[geo-discuss] Fw: INSPIRE SDI for Europe Directive agreed text

Thu Jan 18 12:32:32 UTC 2007

for the benefit of those not on EGIP, Roger wrote this cogent
breakdown of the key points of the published INSPIRE.
I'm thinking just to drop it on the publicgeodata wiki, makes sense?

----- Forwarded message from Roger Longhorn <ral at alum.mit.edu> -----

Date: Thu, 18 Jan 2007 13:01:44 +0100
From: Roger Longhorn <ral at alum.mit.edu>
To: EGIP <european-gi-policy at jrc.it>,
	GSDI Legal-Economic Work Grouup <legal-econ at lists.gsdi.org>,
	SEA-GIS at LISTSERV.HEANET.IE, MOTIIVE List <motiive at sympa.iode.org>
Subject: INSPIRE SDI for Europe Directive agreed text

List(s):

Just to be accurate on the status of the INSPIRE Directive, the final text 
sent in my earlier e-mail is approved by the European Parliament and Council 
of Minsters, following the conciliation process. The adoption of the 
Directive is an agenda item for the European Parliament's meeting of 17 
February 2007 in Strasbourg. It is expected that the Directive will be 
adopted and there can be no more changes to the text, as this is not 
permitted after the conciliation phase has completed.

Some highlights.

**Who must comply:**

The INSPIRE Directive applies to all "public authorities", defined in 
Article 3 (para 9) as:

"public authority" means:

(a) any government or other public administration, including public advisory 
bodies, at *national, regional or local level*;
(b) any natural or legal person performing public administrative functions 
under national law, including specific duties, activities or services in 
relation to the environment; and
(c) any natural or legal person having public responsibilities or functions, 
or providing public services relating to the environment under the control 
of a body or person falling within (a) or (b).

Member States may provide that when bodies or institutions are acting in a 
judicial or legislative capacity, they are not to be regarded as a public 
authority for the purposes of this Directive;"
<end extract>

**What data is covered by the Directive.**

The Directive applies to spatial datasets that are in "electronic format", 
but does not require the collection of any new datasets. However, the 
actions regarding creation of metadata and wide publication by electronic 
means does apply to all existing datasets that are considered to be 
"spatial", officially defined in the Directive as "any data with a direct or 
indirect reference to a specific location or geographical area;".

**Source of possible exceptions to some of the articles/principles.**

Intellectual property rights of third parties will be respected, i.e. if a 
government agency or external contractor acting for a government agency 
holds copyright of IP rights under the EU's database protection Directive 
(as implemented in law in all EU Member States), then the terms of the 
Directive on access, exploitation, etc. cannot be used to undermine those 
rights. The long and short of it is that, for example, a national mapping 
agency or census bureau or ... who now claims copyright or database 
protection rights on its datasets and charges for their access and use, can 
continue to do so, even though the spirit and general principle of the 
Directive is to make as widely available as possible any and all public 
geospatial data, at minimal or (preferrably) mo cost, other than cost of 
distribution. This is in line with the already existing Directive on re-use 
(including commercial exploitation) of Public Sector Information - which 
also applies to any PSI that is geospatial. It is important that this latter 
re-use of PSI Directive be read and understood in parallel to the INSPIRE 
Directive. (I attach a copy of the PSI Directive to this e-mail for your 
reference).

**Timing of Directive implementation.**

Article 5 requires EU Member States to create metadata for all their spatial 
data holdings, and that this metadata must then be 'maintained'. The 
metadata will be created according to implementing rules, which are now 
being specified by 5 Drafting Teams (all volunteer experts) under guidance 
of DG Joint Research Center, Ispra, Italy. EU Member States must adopt 
"implementing rules" within one year of adoption of the Directive. Since we 
expect the Directive to be officially adopted on 17 February 2007, that 
means the rules must be adopted by February 2008. Today, in mid-January 
2007, no Drafting Team has yet published any 'rules' for public comment and 
we are led to believe that much work remains to be done in completing these 
'implementing rules' and getting agreement on them from the relevant 
committee(s).

Article 6 then states that the metadata must be created and available within 
two years following adoption, i.e. not later than February 2010, for Annex I 
and II data (see attached Annex list) and not later than 5 years, i.e. by 
February 2013, for Annex III data. Annex I and II cover 13 data themes for 
'core' data while Annex III covers an additional 21 data themes in a wide 
range of thematic areas, e.g. statists, environment, land use, various types 
of 'facilities' from across a wide range of sectors, atmospheric, 
meteorological and oceanographic/sea regions data, etc.

Article 9 then (confusingly, to me, that is!) states that: "The implementing 
rules provided for in Article 7(1) shall be adopted in accordance with the 
following timetable:

(a) no later than ? [Two years following the date of entry into force of 
this Directive.] in the case of the spatial data sets corresponding to the 
themes listed in Annex I;
(b) no later than ? [Five years following the date of entry into force of 
this Directive.] in the case of the spatial data sets corresponding to the 
themes listed in Annex II or III." <ends>

I interpret this to mean that the implementing rules relating to metadata 
(the focus of Article 5) must be adopted within one year of Directive 
adoption, i.e. by February 2008 while the implementing rules regarding 
spatial data specifications to enhance and ensure transnational 
interoperability (the focus of Articles 7, 8, 9 and 10) must be adopted 
within 2 and 5 years of Directive adoption for Annex 1 and 2 data and Annex 
3 data, respectively.

**INSPIRE interoperability.**

As regards the concept of aligning the INSPIRE SDI technical work with 
initiatives in Africa (and other non-EU regions of the world), i.e. 
developing a global framework, Article 8 states:

"2. The implementing rules shall address the following aspects of spatial 
data:

(a) a common framework for the unique identification of spatial objects, to 
which identifiers under national systems can be mapped in order to ensure 
interoperability between them;
(b) the relationship between spatial objects;
(c) the key attributes and the corresponding multilingual thesauri commonly 
required for policies which may have an impact on the environment;
(d) information on the temporal dimension of the data;
(e) updates of the data.

3. The implementing rules shall be designed to ensure consistency between 
items of information which refer to the same location or between items of 
information which refer to the same object represented at different scales.

4. The implementing rules shall be designed to ensure that information 
derived from different spatial data sets is comparable as regards the 
aspects referred to in Article 7(4) and in paragraph 2 of this Article."
<ends>

**Impact of INSPIRE on existing data exchange/interoperability 
conventions/programmes/initiatives.**

For those international communities who have existing, pre-established 
regimes for data exchange and interoperability, for example several of the 
biodiversity, meteorological and oceanographic community global programmes, 
enacted under internatonal conventions, Article 7 includes:

"Where organisations established under international law have adopted 
relevant standards to ensure interoperability or harmonisation of spatial 
data sets and services, these standards shall be integrated, and the 
existing technical means shall be referred to, if appropriate, in the 
implementing rules mentioned in this paragraph."

What this text means by "these standards shall be integrated" will probably 
be a matter of much debate - and potential dispute - in the years ahead.

Kind regards

Roger Longhorn
ral at alum.mit.edu
Member, EUROGI International Alliance W.A.G.
MOTIIVE List Moderator
EUCC Information and Data Management W.G. leader (EUCC are a registered 
INSPIRE SDIC for the coastal community)
Steering Committee Leader, MOTIIVE Project (Marine Overlays on Topography) - 
one of the INSPIRE 'implementing rules' test projects funded under FP6.

----- End forwarded message -----

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