Bilateral meetings with MIG-T members (upon request)
MT
Minutes
The minutes summarise the main conclusions and actions from the meeting. Actions are indicated by using check boxes and are tracked in the dedicated "Actions" section below.
The meeting was chaired by the EC (JRC) and attended by experts from AT, BE, BG, HR, CY, CZ, DK, EE, FI, FR, DE, HU, IS, IE, IT, LV, LI, LT, LU, MT, NL, NO, PL, RO, SK, ES and SE, the EEA, the European Commission services (ENV, ESTAT and the JRC), and several invited experts.
Welcome and approval of the agenda
The agenda of the 81st MIG-T meeting was approved without changes.
Actions from the previous meeting
Actions from the 80th MIG-T meeting were reviewed and their current status is reflected in the dedicated wiki page. Some actions for MIG-T members remain open as they require additional input.
INSPIRE Monitoring and Reporting
Context and overall approach to monitoring 2024
Monitoring results and lessons learned
Discussion
INSPIRE Monitoring and Reporting
The process and components used for the calculation of the INSPIRE Monitoring indicators in 2024 were described, followed by the presentation of the results. For a third consecutive year, the process was performed with the INSPIRE Geoportal based on GeoNetwork open source (now implementing the data-service linking simplification approach), complemented by a set of Monitoring and Reporting Tools for evaluating the declared conformity of the harvested reseources.
The Monitoring and Reporting 2024 dashboard is available for all Member States, EFTA countries (except Switzerland) and Moldova. The results from 2023 are available here to allow for comparison.
Regarding the monitoring indicators, overall an improvement of the results is observed compared to the 2023 exercise, especially in terms of dataset accessibility that significantly improved compared to 2023. However, heterogeneity in the performance of the different countries still remains and, similarly to the previous years, there are concerns about the reliability of indicators on the conformity of datasets and services (both being self-declared).
Several issues were identified in the Member States implementations during the M&R process and reported during the meeting, which may turn into opportunities for future improvement:
Presence of metadata records with indexation warnings and errors, and non-INSPIRE metadata records in national catalogues.
Cases of conformity of datasets and network services non properly declared.
Declaration of GEMET INSPIRE Theme keywords lacks interoperability. It is suggested to follow both requirements but also the full set of recommendations on this matter.
Existence of service timeouts and other issues preventing dataset accessibility through network services.
Examples were also highlighted, showing the good performance of several countries in specific monitoring indicators.
MIWP Actions
Action 1.1. Towards a digital ecosystem for environment and sustainability (20')
ISO and GeoDCAT-AP metadata implementation pilot - candidate good practice
Technical work foreseen in MIWP 2025 - 2026 (10')
What is new?
Action 2.4Governance of artefacts (10')
Updates and news on INSPIRE artefacts incl. registry content
Action 2.4 Central INSPIRE Components (30')
Reference Validator
Re3gistry software
Geoportal
Action 1.1. Towards a digital ecosystem for environment and sustainability
The results of the ISO and GeoDCAT-AP implementation pilot that is implemented together with the SEMIC action were shared.
A summary of the 3rd meeting of the pilot was given. It was focused on clarifying and refining the High-Value Datasets tagging good practice candidate (non-multilingual example / multilingual example), while sharing updated progress reports from participants (BE-Flanders, CZ, DK, FR, IT, FI, NL, ES, SK, OP, and JRC).
Participants just published their initial results on GitHub (25 issues across different repositories: Pilot / SEMIC specification / SEMIC XSLT transformation), but the work is still ongoing. Particularly, a cross-participants analysis is needed. All consolidated issued will be reported in the SEMIC repositories.
It was also agreed between the participants to extend the deadline for finishing the pilot until June 2025. A first version of the pilot report is expected by March 2025 including the first participants' outcomes, and the final report will be provided at the end of the pilot (June 2025).
The results available until the date on the candidate good practice voting were also shared with the audience. The deadline for voting was extended until 28 February.
The 4th meeting of the pilot will be scheduled soon.
Technical work foreseen in MIWP 2025-2026
The MIWP 2025-2026, endorsed in late 2024 and expected to run until mid-2026, was introduced with highlights on which Actions from the MIWP 2021-2024 were continued (1.1, 2.4, 2.5, 3.1), closed (2.1, 2.2, 2.3) and which new Action was introduced (3.2). For all the active Actions, the European Commission wrote new fiches including context, organisational set-up, tasks and outcomes foreseen.
Technical work will mainly happen within Action 2.4, focused on operating the central components (Geoportal, Registry, Validator) and the INSPIRE knowledge base, and on continuing governing the artefacts (application schemas, TGs, UML models, Registry content) until the possible revision of the legal framework, with these highlights:
attention will be placed on maintenance, with new developments/features out of scope;
the number of releases will be reduced;
helpdesk support will be continued but kept basic;
governance process and sub-group discussing change proposals on artefacts will be maintained.
For application schemas, following a request in the helpdesk, a versioned folder including the latest schemas released (in this case named 2025.1) was added to the release.
MIG-T members to share feedback on change proposal #172 for TGs (action still open from the 79th MIG-T Meeting).
Action 2.4 Central INSPIRE Components
INSPIRE Reference Validator
The release plan of the INSPIRE Reference Validator was updated. Only one release per year (v2025.1 in 2025) will take place in mid-June.
In approximately 3 years (from February 2022) since the establishment of a JRC dashboard to collect insights on the use of the Validator, about 100k tests were performed with an overall 44% of passed tests. This percentage varies with the type of resource: 54% for metadata (the most tested resource type with 60% of the total number of tests), 29% for datasets, 25% for view services, 20% for discovery services, and 13% for download services. The temporal distribution of tests shows a peak in November/December when the Validator is used in preparation of the Monitoring and Reporting process; a peak on 2 January 2025 was also recorded, caused by massive use of the Validator through its API.
Re3gistry software
The latest releases are v2.6.0 (June 2024) and v2.6.1 (September 2024).
The latest release (v2.6.1) included solutions to the issues listed here. These include changes to improve reliability and other specific improvements and bug fixes to increase robustness.
In 2025 and 2026, one release per year will take place. The one correspoding to 2025 (v2025.1) will take place on , delivering Re3gistry v2.6.2. This release will include essential bug fixes reported through the helpdesk, and may incude any updates or new features stemming from the work of the 'Re³gistry Requirements Clarification Group'.
The updated release strategy for the Re3gistry is avilable here.
Geoportal
The JRC shared the latest news on the INSPIRE Geoportal.
The results of the INSPIRE Monitoring and Reporting 2024 were already published in the frontend on . As a result, increase accessibility indicators are available.
Regarding the backend, the updates of the GeoNetwork Link-Checker delivered during November and December were reminded. The last version of the Link-Checker (v1.1.8) is available here.
The details to access the Sandbox harvesting console were shared again with the Member States / Countries.
Few Member States were reminded to duly update their list of National Catalogue Administrators (including both the Primary and Deputy roles), as already warned in previous MIG-T Meetings. At the time of the meeting, the information is missing for 3 Member States (LV, PL and SI). Some Member States (BG, CY and IS) were reminded to clarify the role (Primary or Deputy) for their reported catalogue administrators.
The JRC informed about the potential improvement for 2025, possibly including: (i) improvement of the reliability and efficiency of large-catalogues harvesting, (ii) correction of misfunctionalities in the National / Regional filter (#213), (iii) addition of a page in the Geoportal frontend informing about the latest harvesting dates (#181), and (iv) the enhancement, integration and automation of Link-checker outputs (accessibility logs).
MS with missing nominations to provide their list of INSPIRE Geoportal National Catalogue Administrators, including all the necessary details, through the ad-hoc survey tool.
Topics proposed by MIG-T members
Metadata management natively in ISO vs. DCAT (CZ)
CZ colleagues emphasised on the need to align metadata standards and practices in light of the reporting obligations under the HVD implementing act and INSPIRE. The discussion on this alignment will continue within the context of the dedicated pilot.
JRC will investigate with the Geonetwork community on the functionalities of the tool for consuming and exposing metadata in accordance with the GeoDCAT-AP specifications.
JRC to include in the agenda of the forthcoming 82nd MIG-T meeting on implementation examples of ISO and GeoDCAT metadata. MIG-T members to propose good practices in this session.
News from EC services 🇪🇺
ENV
GreenData4all and EGDDS
Other services (tbc)
ENV informed on the ongoing work related to the GreenData4all and the European Green Deal Data Space (EGDDS):
GreenData4all - work is ongoing on the preparation for a possible revision of the legal framework that is supported by a contractor and an EC inter-service group. Evidence is being collected through an open public consultation which is open until . All are encouraged to provide feedback.
EGDDS - a gathering of colleagues from the deployment call for the data space is organised back to back with the 2025 Data Space symposium in Warsaw. Preparations are ongoing for the implementation of the identified use cases.