSS was in extensive use
in a wide range of sectors and, in particular, was finding
increasing application in multi-modal transport
applications in Australia. It pointed to the growth of
national and regional based differential GPS networks,
created by governments and their agencies as well as by
the private sector and industry throughout Australia, and
saw some national cost-benefit possible by coordination
of these burgeoning differential GPS systems.
The business case was much influenced by particular case
studies that focussed on the wasteful proliferation of real-
time differential GPS services. But it also saw benefits,
less well defined in economic terms, coming from having
an expert forum in the AGCC that could advise
government pro-actively on GNSS application areas
where government should play a role in policy and
standards frameworks. Radio frequency spectrum
matters were a particular case in point.
One weakness of the business case is that in most broad
sectors of GNSS application, such as transport, the
application of GNSS is against quite clear sectoral
objectives and it is not clear to those involved in such
sectors that there is benefit from wider coordination.
Thus, for example, while there was, and is, strong
evidence that there are substantial benefits in road
transport from greater application of GNSS technologies
it is less clear that a more widely-based coordination
body advising government would materially improve
outcomes in this one sector. There are already bodies like
the Australian Transport Council and Intelligent
Transport Systems Australia (ITS) that can be expected to
include in their purview relevant aspects of GNSS
application to transport. Similarly, the Department of
Defence might see itself as internally self-sufficient in
managing defence GNSS applications; its attitude to the
AGCC might well be more informed by the economy it
presents by allowing a single point of contact with key
representatives of civil users of a military system, GPS,
than by any expectation of increased defence efficiency
in GNSS application.
This background is encompassed in the forward-looking
statement made in the business case when leading into
describing a proposed work program. It reads as follows.
The proposed Australian GNSS Coordination Committee
(AGCC) will be a proactive Committee identifying areas
of GNSS use which can be managed better through a
nationally coordinated approach. It presents an ideal
forum for exchange of information with an international
flow-on. The Committee would provide information to,
and liaise with, Australian representatives on

Sinnott: GNSS Coordination at the National Level: the Australian Experience 245
international bodies, and would seek information
exchange from similar bodies. The Committee would
also look at gaps in the use of GNSS between the different
transport modes and how they can be overcome. The
range of skills and backgrounds which the members
would bring to the Committee would be compounded in
impact by the networking opportunities made possible.
2.4 The AGCC review – refining the terms of
reference
Establishment of the AGCC in 2000 was for an initial
term of three years so in 2003 an external review was
carried out. The review noted that the environment in
which the AGCC worked had changed considerably from
that foreseen in the initial business case. In particular,
just before the AGCC’s first meeting, selective
availability was removed from the GPS standard
positioning system signal, making many metric-precision
differential GPS systems redundant in terms of precision
improvement. With this was removed a major plank of
the initial “national efficiency” coordination role foreseen
for the AGCC. Conversely, the maturing plans of the
European Union for Galileo, barely hinted at in the 1999
business case, posed a new set of challenges in
developing a national position on GNSS in Australia.
The review noted that the AGCC had struggled to achieve
outcomes in some areas. These included its inability to
influence GNSS infrastructure, including augmentation
systems, standards, protocols and receiver technologies.
This in undoubtedly a true assessment and is is now
accepted in the new terms of reference that these are not
areas in which a major AGCC impact will be felt.
On the positive side, the review noted the substantial
outcome represented by release by the Federal
Government of a wide-ranging policy statement on
GNSS, Positioning for the Future, which had been
developed by the AGCC. Other areas in which the
Committee’s work was deemed effective was in
interference and jamming, legal issues, security for the
GNSS spectrum and information provision to the GNSS
user community. Each of these areas is addressed in
following sections of this paper.
The net assessment of the AGCC was sufficiently
positive for the review to recommend a further three-year
term for its activity. Proposed amended terms of
reference were then developed by officials of DOTARS
and the AGCC Chair, noting the assessments and
recommendations of the review, the experience of the
AGCC’s first term and the resources currently accessible
to the AGCC. These were put to the Minister with the
review recommendation for a further three-year term.
The Minister agreed with the recommendation for
extending the AGCC’s term to 2006, reappointed the
Chair and has formalised current terms of reference.
It is instructive to compare and contrast the original terms
of reference with those now in place, as the shift in
emphasis is in part the product of three years experience
in what is reasonable and feasible for such a body to
address. In particular, other countries in a similar
position to Australia – ie dependent on GNSS-derived
services but not having any vesting in space assets or
GNSS control – might gain some benefit from noting the
evolution in the AGCC terms of reference.
The following shows a comparison of the body of the
original (2000) and current (2004) terms of reference,
subdivided into clauses of convenience, which requires
some reordering of paragraphs to allow comparison.
(Some minor amendment to grammar, shown in square
brackets, of the 2000 version has also been effected to
allow more ready comparison, but without altering the
sense.)
Preamble to original (2000) Terms of Reference:
The AGCC will [function by] …
Preamble to current (2004) Terms of Reference:
The AGCC is the national advisory body to Minister for
Transport and Regional Services on issues relevant to
Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS). In
developing advice, the Committee consults with
Australian GNSS stakeholder communities, and is
informed by linkages with international GNSS providers
and authorities. The Committee provides information on
GNSS developments to Australian stakeholders, and
encourages the take-up of GNSS applications.
The Committee has a role in …
Clause 1, 2000 version:
consider[ing] and develop[ing] mechanisms to coordinate
all aspects of GNSS on land, sea, and in the air,
including:
- development and maintenance of a national strategic
policy towards GNSS;
- coordination of national infrastructure development
taking advantage of economies arising from multiple use
of common systems; and
- recommendation of direction for preferred GNSS
standards and protocols for use in Australia;
Clause 1, 2004 version:
- developing and facilitating national GNSS policy;
- harmonising GNSS standards and protocols to achieve
the potential economic and social benefits from
applications;
Clause 2, 2000 version:
promot[ing] the safe and effective utilisation and
development of GNSS in Australia, including through:
- promotion of GNSS user education and effective
information dissemination;

246 Journal of Global Positioning Systems
- an integrated approach to establishing mechanisms to
minimise the effects of interference to GNSS; and
- investigation of specific GNSS related issues through
the initiation and management of studies;
Clause 2, 2004 version:
promoting the efficient and effective development of
national GNSS infrastructure;
Clause 3, 2000 version:
coordinat[ing] national security issues and assist[ing] in
keeping users aware of GNSS developments and security
in all transport modes and relevant areas and provid[ing]
a forum for an exchange of information on receiver
technology and applications;
Clause 3, 2004 version:
- coordinating advice on national security issues as they
impact on GNSS applications by Australia;
- promoting the further penetration and application of
GNSS technology to all modes of transport where
efficiency, safety, environmental and other benefits can
be realised;
Clause 4, 2000 version:
Coordinate[ing] the application of augmentation systems,
particularly the provision of new augmentation systems,
taking advantage of economies available through sharing
common systems;
Clause 4, 2004 version;
deleted
Clause 5, 2000 version:
coordinat[ing] and influenc[ing] national and
international use of GNSS through existing
radiocommunications fora in Australia; and
Clause 5, 2004 version:
promoting and protecting GNSS spectrum management
interests and issues in national and international
radiocommunication fora;
Clause 6, 2000 version:
coordinat[ing] the national use of GNSS in other relevant
applications.
Clause 6, 2004 version:
- maintaining an informed understanding on the provision
and application of GNSS nationally and internationally,
through liaison with relevant authorities;
- providing advice on GNSS matters requested by the
Minister for Transport and Regional Services and
undertaking specific tasking referred to it by the Minister.
What is clear in this clause-by-clause comparison is that
the current terms of reference emphasise the participative,
consultative and advisory nature of AGCC operations
rather than promoting an unrealistic expectation that the
Committee will have the resources and authority to
intervene in market-driven areas in a significant way.
There is now a concentration on ends and an avoidance of
prescription of means. In particular, the focus on
rationalising augmentation systems, which played such a
major part in initial thinking about AGCC activity, is
significantly de-emphasised. All these changes reflect
the reality of the first three year’s operation of the AGCC
and provide some useful guidance to any other nation
contemplating a group similar in function to the AGCC.
What does carry over from the original to the current
terms of reference is a recognition of the importance of
networking through AGCC membership. There is no
other interactive forum in which GNSS stakeholder
representatives meet to compare notes on a technology
which is pervasive. In day-to-day operations there is
little reason for the geodesic community to touch base
with aviation services or defence, for example, yet
experience has shown that the AGCC’s linking thread of
GNSS has allowed valuable synergies and mutual
benefits to be realised for stakeholders from these sectors,
and others.
3 Significant AGCC outcomes
In its activity to date the AGCC has addressed a number
of significant issues and delivered some important
outcomes. A selection is described in what follows.
3.1 Licensing of GPS spectrum
The radiofrequency spectrum is managed in Australia
under the Radiocommunications Act 1992. The
Australian Communications Authority (ACA), which is
established by the Act, is responsible for planning,
licensing and technical standards for use of the spectrum.
Although GPS signals are widely used in Australia there
seemed, at the time of the AGCC’s inception, no
assurance that the spectrum used for GPS transmissions
would be protected and that, indeed, nothing stood in the
way of the ACA allowing other use of this spectrum in
accordance with its charter.
There were several options under the
Radiocommunications Act by which GNSS signals could
be protected. After study by the AGCC, including
referral to its Legal Issues working group and ACA
advisers, licensing of the primary in-space transmissions
has been achieved through having the Department of
Defence hold a space licence (a form of apparatus
licence) and covering receivers through a class licence.
These arrangements are now in place so that Australian
users of GPS services may rest assured that they have
free and unhindered access to GPS signals and that legal
remedies exist to prohibit incursions into this spectrum.
It might be considered anomalous that the Department of
Defence should, at significant annual cost to it, hold a

Sinnott: GNSS Coordination at the National Level: the Australian Experience 247
licence for civil GPS services when its access to the
military GPS signals is protected in other ways. While
Defence does have some requirement to access civil
signals its holding of the civil GPS signal licence is
primarily for benefit of the rest of the Australian user
community. For its part, ACA has a charter to charge
annual fees for spectrum licensing so the current
arrangement with Defence is no different from any other
commercial licensing arrangement. The AGCC has
reflected that, from the perspective of the Australian
taxpayer, it must be considered curious that two agencies
they fund are committing a good deal of administrative
time and energy to exchanging taxpayer money annually
to achieve such an obvious and long-term community
need. One might also have some concerns that, under
funding pressures, Defence might at some future time opt
to cease holding the licence and thereby leave the
spectrum unprotected. There seems a good case for some
minor legislative change to avoid this current unwieldy
and essentially unsatisfactory fix by an amendment to the
Radiocommunications Act and this has been tabled as a
recommendation from the AGCC’s Legal Issues Working
Group.
3.2 Ban on GNSS jammers
The AGCC had been concerned that, while it is an
offence in Australia to operate an unlicensed transmitter,
such as might be used to attempt to jam or interfere with
GNSS signals, it has not until recently been an offence to
supply, or possess for the purposes of supply, such a
device. With jamming devices advertised for sale (albeit
at a significant price) on the web, and circuit designs and
instructions sufficient for a trained technician to construct
such a device similarly available, the AGCC consulted
with the ACA to determine an appropriate regulatory
response.
The AGCC noted the growing reliance our community
has on GNSS signals for position-fixing, navigation and
timing so that jamming and interference to GNSS signals
poses a significant public safety and security risk. The
AGCC agreed with the ACA that there appeared to be no
legitimate radiocommunications use for a GNSS jammer
and that, so long as legitimate Defence use was permitted,
for which an exemption exists, a legislative approach was
appropriate.
A public consultation process was initiated by ACA in
August 2003 and followed through to the enactment of
legislation. The outcome, as announced on 1 September
2004 by the ACA (Australian Communications
Authority, 2004), is that devices that can be used to jam
GNSS are now prohibited under section 190 of the
Radiocommunications Act 1992. The impact of the
prohibition is that any person who supplies, or possesses
a jamming device for the purpose of supply, can be
prosecuted under the Act. Penalties range from fines of
up to $165, 000, to imprisonment. The ACA has
publicised the ban to increase public and supplier
awareness of GNSS jamming device prohibitions in the
hope that widespread awareness will minimise the need
for regulatory action after the event. Of course it may be
said that such legislation only deters those who abide by
the law and that legislation by itself does not remove the
threat of GNSS jamming. This is undoubtedly true but it
is equally true that the legislation ups the ante in a major
way for those who might seek to disrupt a significant
element of our national infrastructure.
3.3 Evidentiary use of GNSS signals
On occasion GPS positioning data is used for evidence
purposes in the courts, and there have been calls for an
independent authority to verify the performance of the
GNSS signal at a given point in time. It is expected that,
as awareness grows of the application of GNSS signals to
“prove” location and time in court proceedings, there will
be more emphasis on this matter.
The AGCC's Legal Issues Working Group has
investigated the way in which GPS position and time is
derived and how it relates to the GPS data collected and
processed by Geoscience Australia and to coordinated
universal time (UTC) as measured by the National
Measurement Institute in Australia. The group
investigated whether the data collected and the tracing of
GPS time in this way was sufficient for the purposes of
evidence in Australian courts for signal verification.
The group concluded that the National Measurement
Institute and Geoscience Australia record and maintain
sufficient data to support the accurate and reliable
calculation of timing and position data, and that these
records may provide appropriate evidence for the
verification of GPS signals. Geoscience Australia also
collects data that may provide some assistance to verify
GLONASS signals if required. This advice is now listed
on the AGCC web site.
3.4 Vulnerability
GNSS signals are extremely weak and their reception
may easily be interfered with accidentally or
intentionally, leading to erroneous time or position being
derived by users or service being denied. Sources of
unintentional interference include spurious emissions
from other electrical/electronic equipment operating at
different frequencies than the GNSS signal, but
producing some signal power in the GNSS frequency
bands (e.g. harmonics, bandwidth spill-over). Spectrum
Management Regulations managed by the Australian
Communications Authority (ACA) allow for the

248 Journal of Global Positioning Systems
enforcement of sanctions against users of equipment
producing the unintentional interference to alleviate the
problem. This can be achieved in a number of ways
including electromagnetic shielding and/or RF filtering.
As noted in section 3.2 above, as a result of AGCC
actions it is now illegal to own, operate or supply a
device intended to jam GNSS transmissions. However,
the possibility still exists for mischievous or malicious
persons to ignore legal sanctions and seek to jam GNSS.
Sources of intentional interference include dedicated
barrage jammers designed to stop the GNSS receiver
from forming a navigation solution, and dedicated
deceptive jammers designed to cause the GNSS receiver
to form an incorrect navigation solution. Under
conditions of military hostility it must be expected that
forces will seek to limit use of adversary GNSS, so both
sides would have GNSS jamming capabilities and means
for protecting their own use of GNSS. This military
discipline, NAVWAR, is a specialist area which is not
touched on further in this paper.
The risk of a civil GNSS receiver failing due to the
presence of RF interference depends significantly on the
scenario in which the receiver is operating. The effect of
the loss of GNSS is again scenario-specific, but could
range from limited impact (for example, a GNSS-guided
agricultural machine loses its guidance, requiring the
operator to navigate manually) to a more significant
economic loss (for example, banking transactions cease
because of time-synchronisation problems) and
potentially loss of life (for example, a bushwalker relying
solely on GNSS for navigation becomes lost when his
receiver fails).
Up until now, there have been relatively few reported
incidents of operations being significantly affected by
interference-related failures. It must be noted, however,
that interference, whether intentional or unintentional,
can only be successfully mitigated if the interference can
be recognised. Systems that rely on GNSS for time
information specifically can be more easily deceptively
jammed and it is often much more difficult to identify
that deceptive jamming is occurring. Such GNSS-time
dependent systems include cell-phone base stations.
Failure of a GNSS receiver to produce navigation and
timing information does not, of itself, cause damage to a
system or operation relying on that information. Systems
and operations that rely on GNSS for information can be
designed to operate for periods of time when the GNSS
signal is unavailable and it is important to promote wider
awareness of the need for critical navigation and timing
systems to have adequate mitigation procedures in place,
rather than rely totally on a GNSS system that, while
extremely reliable, represents a potential single point of
system failure.
It follows that the key to mitigating the effect of
interference to GNSS receivers is to educate the user to
put in place adequate backup systems and/or procedures
that either: (i) prevents the interference from occurring;
or (ii) allows the system/operation to continue with safety
in the absence of GNSS information.
The AGCC has sought to promote, and be involved in,
such educative processes. It is pleasing to note that the
Attorney General’s Department and other agencies
addressing critical infrastructure protection have now
included GNSS as an element of this infrastructure,
although it is rarely seen as such by the general populace.
3.5 Factual public information
The AGCC has a useful web site, www.agcc.gov.au, that
is quite heavily used to source factual information,
including reliable links to other GNSS web sites, GNSS
course information and breaking GNSS news.
Suggestions for improvements are always welcome.
Although it is over four years since the US removed
selective availability from the GPS transmissions there
are still sporadic media outbreaks of rumours of its
reimposition. All such rumours have been shown to be
false and the AGCC has responded to the more serious
media misrepresentations by using its contacts in US
agencies that manage GPS to issue authoritative
statements refuting ill-founded claims.
It is noted that US GPS policy is currently under review
and a statement is expected at any time. It is expected
that, because the US is a the nation most dependent on
civil use of GPS, this will only serve to fortify the long-
term intent to make GPS maximally useful for the civil
community as well as for the military purposes for which
it was originally designed.
3.6 Australia’s relationship with Galileo
The AGCC has been active in seeking to build bridges
with the EC and to promote dialogue with the intent of
defining the parameters for an Australia-EU relationship
on Galileo. There were AGCC/EC discussions in
Brussels in April 2002 and there has been ongoing
exchange of correspondence. Clearly any formal
EU/Australia relationship specifically on Galileo would
have to be established and managed through government
channels and no government position has yet been
adopted.
There is, however, a general framework for EU/Australia
cooperation in which Galileo gets some coverage. In
April 2003, the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs
and Trade entered into an overarching agenda for
cooperation with the EU that includes provision for

Sinnott: GNSS Coordination at the National Level: the Australian Experience 249
development of arrangements to enable cooperation
associated with the Galileo Satellite Navigation project.
This includes a framework for ongoing cooperation with
the Galileo Joint Undertaking in the following areas.
• on-ground infrastructure in Australia;
• the potential for industrial cooperation
• scientific and commercial Galileo application;
• associated research and development;
• co-operative research in the field of the
radiofrequency spectrum, including research into
mitigation of signal interference; and
• standards
The AGCC has been monitoring carefully the
development of the agreement between the EU and USA
on Galileo/GPS frequency access and other matters and
has been briefed by the US State Department. The
conclusion of this agreement in June 2004 is seen as
assisting Australia in achieving some of what was
intended from the EU/Australia agenda for cooperation.
Prompted by AGCC advice that there are potentially very
significant benefits for Australia in some closer
relationship with Galileo that is likely from the general
agenda for cooperation DOTARS officials have moved
to establish an Interdepartmental Committee (IDC) to
progress this matter. The IDC has met once (September
2004), confirmed that a whole-of-government approach
would be appropriate to progressing any plans for an
EU/Australia relationship on Galileo, and has determined
areas in which further information is to be sought.
The AGCC will seek to continue to advise the IDC in
accordance with its advisory charter. The AGCC sees
opportunities for Australia to secure major benefits from
the greatly expanded position fixing and timing
capabilities that will be made available when, with
Galileo fully deployed, there are over 50 GNSS satellites
in orbit. One issue implied within the agenda for
cooperation, on which the AGCC has sought to gain
more widespread acceptance, is the value to Australia, as
well as to the Galileo consortium, of having Galileo
reference stations on the Australian landmass, desirably
collocated with existing GPS reference facilities.
3.7 Privacy issues
Privacy and civil surveillance in this country falls under a
number of legislative provisions of the Commonwealth or
States and Territories. Legislation tends to be reactive
and is primarily targeted at regulating the collection of
individuals’ information by government agencies, with a
tacit understanding that the private sector will be largely
self-regulating. The impact of new and emerging
technologies has yet to be felt in many areas of
legislation. In particular, legislation covering the
individual’s right to privacy of location, as opposed to
more traditional privacy rights over such things such as
medical records and telecommunications, is quite
immature. Although GNSS of itself cannot be held to
infringe, or potentially infringe, on any such privacy
rights, clearly when allied with logging or mobile
communications technology it can enable infringement of
such rights.
As location-based services become more ubiquitous there
will be a growth in concern about individuals’ right to
privacy over their location and movement history. The
aggregation of location information with other data,
though each element of the aggregation may be relatively
benign, clearly opens opportunity for serious abuse of
individual privacy rights. The AGCC has recently
completed a study on this matter that concluded that
present privacy legislation is adequate at the current state
of technology. It has alerted the Privacy Commission to
its findings. It is expected that the AGCC will need to
review its position on this matter at some future date as
further GNSS-based location technologies are considered
or adopted.
4 The future of the AGCC
Because the AGCC operates in an area of policy and
practice which is pervasive but which is no one sector’s
or government portfolio agency’s preserve it is difficult
to sustain a case for resourcing its activity. The
Department of Transport and Regional Services has
provided secretariat services, including hosting the web
site, without which the committee could not function and
stakeholder agencies from which members are drawn
have supported their representatives’ attendance at
meetings and some associated additional time
commitments. However, it has been difficult to secure
membership from major GNSS-user sectors like
agriculture and SMEs. In its present phase of operation,
with extremely tight funds, the AGCC is unable to cover
costs of member travel or attendance. Although the facts
speak very clearly otherwise, there is a risk that in this
environment members may feel that their efforts are
underappreciated as well as unrewarded and may lose
interest in continuing to serve.
In the present funding climate the AGCC can operate
only to the end of its current term, ending mid-2006. If it
is to continue beyond this date, a major task for the next
two years will be to continue to grow its support base and
credibility among its stakeholder community.
5 Conclusion
The AGCC has, within its terms of reference and
operating as what amounts to a volunteer committee,
delivered excellent outcomes over its four-year life. The

250 Journal of Global Positioning Systems
paper has outlined some of the key areas of its work
during this period, pointing to the major challenges that
remain in the future. These come from the explosive
growth of GNSS applications, the entry of Galileo into
the GNSS scene and GPS modernisation, the potential for
uncritical reliance on GNSS to expose vulnerabilities, and
a potential threat of legal and related issues in the area of
privacy.
References
AGCC (2002) Positioning for the Future – Australia’s Satellite
Navigation Strategic Policy, Australian GNSS
Coordination Committee, ISBN 0-642-50214-5, August.
Australian Communications Authority (2004) Ban on RNSS
jammers, Media Release 73, September,
http://www.aca.gov.au/aca_home/publications/reports/info/
prohibit.htm
Kallweit T (2003) Exacting a toll: GPS, Microwaves Precise
Swiss System, GPS World, June, 16-22
Koniditsiotis C (2003) Intelligent Access Program (IAP) –
Using Satellite Based Tracking to Monitor Heavy Freight
Vehicle Compliance, Paper 93, Proceedings of SatNav
2003, Melbourne Australia, 22-25 July (CDROM)
Perez C (2002) Technological Revolutions and Financial
Capital: The Dynamics of Bubbles and Golden Ages,
Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd, Cheltenham UK, 52
Sinnott DH (2003) The role and activity of the Australian GNSS
Coordination Committee (AGCC), Paper 53, Proceedings
of SatNav 2003, Melbourne Australia, 22-25 July
(CDROM)
Styles JS, Costa N, Jenkins B (2003) In the driver’s seat:
Location based services power GPS/Galileo market
growth, GPS World, October, 34-40.