The minutes summarise the main conclusions and actions from the meeting. Actions are indicated in the minutes using checkboxes and are tracked in the "Open actions" section below.
The meeting was attended by experts from DE, BG, MT, DK, CZ, BE, HR, PL, EL, RS, AT, UK, FI, EE, SE, NO, FR, HU, IE, IS, CH, PT, NL, EEA, DG ENV and JRC.
Agenda item
Notes / Actions
Welcome and approval of the agenda & previous meeting minutes
The agenda was approved without changes.
Minutes of the previous meetings
The minutes of the previous meeting were approved without changes. Open actions were reviewed and some of them closed.
2016.4 Theme-specific issues / Thematic Clusters
The launch of the new platform has been postponed, since there has been some administrative delay with the contracts of the facilitators. In two weeks these should be solved and the platform launched.
There will be new cross-cutting Clusters focused on tools and technologies, aimed to address any specific questions about software, and on issues related to environmental policies and MIWP actions.
2016.5 Priority data sets / Thematic Viewer
The action will have a web conference in February, to discuss how to setup a common procedure to track the progress on the publication of priority data sets, based on different reporting obligations.
During the Geoportal workshop last week there were relevant discussions on:
the need for translation of the priority data set code lists, which is supported by the Commission. The subgroup will discuss how to proceed;
the need to develop common guidelines for the provision of priority data sets in the Geoportal, since many data sets are available but they are secured through an authentication.
2017.1 Master Guidance
The work will continue during the summer in order to have the first document ready for October.
2017.2 Alternative Encodings
After the face-to-face meeting held in December, a new draft of the document was prepared, which looks at some specific examples (for AD, O&M, EF) and provides a GeoJSON encoding with a number of simplification rules.
Next subgroup meeting is scheduled for tomorrow (February 1).
2017.3 Better client support for INSPIRE data
The contractors' work is progressing. A short presentation of the partial results will be given by JRC in the next meeting.
2017.4 Validation & conformity testing
The contractors' work is progressing with the development of the new ATS/ETS for View Services (WMS/WMTS), SOS, MD TG 2.0, currently under testing from JRC staff. Testing is expected to be completed over the next weeks.
Version 2.0 of the ETF Validator was released (see here); JRC will update the Reference Validator with this new version.
A number of improvement proposals for the Reference Validator were discussed; some of them (mainly related to the UI) were considered of higher priority and will be moved forward by the JRC in the software development roadmap.
The subgroup has recently become less active; JRC expects to have more activity once the new ETS will be available for testing.
JRC discussed the idea to hold a workshop with the users of the Validator, but since only little feedback was received, the idea has changed into the preparation of a survey to appear online when users access the Validator.
2018.1 Monitoring & reporting 2019
Last week there was a meeting between JRC, DG ENV and EEA to define the methodology for the calculation of the indicators for the new Reporting Decision, which also includes indicators computed from the metadata and data sets available in the Geoportal.
It will be shared next week with the subgroup, and then included in a more comprehensive message to the Member States on the practicalities of the 2019 reporting process and the transition to the new reporting process mid-February.
2019.2 Improving availability of INSPIRE data
last week JRC hosted a two-days workshop with MS representatives (45 experts from 28 countries) with the main goal of improving the accessibility and usability of data sets in the INSPIRE Geoportal:
the Geoportal backend (and data/service linking simplification) was presented, and the development of a tool for testing the linking was proposed together with a new tool to check the linkages; once available, testing will be performed with MS.
a new harvesting method will be launched soon, which switches from the current pull approach (JRC performing harvesting of MS catalogues) to a push approach (MS to schedule/perform harvesting and check the results on a geoportal sandbox, before the data is published on the Geoportal);
future development of the INSPIRE Analytics platform, which will add new functionality (including text and geographic search and export functions);
re-organization of the Geoportal helpdesk through the help of MS, each reporting on their past experience (according to a predefined list of categories provided by JRC) in order to create a comprehensive list of FAQs;
all the workshop materials to be provided by this week on the MIG collaboration platform (under action 2019.2); a detailed report will be provided by the end of February;
overall, the workshop was successful and the feedback collected from MS was very positive.
Register and registries
The work of submitting organizations is progressing well.
A collaboration has started between JRC and the National Land Survey of Finland to jointly develop the next version of the Registry software.
Geoportal
The Geoportal had to be taken offline due to an issue on the server. It is now back up and running again.
