[okfn-discuss] Fwd: [OSGeo-Discuss] Greece follows INSPIRE (and attempts to go OpenGeo?)

Wed Jun 30 15:45:16 UTC 2010

Of interest

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Nikos Alexandris <nikos.alexandris at felis.uni-freiburg.de>
Date: Wed, Jun 30, 2010 at 10:33 AM
Subject: [OSGeo-Discuss] Greece follows INSPIRE (and attempts to go OpenGeo?)
To: OSGeo Discussions <discuss at lists.osgeo.org>

Greetings to the list.

(Apologies to the BCC-ed recipients since this might or might not be of your
interest)

The Greek Ministry of Environment, Energy and Climate Change [1] (yes, you
read correctly) has decided to (finally) put on a public discussion the law
that concerns a national infrastructure for (geo)spatial data [2].

It appears to be just a "normalisation" of the current Greek law-framework to
match (or catch up) the European directive INSPIRE. And indeed, it may be the
driving force behind it within the current Greek mess (no matter how far this
mess is real or virtual for the sake of "let's make money").

There are, however, chances to broaden the spectrum of this new law to clarify
important issues. For example, the license of geospatial data will be provided
cost-free but with the limitation for non-commercial use. My understanding is
that this limitation is not only needless but anti-productive in many ways
[3].

Another example is the focus of the law to be passed more on the
organisational aspect of the infrastructure (with lots of limitations) and in
a lesser extent to the social aspect(s) and effects which are of paramount
importance [4].

Noteworthy to mention is the difficulty when translating special technical
terms from English in Greek which leads often to non-clear definitions. There
are various comments on the "Definitions" section [5].

This is just a glimpse of course of the total 31 articles which compose the
law. All in all, the law is on the right track. Yet, it needs fine tuning to
prohibit misuse.

One thing that is not positive, at least from my perspective, is(=was) the
narrow time-window (only 10 days) for which the law is open for public
comments. Unfortunately, I did not notice this until yesterday. Today
30.06.2010 at 23:59 (local time) the comments section will be locked :-(

Nevertheless, this move is a ground-breaker considering how Greek governments
(re-)acted in the past. It is a clear sign of several people willing to go
Open(Geo).

Please, readers that (understand Greek and) are interested in this, or readers
that know people that (understand Greek and) work in this field, comment...
comment... comment... (...typical Greek, just climb to the top or touch down -
no in between solutions).

Thank you for your attention,
Nikos

---
[1] <http://www.ypeka.gr/>
[2] National Infrastructure for Geospatial Data
<http://www.opengov.gr/minenv/?p=757>

[3] <http://www.opengov.gr/minenv/?p=737>
[4] <http://www.opengov.gr/minenv/?p=756>
[5] <http://www.opengov.gr/minenv/?p=754>