Draft inspire monitoring Indicators ( 2)

Cost / Benefit aspects (Art. 16)

1.17Costs of implementing the INSPIRE Directive

The costs subdivided into the various components, as estimated by the public authorities for this phase of implementation of the INSPIRE Directive, are indicated in Table 12.3.11 in the Annex.

The indicated costs reveal experiences that differ in their scope and duration, resulting in different figures for the same components. Furthermore, various authorities state that they do not have data in this phase to be able to respond to this question.

1.18Benefits observed

The examples of benefits identified by the national public authorities (Tables 12.3.12, 12.3.13 and 12.3.14 in the Annex) point to:

1. 
   Positive effects on policy preparation, implementation and evaluation, in particular:
   

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  greater availability of and access to geo-referenced information;
  
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  improved organisation, structuring and cataloguing of all information;
  
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  more effective data sharing;
  
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  economies of scale in terms of using information;
  
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  economies of scale in the supply to various users;
  
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  allocation of budget and procedures;
  
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  creation of services and compatibility of information;
  
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  easier to discover and understand the characteristics of existing information;
  
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  better guarantee of up-to-date data; data producers are more closely associated with the data;
  
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  more specialisation by authorities on their various themes, leading to better quality geographic information;
  
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  linking together of public authorities responsible for producing GI, leading to the definition of national policies in this area, particularly policies on data access, on authorities concerted action and on reduction of duplication in data collection and production;
  
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  greater efficiency in environmental protection, monitoring and evaluation, speeding up the application of legislation in this area;
  
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  establishment of synergies;
  
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  better decision-making.
  

2. 
   Improved services to the citizen, resulting from:
   

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  greater transparency in access to information and in understanding the quality of information;
  
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  generalised access to information;
  
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  improved access, free of charge, to up-to-date data;
  
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  easier access to harmonised data;
  
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  easier information search and better understanding of information characteristics and access conditions;
  
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  creation of new products and services;
  
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  improved public service for certain services.
  

3. 
   Benefits of cross-border cooperation, resulting from:
   

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  easier development of projects with Spain;
  
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  common use by Portugal and Spain of the same multi-temporal series of satellite images;
  
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  easier management of common resources such as water; cooperation support in terms of water resources policy;
  
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  improved evaluation of cross-border impacts;
  
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  improved formulation, analysis, implementation and evaluation of pan-European policies;
  
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  promotion of research activities between different countries.
  

11. Conclusions

This report presents the results of the monitoring and reporting process intended to describe the national spatial data infrastructure, the SNIG and the implementation of the INSPIRE Directive in Portugal, by indicating the current situation based not only on information collected from stakeholders but also on existing documents referring to this situation.

The SNIG is the national spatial data infrastructure, which was set up 20 years ago through Decree-Law No 53/90 of 13 February 1990. It was the first SDI to be developed in Europe and the first to be made available on the Internet in 1995. Given the recent advances made in this area, it has since been substantially altered, and the transposition of the INSPIRE Directive through Decree-Law No 180/2009 of 7 August 2009 has led to the former Decree-Law on the SNIG being revised.
The monitoring and reporting process was carried out in phases and was based, as already mentioned, on three main foundations: the INSPIRE FPN, the GT M&R CO-SNIG and the IGP as INSPIRE MSCP through the INSPIRE WG.
To calculate the indicators, the INSPIRE FPN authorities were asked to identify the Spatial Data Sets (SDS) and services under their responsibility and associated with the Annex themes, and also to describe these in terms of the existence and conformity of metadata, coverage and conformity of SDS and existence of services, their accessibility through metadata and their use. They were also asked to respond to a series of questions for the INSPIRE Portugal Report.
In terms of the involvement of the INSPIRE FPN authorities, responses were received from 18 out of the 29 authorities asked to contribute to the INSPIRE Report. The number of responses to the online form was slightly higher, as 20 out of the 29 authorities contacted responded to it.
Efforts were made to include all information that might help to describe the national SDI and situation with regard to implementing the INSPIRE Directive, based on the topics indicated by the European Commission for the Report and the information needed to calculate the various monitoring indicators. Despite everything, it was not possible in this phase to identify SDS and services for two themes in Annex III (Human Health and Safety and Atmospheric Conditions).
The cooperation between the MSCP and the GT M&R CO-SNIG throughout the monitoring and reporting process should be noted, which clearly shows the importance of forming specific working groups on certain themes. The collaboration with the public authorities participating in the SNIG should also be highlighted, particularly those involved in this phase of implementing the Directive.
As this was the first monitoring and reporting process for the Directive, various doubts were raised about some of the monitoring and reporting requirements, which will clearly not be the case in subsequent phases.
Finally, it is believed that the monitoring activity could be made much easier by using the information contained in the metadata. Furthermore, the identification of SDS and services associated with the Annex themes may also be improved during the coming year, as a result of the activity of the thematic working groups, which will allow better validated and more complete results to be obtained. Subsequent efforts will also be made to involve a larger number of authorities in the process.

12.