Context

The overarching vision for a European spatial data infrastructure for the purposes of EU's environmental policies and policies or activities which have an impact on the environment (Article 1 of INSPIRE Directive 2007/2/EC) has not changed since the inception of the Directive, and is to promote data sharing and put in place easy-to-use, transparent, interoperable spatial data services which are used in the daily work of environmental and other policy makers and policy implementers across the EU at all levels of governance as well as businesses, science and citizens.

To realise the vision and to maximize and facilitate the reuse of data across administrative levels, borders and sectors, data offerings from different sources should be consistent and comparable. At the same time the INSPIRE community has clearly indicated the need to drive the further implementation (data and services availability, accessibility and interoperability) of the Directive by a real demand and tangible use cases. Furthermore, it is suggested to speed up the implementation by doing less but doing it quicker.  

Certain aspects of the implementation of the INSPIRE Directive (e.g., harmonization of all data in its scope) are still considered as cumbersome or even disproportionate. The broad spatial data scope of the Directive and the high-level definition of the data scope through its 34 themes has resulted in a diversified and non-comparable offering across Member States.

With the publication of the High-Value-Datasets (HVD) Regulation under the Open Data Directive that covers a large part of the data in scope of the INSPIRE Directive, a clear need in the Member States for an aligned, common, and once-only implementation for data sharing that serves both INSPIRE and Open Data requirements was identified.

In view of this evolution in the data sharing landscape and to maximize the use of the limited resources in Member States, EFTA countries and European institutions it is proposed to merge the existing MIWP action 2.1 (Need-driven data prioritisation) and 2.2 (Roadmap for priority-driven implementation) into a new action. This new action 2.5 should, whilst honouring the principles of use case driven data prioritisation and balanced interoperability approaches, aim at building a common understanding of the interaction of INSPIRE and HVD, developing a consensus on a common implementation roadmap with the objective to maximise the reuse of the INSPIRE implementation for meeting HVD requirements.

Proposed action

The action will work on three interdependent strands of activities:

• Data provisioning: Once only identification and dissemination through streamlining of provisions and technical guidelines for the metadata documentation and publication of datasets and services under INSPIRE and Open Data legislation taking into consideration data priorities, by 1) proposing good practices using the flexibility of the existing legal framework and/or 2) informing the GreenData4All impact assessment of necessary changes to the legal framework.  
• Data use/impact: data prioritisation in line with HVD of those data sets that satisfy concrete stakeholder needs at different administrative levels and for which minimal interoperability should be pursued.
• Synergies: Aligning monitoring and reporting for INSPIRE datasets and services in scope of HVD by 1) proposing good practices using the flexibility of the existing legal framework and/or 2) informing the GreenData4All impact assessment of necessary changes to the legal framework. Additionally, INSPIRE and Open Data HVD networks shall be closely connected on EU and national level via coordinated communication to strengthen the open geospatial content and functionality availability and utilisation.

Links & Dependencies

• Interplay with Action 2.3 “Simplification of INSPIRE implementation” and Action 2.4 “Central INSPIRE infrastructure components” (e.g., fit for purpose data specifications, encodings, …)
• Interplay with Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2023/138 laying down a list of specific high-value datasets and the arrangements for their publication and re-use
• Feed legal bottlenecks/simplification proposals into Action 3.1 GreenData4All

Tasks

• Establish synergies in metadata exchange (mapping ISO vs. DCAT)
• Promote one-off dissemination by identifying and documenting duplicate information requirements in EU legislation.
• Manage the list(s) of priority datasets considering data in scope of HVD (annually reviewed by the MIG)
• Monitor the availability, accessibility, and use/impact of priority datasets.
• Initiate pilot projects or collect national best practice to remediate identified issues or demonstrate different uses of data (annually reviewed by the MIG)
• Process fast-track data requests (ad hoc)
• Identify, also building on previous simplification efforts, the flexibility and simplification potential in the area of metadata, network services, data specifications and reporting under the existing legal framework with the aim to achieve maximal alignment with HVD provisions e.g., through good practices and/or recommendations for amending the legal framework.
• Identify potential funding and project ideas, encouraging active stakeholders to develop tangible solutions.

Outcomes

• INSPIRE & OD HVD metadata mapping
• List of priority datasets, disseminated once only, and their identified use cases
• INSPIRE good practices as implementation guidance for only once publication of spatial environmental data.
• Recommendations for the GreenData4All impact assessment on aligning INSPIRE and HVD (not limitative):
  • the alignment of data sharing regimes including the possible move of the access regime towards open data.
  • moving towards technical neutrality.
• the alignment of regulatory monitoring and reporting provisions on data sharing and use/impact.