Current status of INSPIRE: work of the Drafting Teams and role of the SDIC's

Danny Vandenbroucke

Spatial Applications Division of K.U.Leuven R&D (B)
Co-chair of the INSPIRE Drafting Team on Monitoring and Reporting

In 2001, the European Commission initiated the INSPIRE initiative. It was based on the observation that the accessibility, interoperability and affordability of spatial data and information systems were limited. It was generally recognised that this situation prevents society to fully benefit from the potential of the technology to improve the relevancy, accuracy, impact and public control of territorial policies and related decisions at all scales and to involve citizens, businesses, non governmental and research organisations in a participatory information society.
With the INSPIRE initiative, the European Union - in collaboration with all the relevant stakeholders - intends to establish an infrastructure for spatial information in Europe that will allow the public sector users at the European, national, regional and local levels to share spatial data from a wide range of sources in an interoperable way for the execution of a variety of public tasks at conditions which do not restrain its use. Moreover, users in private, research and NGO-environments and the citizen will be offered services to discover, access and view these spatial data sources. Environmental policies, for which the spatial dimension constitutes an important component, have been chosen as the starting point to establish this spatial infrastructure.

To reach these objectives, the European Commissioners of Environment, Economic and Monetary affairs and Research agreed in 2002 about a Memorandum of Understanding, not only recognising the problem but also indicating the steps to be taken to develop such an infrastructure. One of the key elements in the MoU was the need for a legislative framework. In order to develop the INSPIRE legislation, all GI stakeholders were mobilised in relevant working groups in order to prepare the drafting process of the proposed Directive. Mid 2004, the proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council - Establishing an infrastructure for spatial information in the Community (INSPIRE) - saw light.
In March 2005, the Commission launched a Call for Expression of Interest for Spatial Data Interest Communities (SDIC) and Legally Mandated Organisations (LMO) to support the preparation of the implementation of the proposal for a Draft INSPIRE Directive. The aim was to stimulate European technical, organisational and thematic networks and communities to help defining the implementing rules for data, metadata and service implementation, and for data policy and monotoring & reporting. Five Drafting Teams were set-up to draft these implementing rules. A Kick-off meeting with 75 experts from the Core Drafting, Supporting and Consolidation Teams was held in JRC in October.
The presentation will focus on the status of INSPIRE in general and of the work of the Drafting Teams in particular. How will the Drafting Teams work: procedures, planning, methodology? What will be the result of this process? What is the role of the SDIC's and LMO's? What is the relationship with the work that is ongoing in research and other GI projects?