European GI Users Meeting
28 May 1996

Meeting Report (Final)

Table of contents

Introduction
Meeting Introduction
Input from Participants
Meeting Conclusion

Introduction

The latest version of the GI2000 Policy Document, dated 31 December 1995, was distributed at the meeting, as amended by M Littlejohn of DG XIII/E and R Longhorn, external expert in GI, specifically to take account of comments from the previous meeting with the Commercial GI Data Providers (held 28 November 1995). This document is available separately and can be accessed on the I'M Europe Web site.

The meeting was opened and chaired by Mr. Martin Littlejohn, DG XIII/E.3, who also used this opportunity to provide a progress report on the INFO2000 Programme , which was approved by Council on 20 May 1996. It is under INFO2000 that certain specific actions relating to further development of GI content in Europe will take place, following a Call for Proposals expected to be launched mid-June 1996.

Meeting Introduction.

A questionnaire was distributed by R Longhorn, a copy of which appears in Annex D, along with a short analysis of results obtained from answers to the questionnaire.

Input from Participants.

Rather than report what each individual said, this report contains a summary of all issues raised or main comments made on the principal themes. These are listed in no specific priority order.

Metadata and metadata services.

• Metadata services and metadata standards are a key issue to users of GI, in agreement with similar strong feelings on this issue from the commercial GI data providers meeting.
• Some level of metadata or metadata services should be available freely, yet others should be chargeable, as services.
• GI metadata is definitely needed, but at a level (or levels) yet to be determined. Comments included "there are already too many metadata services, of too many varieties, with too little standardisation and too little commonality across services." This is becoming very confusing to the end user, whether experienced or naive. Metadata services/systems must be easy to use in the first instance (level of data presented, method of presentation and selection, breadth of coverage, etc.). More detailed metadata can then be found by contacting GI providers directly as a result of using the contact details held in the metadata. Some GI metadata may need to be simplistic, shallow in detail yet with wide breadth of coverage, while other metadata needs to be detailed and/or perhaps even oriented towards specific subject niches.

Pan-European Datasets / Base Data.

• There is a real need to invest much more in developing the European GI datasets and/or a meaningful set of "base data". The possibilities opening up as a result of forthcoming high resolution remote sensing data must be carefully considered in relation to potential cost of collecting and maintaining European-wide "base data".
• The data in this pan-European GI data collection will probably need to be sold at some level of cost, as opposed to being made available free. The meeting was divided as to whether this should be a purely nominal cost (cost of recovery, as in the USA model) or at some cost relating to the value of the data to the purchaser or end-user.
• Transparency in pan-European GI datasets is as important within a country as it is across the pan-European boundaries.
• The "European" area needs proper definition in regard to "pan-European GI base data", for example, ocean regions cannot be ignored (especially the North Atlantic, where major issues of minerals, sea bed and fisheries exploitation are still being resolved). Also, since it is already the stated commitment of the EU to bring additional East and Central European states (including the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia) into the association over the next decade or more, these areas, too, should be covered. A case can be made that GI for these areas may be even more important now than in the future, as decisions governing large sums of aid and development funding are being made which need better analysis and monitoring capabilities.

Availability of GI.

• More database services are needed, from which potential users can select GI for own purposes. Techniques are needed to help make re-use of GI (for purposes other than that for which it was originally collected) both possible and easier.
• The bulk of high resolution data (large scale) is held at government level and the EU's role should be to help release such data for more general consumption, tackling all the many issues this may involve (monopoly control, pricing, guaranteed access, liability, guaranteeing personal privacy, etc.).

Legal issues.

• GI does have special legal implications above and beyond those of other forms of multimedia. GI is very expensive to collect, maintain and sell, and therefore deserves separate consideration in regard to protection of IPR. Misuse of GI, or use of "faulty" GI (i.e. either bad data or data used for purposes other than those for which it was collected and sold) can lead to dangerous and expensive mistakes or decisions, e.g. in road navigation for emergency services, decisions on where to locate large industrial or commercial complexes, etc.

Interoperability and Standards.

• Interoperability and integration are important to users, especially new GI users. Guidelines are needed, even now, stating what are the risks and benefits for acquiring strictly proprietary systems versus fully interoperable systems, especially for naive users. However, the whole question of interoperability seems to be one which may not be resolved in less than several years time (according to OGC and others who are working in this area). In the meantime, how can users get practical, useful assistance in regard to integrating data ("GI-to-GI" and "non-GI-to-GI") across multiple software platforms (GIS versus desktop office programmes) and across media/dissemination technologies (disk, CD-ROM, networks, the Web,...).
• Standardisation is still to be resolved. There are at least 24 "standards" now in use globally for GI and GIS, not including proprietary data formats of major GIS vendors. Add to this list the 26 "standards" in use for interchange of vector and raster graphics, and the poor end-user, especially the "first time" user, is completely lost! Even within specific industries, i.e. water supply, gas supply or telecommunications, single industries across Europe do not apply the same standards.
• The position on standards is still not clear, i.e. as to what is needed, what is possible, what is practicable. Many (most?) users are not interested in standards per se, but rather in getting their new spatial analysis systems in place. They find the whole standards debate boring and not relevant, since they have applications that need implementing today, not in five years time when perhaps the relevant standard will have been agreed.

Public/Private Synergy.

• The meeting generated a plea for greater public/private synergy in regard to collection and dissemination of GI, not just "traditional" large government data holders, such as National Mapping Agencies, but from local and regional government (cadastral data) and large "semi-government" organisations (in many countries), such as telecommunications, water, electricity and other network operators (who often hold vast volumes of GI).
• Unfortunately, altering the current public/private situation will require a major change in the culture of many government organisations, including (perhaps) changes in their legal mandates to provide data to the public. A culture of "cooperation" needs to be engendered, from the highest levels on down. This will all take time and strong political will at national, local and regional government level. In this context one must also consider that an archive needs to be maintained to retain change information.
• Current restrictions on use of government held and collected GI must be lifted, across various types of GI, or at the very least clearly stated, so that the access, use and re-use issues can be openly debated and resolved. This will probably happen at national level due to differences still existing at national level across the EU in regard to dissemination policies, privacy legislation, etc.
• Even "negotiated" agreements between government data holders and large user associations do not always work (UK local government agreement with OS GB for basic "maps" was a good example of the value of such agreements, while other participants pointed out that similar agreements relating to cadastral and utilities information in other EU member states had not proven to be satisfactory).
• A clash in "accounting cultures" often seems to lead to inability of the government data holder to understand the needs of the non-government data user. This needs to be examined, specifically in relation to GI.
• It is time to face the public/private synergy "problem" specifically in regard to GI openly and with the goal of achieving some form of common agreement, across Member States, within a stated time period. To do this, more investigation is needed into the actual position today of public/private synergy (or lack thereof) in regard to GI provision and use.

Marine GI is important, too!

• We seem to have missed the importance of the marine side of the GI world in the current (and earlier) versions of the GI2000 document. We must/should add something more specific about the peculiar problems of marine-related GI, i.e. it is inherently cross-border, as marine related applications or problems often touch many national borders (coastlines). As for liability issues, advent of electronic chart systems is totally GI focused and first court cases on liability over supply of "bad" data have already occurred (and been won against the chart supplier!).

Economics of GI.

• There is too little knowledge of the economics of GI, i.e. not enough hard information on payback periods, rate of return on investment, etc. and too few models which can be used to highlight other, often non-economic benefits of, for example, GI used for environmental monitoring, urban and regional planning, etc. Many large commercial organisations have recently stopped GIS projects because of lack of such justification data and this is having an adverse effect on whole industries. (Another cause of this is that too little awareness of GI and its benefits exists at higher echelons in industry).
• Cost recovery models are not even the same across Europe. For example, OS GB (reportedly) assigns zero economic value to its current database, which was built up historically over a long period of time. Such cost will almost certainly never be fully recovered and the data was never collected with that aim in mind. However, OS GB must assign a cost to on-going data collection, maintenance and dissemination to a wide range of customers and customer types. Yet in the German context, such a high value has been put on the existing GI databases that "many local governments cannot even participate" in the use and exploitation of these datasets.
• The opinion was expressed that the full economics of collecting and maintaining very large databases (typical for GI) is still not fully understood nor is the very high cost recognised, and may even be prohibitive, in relation to national collections of GI, if you tried to implement full cost recovery. Yet there are normally other reasons for collecting and maintaining such huge datasets which may not even have an obvious economic benefit.
• Getting to the "real end users of GI" is very difficult, since they now appear in all walks of life, all sectors of business and industry, and approach the use of GI from very different perspectives as to content of their GI, cost, method of use, expectations, need for accuracy and precision, timeliness, maintainability of key GI datasets over long(er) periods of time, etc.

Removing barriers / creating guidelines.

• A "stick and carrot" approach may be necessary, in which, for example, monopolistic practices controlling data (whether government or private) is ended, "bad" practice is identified (and punished, somehow?) and "good" practice is highlighted and encouraged or rewarded. For example, monopoly control of a major data source is not inherently "bad" if adequate and acceptable access mechanisms exist (price, availability, use/re-use provisions, etc.). In the UK, The National Pricing Discrimination Policy does work (according to the participant who mentioned this!) but this is not a "unified price list".
• So, do we in Europe need national "guidelines" and price lists for GI? Do these need to be "harmonised" across national boundaries in order to help users focus on cross-border issues requiring spatial analysis? If we had these, how much would they impact the market for GI in Europe?
• A "guideline" on access or pricing is one thing, the actual procedures and/or prices put in place by data holders can often be something else. The data holder thinks they are following the "guideline" but this is disputed by the potential buyer/user. For example, different "guidelines" exist regarding "cost of distribution", "cost recovery", "cost based on perceived value to the purchaser", etc. So there is not even a single "guideline" principle at stake here, but a range of types of guidelines.

Role of the EU and the GI2000 document.

• EU has to demonstrate that it can remove barriers for GI, such as monopoly control practices, as it has done, or is trying to do, in telecommunications, electricity supply, etc.
• We need better vision as to how a wide range of activities can be assisted using GI, GIS technology and spatial analysis techniques, i.e. in social, economic and cultural areas of life.
• EU should help to raise awareness of GI issues at both national Member State government level, but also across groups of users and potential users.

Meeting Conclusion.

• Metadata was very important, if not yet well understood and/or implemented.
• Access to data is key, including cost guidelines, copyright issues, guidelines on use and/or re-use of GI, etc.
• Commitment to creating and maintaining pan-European base data is necessary, at EU, Member State government and private industry levels. We must "properly specify" the content for "pan-European base data", not forgetting specific requirements such as marine information.
• EC should support liberalisation of the GI data marketplace, in the same way that it is pushing for deregulation in telecomms and other network services.
• GI standards are important, but confusing to users, many of whom cannot wait for standards to be developed, but must get on with their applications using whatever is readily available.
• Public/private synergy is a key issue, especially in the area of GI, as so much GI is held by government agencies. A new "culture of cooperation" needs to be fostered between government and private industry/users in regard to GI, but this will take a long time and further efforts to make it happen, possibly spurred on by EU-level actions.

• Further revisions to the GI2000 Policy Document will be made and will be available via the I'M EUROPE World Wide Web site.
• The GI2000 document would eventually become a Communication to Council and the Parliament covering the main issues set forth in the current document, as revised following the final two meetings in the consultation process.
• The INFO2000 programme first Call for Proposals would be announced mid-June and participants were encouraged to make proposals, especially in regard to GI under Action Line 3.1.