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By Dr. Massimo Craglia - January 2001
Dr. Massimo Craglia, a Senior Lecturer at the University of Sheffield, provides an overview of the INFO2000 project on Methods for Access to Data and Metadata in Europe (MADAME). The article sets the project in its policy context, describes its objectives, introduces the partners, and summarises its achievements.
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The Internet continues to grow at a phenomenal pace. Internet users have soared from 171 million in 1999 to 377 million in September 2000, of whom 160 million in North America, and 105 million in Europe [1]. Whilst North America remains in the lead, the variations within Europe are very significant as shown in Table 1 with Internet penetration ranging between 49% in Norway to 6% in Portugal [1]. These differences reflect different stages of economic developments, and historical and cultural traditions. However, governments also play an absolutely crucial role not only in the provision and regulation of the underlying infrastructure, including direct public investment and education, but also in creating the policy framework within which increased use of information and communication technologies takes place.
| Norway | 49% |
| Sweden | 44% |
| Finland | 38% |
| Denmark | 35% |
| UK | 26% |
| Benelux | 24% |
| Switzerland | 23% |
| Slovenia | 23% |
| Germany | 19% |
| Italy | 16% |
| France | 15% |
| Greece | 12% |
| Spain | 9% |
| Portugal | 6% |
Table 1: National Internet Penetration Rates - Source [1]
Moreover, public sector organisations are also the major single holders of information, and hence of the essential resource upon which information-based industries and services can develop.
A recent study for the European Commission [2] estimates the total value of public sector information (PSI) in Europe at € 68 billion annually, a substantial part of the total economic activity within the European economy. The report distinguishes between investment value, i.e. what government invests in the acquisition of PSI, and economic value, i.e. the part of national income attributable to industries and activities on the exploitation of PSI. European governments invest annually some € 9.5 billion in PSI, the largest sector of which is represented by geographic information (mapping, land and property, meteorological services, environmental data), followed by cultural and company information. The economic value of such investment is estimated to be in the range € 60-70 billion, of which geographic information represented over one third.
Given the importance of PSI to develop the Information Society, a number of initiatives at national and European level have started to take place to increase access to this vital resource to both citizens and business. At the European level, the most recent initiative launched by the European Commission and agreed at the highest political level at the Lisbon Summit in 2000 is 'e-Europe: An Information Society for All' setting out the European agenda for the further stimulation and growth of the Information Society. It identifies ten priority areas to bring Internet access to the reach of all, and develop key applications in the fields of education, health, transport, and access to government information. At the Feira Summit in June 2000 the e-Europe Action Plan was agreed. Within the action plan 'Government on-line: electronic access to public services' focuses on the extent to which digital information can transform old public sector organisation and provide faster, more responsive services. It can increase efficiency, cut costs and speed up standard administrative processes for citizens and business.
National initiatives are also moving along similar lines. As a matter of example, the UK government has set a target of all interactions between government departments and citizens to be on-line by 2005 [3]. Similar initiatives are also taking place in other countries [4]. What we are witnessing therefore is an increasing pressure on public sector organisations, both at central and local level to use Information Technologies to become more effective and efficient, and more responsive to the needs of citizens. At the same time they are also often asked to become more open in respect to the information they have, share it with others, and in many instances also exploit this information to recover some of their costs. These are potentially major undertakings for public sector organisations, and particularly for local authorities, the vast majority of which are very small and lack both technical and financial resources.
Whilst it is very seductive to think that at a time when most information in the public sector is processed and stored in computers, it is very easy to make it available to others by 'putting it on the Web', reality is much more complex than that. In the first place, most public sector organisations do not value the information they have as one of their crucial assets. Instead, they tend to see information as only functional to the specific task for which it is collected in the first place. The re-use of this information for other purposes, including public consultation and use, and integration and value-adding by the private sector, is hampered by limited visibility of who has what information, barriers to access including legislation, and pricing, and a host of perceived problems within the organisations 'owning' this information that do not value the full potential of their information resources, and fear that opening access might lead to misuse, liabilities, or simply embarrassment about errors in the data. Moreover, many public sector agencies, particularly at the local level, feel that there is a lack of guidelines on how to go about providing access to the information they hold, disseminating it, or exploiting it, and rightly fear about making mistakes, or use this as a convenient excuse to wait and see.
Recognizing the complexity of the context outlined above, we decided to respond to the call for proposals of the INFO2000 programme in February 1998, with a project that took a broad view of the issues involved in 'access' to PSI. In the first place we wanted to utilize the significant amount of operational experience that already existed in the public sector in Europe, learn from it, and disseminate it as widely as possible to help others avoiding mistakes and 'reinventing the wheel'. We developed a partnership therefore among organisations with some 10 years of experience each in on-line data and metadata service provision. We were particularly interested in comparing and blending experience at three levels: Europe-wide, national, and local. Within the broad range of information collected by the public sector, the project focused on statistical and geographic information. The latter, which includes information about land and property, service provision, and both natural and man-made features constitute a large part of the information managed daily by local authorities.
When we first met to define the project, we also realized that all of us had been making information available on-line, with often sophisticated support services around it, and yet we were not entirely sure about who was using this information, how they were using it, and what they generally thought about the service provided. In other words we all needed to move from our current information-provider perspective to a much more user-oriented one. This became then one of the hallmarks of our project. Finally we recognized that we wanted not only to learn from each other, but also tap on the advice and experience of others particularly in respect to the broader institutional, organisational, and economic issues that provide the framework within which PSI is made available and exploited. Our final objective was to distill this cumulated knowledge into generic guidelines that may be of help to any organisation, but particularly to local authorities that are starting the process of increasing access to their information resources.
University of Sheffield [5]: Department of Town and Regional Planning (co-ordinator)
The Department is an internationally recognised centre for high quality research. Between 1993 and 1997, it co-ordinated the European Science Foundation GISDATA [6] scientific programme which was funded by 14 European countries. Given the leading role played by the Department in this programme it was able to act as the voice of this strategic platform and contribute on its behalf to the discussions on GI2000 and on the Fifth Framework Programme. The Department has also been involved in other European projects including the GI-POLICY and GI-META studies for the European Commission, and the establishment of the Association of Geographic Information Laboratories in Europe [7].
Centro Nacional de Informação Geográfica – CNIG [8]
CNIG is a research agency from the Portuguese Public Central Administration. It is responsible for the implementation, co-ordination and management of the National Geographic Information System (SNIG) which was created in 1990. SNIG is a network of central, regional and local Geographic Information Systems developed by the corresponding Administration Agencies, that also links the geographic data bases - graphical and alphanumeric - implemented by the producer agencies. SNIG counts on the participation of the major Portuguese GI producers at the national, regional and local scale.
Intercommunale d’Equipement Economique de la Province de Luxembourg (IDELUX) [9]
I.D.E.LUX is a cooperative society aiming at the economic development of the Belgian Province de Luxembourg. The associates of I.D.E.LUX are all the 44 municipalities of the province, the Province de Luxembourg itself, as well as some private companies and institutional investors. In order to fulfil its mission of global development of the province, I.D.E.LUX acts as project owner in several domains, including the development of telematics services, operated through Centres de Support Télématique. Positioned between the Walloon Region, the Provincial authorities, the municipalities and the economic operators, I.D.E.LUX is in an excellent position to demonstrate and improve the particular situation of public sector information at the local level.
The National Land Survey of Finland (NLS) [10]
The National Land Survey of Finland (NLS) produces and provides information and services on real estate, topography and the environment for the needs of customers and the community at large. NLS is responsible for Finland's cadastral system, databases pertaining to real estate and general topographic mapping assignments. One of the principal functions of NLS is promotion of the shared use of geographic information provided by various public authorities to public bodies and private enterprises. Shared use in Finland is based on standardised data interchange. The goal is to bring all the major Finnish geographic information sources into the information service. One of the means for promoting the shared use of geographic information is the maintenance of the national geographic data description directory. The directory currently holds descriptions of 150 datasets from 20 national organisations and about 100 datasets from local administration.
Resource Centre for Access to Data on Europe (r·cade) [11]
r·cade is a resource centre established in 1993 by the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). Its mission is to establish a central access point for statistical information on Europe for the social science research community. In February 1999, r·cade signed a contract, in partnership with the ONS, to become the official UK Eurostat Data Shop. This provides r·cade with access to Eurostat's complete catalogue of online data, digital data, and paper publications. The Centre is based at the University of Durham.
The MADAME project ran for 2 years, was completed in December 2000. During this period, a range of activities has been undertaken the results of which are documented in a series of reports:
The first four of the reports above are already available on the project’s Web site, whilst the fifth is been completed at the time of writing [12].
The first report has also provided the nucleus for an overview of data policies in twelve countries prepared on behalf of the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre, DG Information Society, and EUROGI, the European umbrella organisation for geographic information [13].
Of potential interest to many readers of this article are the findings included in the second report above. This includes a self-evaluation of the on-line services provided by the partners and the results of 10 focus groups undertaken in four countries with over 100 users and potential users of these services coming from the public and private sector and academia. The choice of the Focus Group technique, amongst a wider range of group interviews, was based on the fact that it is an excellent method of using group interaction to produce data and insights that would be less accessible without the lines of communication found in a group. This is the key distinguishing feature of Focus Group research and this is what makes it such an interesting technique to use. Moreover, Focus Groups are useful when it comes to investigating what participants think but they excel at uncovering why participants think as they do. Focus groups are not a methodology to provide a representative sample of the total population. They are a methodology to achieve depth of analysis rather than statistically significant findings. Over 500 hours of face-to-face contact time have certainly provided an enormous richness of information. Moreover, the number of people involved adds considerable weight to the findings discussed in this report, which will be of interest to any organisation providing on-line services.
For those readers who are particularly interested in metadata standards, particularly in the geographic information field, we recommend looking visiting our Web site [12] and also looking at the relevant section of the Guidelines, as we have made a considerable effort in helping forge a consensus among different projects involved with metadata in liaison with the ISO, the international standardization organisation, CEN, the European standardization organisation, and the European Commission represented by the Joint Research Centre.
As stated above, the MADAME project formally came to an end in December 2000. We are currently printing the Guidelines for wide distribution across Europe, with an extended Executive Summary in four languages, in addition to the dissemination via the Web site.
What we are looking forward to now is to help implement these guidelines and increase access to public sector information in a range of organisations, particularly at the local level. For this purpose we are looking at the first call of proposals of the eContent programme [14] which is likely to take place in March 2001. If anybody is interested in talking to us please contact me using my email address.
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Dr. Massimo Craglia
Senior Lecturer
Dept. of Town & Regional Planning
University of Sheffield
gisdata@sheffield.ac.uk
<http://www.shef.ac.uk/trp/gis/maxweb.htm>
Dr. Massimo Craglia is a Senior Lecturer in Town & Regional Planning at the University of Sheffield. His major research interests focus on the diffusion and application of geographic information systems in planning, and the development of data policies, and infrastructures for data sharing at national and local levels. He directs the EC project on Methods for Access to Data and Metadata in Europe (MADAME), and is the Director of the Sheffield Centre for Geographic Information and Spatial Analysis.
He is an advisor on data policies to the European Umbrella Organisation on Geographic Information, (EUROGI), and chairs the Data Policies Working Group of the Association of Geographic Information Laboratories in Europe (AGILE), as well as the European Special Interest Group of the AGI. Between February and July 2000, he was Detached National Expert to the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission with the brief to develop a GI policy for the Commission’s services.
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For citation purposes:
Craglia, M. "Methods for Access to Data and Metadata in Europe: An Overview", Cultivate Interactive, issue
3, 29 January 2001
URL: <http://www.cultivate-int.org/issue3/madame/>
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