[geo-discuss] Fw: INSPIRE Democratic Process - Update 11

[Jo Walsh]

Chris Corbin's conscientious updates on the INSPIRE spatial data
infrastructure process to the EGIP list, fill me with consternation.
This latest is an open letter from a pan-euro local government
interest group, stating:

[[ CEMR asks therefore that financial mechanisms are put in place to
support the implementation of INSPIRE by local and regional
authorities, especially in the initial phase, and that free access to
spatial data is restricted compared with the original Commission
proposal. ]]

The obligation to provide 'viewing' services for all data free of
cost, 18.1.b in the current proposed Directive, will cause local
authorities and non-National Mapping Agency data gatherers a lot more
cost than simply releasing the data for download via FTP; an action
which would fulfill the same civic society/NSDI remit.

But the INSPIRE consultation process will not admit advice from anyone
less than an organisational consortium. We have a clear and coherent
alternate worldview to the one that states "concerns of freedom of
information, innovation and national infrastructure are subordinate to
those of recovering costs and supporting government departments".

We can build and plan and develop our licenses and possibly even come
to agreement with OS on generalised data sets for non-profit use. Then
i see a future in which OS et al turn round and state, "Sorry,
licensing and pricing are now wholly in the hands of the European
Commission to decide, as stated in INSPIRE." 

i started making notes for an INSPIRE letter campaign, perhaps helping
to raise MEPs awareness of the issues on the Committee. 
http://okfn.org/wiki/OpenGeoDataLetter 

Other than Chris Corbin and Roger i haven't seen much INSPIRE-related
awareness-rousing, perhaps EGIP is not the place to look :/

----- Forwarded message from corbinceh <corbinceh at ntlworld.com> -----

You may be interested in the following (if you have not already seen it)
another example of the democratic process in action related to the proposed
INSPIRE Directive. 

The Council of European Municipalities and the Regions (
http://www.ccre.org/ ) open letter to MEP's regarding the potential costs of
implementing INSPIRE at the regional and local levels.  The open letter can
be down loaded at the following URL:

http://www.ccre.org/news_detail_en.htm?ID=502

A WORD version of the letter is attached just in case you have difficulty.


The Council activities related to the proposed INSPIRE Directive seem to be
very active with three documents now posted that are not available (Dated
22-03-2005, 03-05-2005 and 04-05-2005.