Capacity building for

INSPIRE Implementation

– A Danish Case Study

23. June 2010

Krakow, Poland

Henning Sten Hansen, Line Hvingel,

Lise Schrøder & Jesper Christensen

Overview

• The Danish approach to e-Government and

Spatial Data Infrastructure

• A national GI survey

• The analysis

• Conclusions

• Further research

SDI and e-Government

• Why SDI ?

– It is NOT because the politicians suddenly have found

interest in spatial databases and geoprocessing ! ! !

• But

– It is because geographic information is an important

dimension for most public data collections

– And e-Government is seen as a means to obtain a more

efficient public sector, where self service will be the

ordinary contact between for example the citizens and

the local authorities

– This requires data and people – and policies, standards

and access networks

Development of e-government

The Danish vision

Efficiency potentials Level of service

Technological premises

Simple web pages

Portals, search engines and simple formulas

Transactions, limited self service solutions

Integrated on-line services, full automation

SDI implementation

The Danish approach

Central Government

Local Government DK Danish Regions

Project Digital Government

Digital Task Force

Spatial Data

Service

Community

StandardisationCommon

Object Types

To

p-

Do

wn

ap

pro

ac

h

Bo

ttom

-Up

ap

pro

ac

h

Local Mapping

Partnerships

Public Private

Partnerships

NGO

Geoforum

Universities

Research

Standardisation

Funding

Training

GI Survey

State of GI in the public sector

• August 2009 Geoforum Denmark sent out a web based

questionnaire to all public organisations

• An e-mail about the survey was sent personally to

executive level persons in public organisations to ensure

that the answers would cover the organisations and

individuals

• 122 out of 150 (81 pct.) organisations answered the rather

long questionnaire

• The initiative was originally taken by GI Norden inspired

by a series of Swedish surveys

• Geoforum made a similar survey among private

companies during spring 2009 (low response rate 20 %)

Nature and relations between

SDI components

Dynamic

People Data

Access

Network

Policies

Standards

Policies supporting SDI

• Directive 2003/4/EC on public access to

environmental information as an EU

implementation of the Aarhus Convention

• The PSI Directive was implemented in July

2005 aiming at regulating and stimulating

the reuse of public sector in formation (PSI)

• The INSPIRE Directive from 2007 on

establishing infrastructure for spatial

information in Europe

Policy

The INSPIRE Directive

YES

(73%)

NO (9%)

Not

answered

(18%)

• Have you heard about

the INSPIRE Directive ?

Policy

Obtaining information about INSPIRE ?

• The Danish INSPIRE web site

– 39% (38% of the municipalities)

• EU’s official INSPIRE web site

– 11% (Primarily universities and Government Agencies)

• Participation in seminars about INSPIRE

– 26% (24% of the municipalities)

• Geoforum Denmark

– 55% (68% of the municipalities !!)

• Other associations

– 9%

• Two or more of the above mentioned

sources

– 37%

Policy

Have you heard about the new Danish Law on SDI ?

YES

(58%)

NO

(15%)

Do not

know

(27%)

• Law on Infrastructure

for geographic

information (adopted 9

Dec. 2008)

• The national

implementation of the

INSPIRE Directive

Policy

Do you expect that the new SDI Law will affect your

organisation ?

YES (40%)

NO (6%)

Do not know

(18%)

Not answered

(36%)

Policy

Funding model

• Earlier the Danish funding model was based

government funding and cost recovery

• From 2009 all ministries pay an annual fee to KMS,

and all the central government agencies and

institutions have access to KMS’ geodata and

related services

• A similar Municipal Geodata Agreement was

reached with Local Government Denmark in 2009,

and came into effect in 2010

• Hereby one of the major obstacles for GI use was

removed

Standards

• The e-Government strategy underline the

essential prerequisite for creating

interconnectivity between IT systems that

IT systems are based on open standards

• The OIO-project – a more technical

approach to the ongoing e-Government

development - recommends the use of XML

and SOA

• National implementation of the INSPIRE IR

Standards

Agree Neutral Disagree Did not

know

Standards are important 91

90.1%

6

5.9%

0

0.0%

4

4.0%

Standards are difficult to

implement

44

43.6%

36

35.6%

6

5.9%

15

14.9%

The benefit of standards

exceeds the efforts of

implementation

55

54.5%

25

24.8%

12

11.9%

9

8.9%

The standards my be crucial

for our organisation

40

40.4%

43

43.4%

7

7.1%

9

9.1%

Standards

Use of metadata in your organisation

YES (50%)

NO (29%)

Do not know (1%)

Not answered (20%)

75 municipalities have

answered the question

– and 50% answered yes

YES (54%)

NO (17%)

Do not know (6%)

Not answered (23%)

47 other organisations have

Answered the question

– and 54% answered yes

Access

Factors affecting your GIS use

75

municipalities

47

others

Data costs 11 10

GIS Tools costs 17 10

Accessibility (fast and easy access to relevant

data 47 21

Data quality and reliability

30 17

GIS Tools usability (targeted and user friendly)

37 15

Other

5 4

Not answered

16 12

Access

National Geoportals

People

GI-strategy

• Nearly half of the organisations have a

vedtaget strategy for geographic

information

– YES 44 pct.

– NO 38 pct.

– ? 18 pct.

People

At which level do you discuss INSPIRE ?

• Management level

– 15%

• Technician level

– 37%

• Both managers and technicians

– 10%

• Broadly in the organisationen

– 6%

• Do not know – not answered

– 54%

People

GI-organisation

• 70 pct. of the organisations answer that

they have a GIS coordinator or GIS

responsible person

• 16 organisations answer, that they have

more than one GIS coordinator or GIS

responsible person. This number varies

between 2 and 15 ! ?

People

The use of Geographic Information

• People working with geographic information

primarily use GI for information retrieval and simple

standard analyses

– Production, monitoring and mapping 10 pct.

– Research and development 9 pct.

– Simple analyses and information retrieval 58 pct.

– Advanced applications – e.g. geoprocessing 12 pct.

– Support, management, and training 6 pct.

– Other 4 pct.

People

Further need for GI qualifications

Further training Consultants Recruitment Other No answer

Production,

surveying &

mapping

32 20 4 2 9

Research &

development

21 18 4 2 13

Support &

management 48 8 1 2 7

Simple use 72 0 1 2 3

Avanced use 62 11 5 2 3

Other 8 10 3 2 16

How do you expect to cover your need for people with GI expertice ?

Data

From ad hoc mapping to Shared Object Types

• Until recently the various organisations produced

their own data based on ad hoc specifications

• Since the beginning of the century efforts have been

made to harmonise digital mapping through Public-

Public partnership in a bottom-up approach

• Later this initiative was taken over by the Data

Service Community

• The initiative is named Shared Object Types (FOT)

Data

Shared Object Types

• FOT organisation

with secretariat

• Agreements on

funding and

ownership

FOT Coverage

Discussion

Taking outset in the INSPIRE principles

• Data should only be collected once and maintained at the level

where this can be done most effectively (Shared Object Types)

• It should be possible to seamlessly combine spatial data from

different sources and to share the data between many users and

applications (Geoportals are one step)

• Spatial data should be collected at one level of government and

shared between all levels (Shared Object Types and Geoportals)

• Spatial data needed for good governance should be available on

conditions that do not restrict their extensive use (Funding

agreement)

• It should be easy to determine which spatial data are available,

to evaluate their fitness for purpose and to know which

conditions apply for their use (Geoportals regarding availability)

• Spatial data should be displayed in a user-friendly way that

makes them easy to understand and interpret

Conclusions - 1

• The Danish road map to SDI has changed from a

bottom-up approach to a combined approach with

the top taking the imitative

• The local stakeholders take active part in SDI

implementation

• The driving forces are the e-Government and

INSPIRE processes

Conclusions - 2

• The funding model is a major step forward and can

be used for inspiration in other countries

• General lack of GI trained people – at least at the

academic level is a major thread

• Although many initiatives are taken there is still a

lot of work to be done, and economic pressure on

the public sector may slow down the SDI

implementation process

Further research

• Similar surveys have been carried out in

Sweden and Finland

• Comparative analysis between the Nordic

countries

• Develop an analysis framework for

comparative studies

The INSPIRE Conference 2010

The SDI Research Group

Aalborg University

Lise Schrøder, Line Hvingel,

Henning Sten Hansen

THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION !

E-Mail : hsh@land.aau.dk