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INSPIREInfrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe

INSPIRE Monitoring and Reporting 2016 – 2019: Scene-setter Title INSPIRE Monitoring and Reporting 2016-2019

Creator EC/EEA INSPIRE Team

Date of last update 2016-06-14

Subject Streamlining of INSPIRE Monitoring and Reporting

Status Draft orientation paper for discussion

Publisher DG ENV

Type Text

Description Working area 2 of the MIWP 2016 -2020 will carry out activities to significantly simplify and streamline monitoring and reporting under the INSPIRE Directive. This paper sets the scene for these activities.

Format MS Word (doc)

Source EC/EEA INSPIRE Team

Rights Reuse is authorised, provided the source is acknowledged. The reuse policy of the European Commission is implemented by a Decision of 12 December 2011.

Identifier 4th MIG-P DOC9

Language EN

Relation Not applicable

Coverage Project duration

Requested actions: The members of the MIG-P are invited to:

Take note of the document and discuss it at the 28 June 2016 meeting;

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Monitoring and Reporting M&R 2016 Assessment – Country Fiches / M&R 2019 work package

Early draft discussion paper on the INSPIRE M&R roadmap

Context...................................................................................................................................................3

Actions....................................................................................................................................................4

Assessing the Member State reports 2016 (INSPIRE EC/EEA Team)...................................................4

INSPIRE Monitoring & Reporting 2019 (INSPIRE EC/EEA Team + MIG + Committee).........................4

Country Fiche Template.................................................................................................................5

Indicators....................................................................................................................................5

Country Fiche Template Components........................................................................................6

Part 1: Implementation Report – the static part of the country fiche....................................6

Part 2: Monitoring – the dynamic part of the country fiche delivering Key Performance Indicators (KPI).......................................................................................................................8

Part 3: MS Action Plan – Objectives for each MS and the actions to achieve them, aligned with the objectives of the INSPIRE implementation strategy 2016 – 2020.............................9

Annex 1 - Country Report Template.....................................................................................................11

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ContextThe INSPIRE Directive implementation has been identified as one of the main vehicles to streamline existing reporting processes in order to make them more effective and efficient.

In addition to helping streamline the reporting under other pieces of legislation, the monitoring and reporting regime under the INSPIRE Directive itself needs streamlining. The current system is based on Article 21 of the Directive and the 2009 Reporting Implementing Decision. The experience from the previous reporting rounds and the evaluation has shown that this system leaves room for improvement. Administrative and textual information is still quite significant in this system but since the assessment of these aspects has now been carried out (e.g. on coordinating structures) it is not meaningful to collect these, or slightly updated information, on a regular basis. Moreover, the principles on streamlined monitoring and reporting currently developed in the context of the Environment Fitness Check strongly argue for using numeric data for “key performance indicators” or implementation benchmarks and making the rest of the information publically available at national level. The progress in the monitoring action (MIWP-16), dashboard and validation tools would allow for a much more streamlined, electronic and simple monitoring and reporting process under INSPIRE. As a result, working area 2 of the MIWP 2016 -2020 ("End user applications for environmental reporting and implementation") will carry out activities to significantly simplify and streamline monitoring and reporting under the INSPIRE Directive well in time before the next national reports due in 2019. An analysis of the existing documents (Reporting Decision and guidance) needs to be carried out and a concept for a future approach will be developed by the end of 2016. In 2017, this concept will be implemented. Before involving the Committee, the MIG-P will oversee this work supported by the MIG-T.

Two actions are foreseen to guide this M&R transition process: the assessment of the 2016 reporting cycle and the new MIWP 2016-2020 work package "INSPIRE Monitoring and Reporting 2019".

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Actions

Assessing the Member State reports 2016 (INSPIRE EC/EEA Team)Following the submission of the national reports in May 2016, a screening analysis will take place which should result in structured country fiches highlighting the progress of the MS in the various areas of implementation and listing the actions that MS intend to take to close implementation gaps. The idea of country fiches is further developed in the next paragraphs and a first draft template is provided in Annex 1 of this document.

INSPIRE Monitoring & Reporting 2019 (INSPIRE EC/EEA Team + MIG + Committee) Reviewing the INSPIRE Monitoring and Reporting process and obligations in order to develop and implement an optimized and effective process with minimum administrative burden for the reporting actors (MS, EEA, EC). This action should be carried out with high priority before the next monitoring and reporting rounds. The new process will have to adopt the concepts of Key Performance Indicators, dashboards, country fiches, linking to more extensive reporting resources and reporting service endpoints. As end-users are considered part of the process, a broad comprehensive publication of reporting information to the larger public is part of the final objectives. In a first phase (Q2/2016 – Q4/2016) this project will deliver a new M&R concept, a screening report of the impact on the Reporting Decision and a roadmap for transition towards a new M&R process including the development of the legal, implementation and operational components. Possible revisions of the Reporting Decision will be discussed with the Member States. In a second phase (Q1/2017 – Q1/2018) the roadmap will be executed. The reporting process component will be implemented and operationalised and as such contribute to the envisaged end-user applications and the Better Regulation Fitness Check on Environmental Monitoring and Reporting.

High-level roadmap & deliverables

28/06/2016: Discussion on the INSPIRE Monitoring & Reporting 2019 work package by MIG-P

Q3/2016: Written procedure for endorsement of the ToR of the work package by MIG-P.

xx/12/2016: Presentation of INSPIRE M&R screening report (proposed changes to Reporting Decision, KPI, Country fiches, forward-looking CSF, impact assessment …) + Action Plan (actions, roadmap, deliverables …) to the INSPIRE Committee and the MIG.

Q4/2017: INSPIRE Reporting Decision amended.

Q4/2017 – Q1/2018 for testing and improvement

Q1/2018 (preferred) or Q2/2018 (deadline): new INSPIRE M&R system operational.

Country Fiche Template

Indicators

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As clearly stated in the Better Regulation Guidelines1, a good monitoring system links objectives with their relevant indicators. In order to facilitate and streamline the reporting to Commission bodies INSPIRE monitoring has to be aligned with the Better Regulation Guidelines.

In many cases monitoring indicators are focused on performance and compliance assurance of the implementation of the legal framework. They have a technical focus and seldom provide a comprehensive view on the benefit the recorded progress brings or how this progress contributes to more tangible strategic objectives for the end-users and stakeholders. To bridge the information gap between technical monitoring of system performance, end-user expectations and business responses (REFIT results, Fitness Check, MIWP2016-2020 …), the indicator approach as suggested in the Better Regulation Guidelines (p. 46) will be implemented. This introduces the concept of Output indicators (specific deliverables), Outcome/Result indicators (immediate effects) and Impact indicators (impact on the wider economy/society) to measure the progress on interventions/actions against the common set of objectives on technical INSPIRE implementation (Output), immediate benefits for environmental policy making and evaluation (Outcome/Result) and indirect or direct benefits to other policy domains like the Digital Single Market (Impact).

The new strategic direction, that has been translated in the MIWP 2016-2020 and has been subject of discussion in the Member State bilateral meetings, identifies strategic and operational objectives for INSPIRE implementation (e.g. lower administrative burden by optimizing monitoring and reporting processes; improve interoperability and capacity by aligning the INSPIRE framework with other policy domains …). The MIWP 2016-2020 and the MS action plans will define actions as a COM\EEA and MS response to what should be done to achieve the envisaged strategic objectives. The strategic objectives and the common action plan should guarantee a fit for purpose implementation of INSPIRE taking also the end-user perspective into consideration and not only the legal conformity of the implementation. When the action plan is executed (e.g. "INSPIRE Monitoring & Reporting 2019" action), we should be able to monitor the performance of the implementation and the distance to target. For this purpose, quantitative KPI's (e.g. "Time to report" as output indicator, "MS satisfaction" as outcome indicator) can be introduced that give an indication of the level of success of the actions against the implementation of strategic objectives. The above objective and KPI examples focus on the effect of the action plan (e.g. an optimized M&R system) to achieve the target (e.g. lower administrative burden). The existing monitoring indicators that are mandated by the Reporting Decision are mainly output indicators that focus on technical implementation.

Part of the indicator screening will be the definition of a comprehensive set of KPI’s (Output, Outcome and Impact) and objectives that guide and monitor INSPIRE implementation.

Example (for scene-setting purposes):

Objective: "Spatial data relevant to environmental reporting obligations is available"

Action plan: Develop a rolling list of priority data sets. Make available as-is by Q2/2017. Include EUR-Lex keyword in metadata.

Possible key indicators to measure the performance of the action (KPI):

Output indicator: Number/Percentage of data sets with Eur-Lex keyword 1 http://ec.europa.eu/smart-regulation/guidelines/docs/swd_br_guidelines_en.pdf

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Output indicator: Accessibility of spatial data to be reported under environmental reporting obligations for viewing (%)

Output indicator: Accessibility of spatial data to be reported under environmental reporting obligations for downloading (%)

Outcome indicator: Accessibility of spatial data to be reported under the Air Quality Directive (%) Outcome indicator: Availability of required spatial data for the integrated assessment of

biodiversity and agricultural land use (%) Impact indicator: Number of priority spatial datasets available in the European open data portal.

Country Fiche Template ComponentsThe future template can be modelled based on the template for the tri-annual INSPIRE Implementation report (slow-changing descriptive information), the yearly monitoring report indicators (dynamic measurement of the implementation progress) and the template prepared for the bilateral meetings (forward looking implementation aspects), taking into consideration the result from the MIWP-16 (Monitoring) and allowing easy tracing of progress and monitoring of actions by allowing the presentation of these results online in country fiches. The action needs to be coordinated with the EEA and their activities on reporting and the dashboard.

Part 1: Implementation Report – the static part of the country ficheThe existing template for the tri-annual implementation report should be used as input for the country fiche. It might be possible to group some of the current aspects of the report to make it more condensed and less redundant. Some aspects of the current reporting information are less relevant and might be omitted in the future e.g.:

Quality Assurance - As data quality and quality assurance processes can be described in metadata, and since QA-processes mostly differ from organisation to organisation depending on the objective of the data acquisition.

Comments on the monitoring and reporting process - As this becomes part of the larger Fitness Check initiative on monitoring and reporting.

Measures to facilitate sharing, stakeholder cooperation, access through the geoportal - As access to spatial data will be measured based on the monitoring process and is also covered by Art. 15 (data sharing arrangements and policies).

Usage of the infrastructure – As a lot of MS SDI's follow a federated approach it seems difficult to gather qualitative information about the usage of the SDI. It might be considered to rephrase this indicator towards the level of integration of INSPIRE data and services in MS Digital Agenda, e-Government and DSM initiatives.

EXAMPLE OF POSSIBLE CHANGES TO THE IMPLEMENTATION REPORT TEMPLATE WITH IMPACT ON THE REPORTING DECISION

CO-ORDINATION AND QUALITY ASSURANCE (ART. 12) COORDINATION (ART. 12.1.)

o Member State contact pointo The coordination structureo Comments on the monitoring and reporting process

QUALITY ASSURANCE (ART. 12.2.)o Quality assurance procedures

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o Analysis of quality assurance problemso Measures taken to improve the quality assuranceo Quality certification mechanisms

FUNCTIONING AND COORDINATION OF THE INFRASTRUCTURE (ART.13)o GENERAL OVERVIEW DESCRIPTION OF THE SDIo INSPIRE STAKEHOLDERS & ROLEo ROLE OF THE VARIOUS STAKEHOLDERSo MEASURES TAKEN TO FACILITATE SHARINGo STAKEHOLDER COOPERATIONo ACCESS TO SERVICES THROUGH THE INSPIRE GEOPORTAL

USAGE OF THE INFRASTRUCTURE FOR SPATIAL INFORMATION (ART.14)o USE OF SPATIAL DATA SERVICES IN THE SDIo USE OF THE SPATIAL DATASETSo USE OF THE SDI BY THE GENERAL PUBLICo CROSS-BORDER USAGEo USE OF TRANSFORMATION SERVICES

DATA SHARING ARRANGEMENTS (ART.15)o DATA SHARING ARRANGEMENTS BETWEEN PUBLIC AUTHORITIES AND COMMUNITY

INSTITUTIONS AND BODIESo DATA SHARING ARRANGEMENTS BETWEEN PUBLIC AUTHORITIES AND COMMUNITY

INSTITUTIONS AND BODIESo BARRIERS TO THE SHARING AND THE ACTIONS TAKEN TO OVERCOME THEM

COST / BENEFIT ASPECTS (ART.16)o COSTS RESULTING FROM IMPLEMENTING INSPIRE DIRECTIVEo BENEFITS OBSERVED

The content provided by the MS needs to be streamlined and synthesized to reflect a similar approach and comparable content across MS. If possible, extensive textual descriptions should be summarized and/or clarified by visuals/graphics.

This part of the country fiche is considered to be the static part of the country fiche. In future this content will not be requested separately in a report but will be updated by the MS upon changes conform the tri-annual reporting cycle as mandated in the INSPIRE Directive or can be continuously maintained by MS on a voluntary base.

Part 2: Monitoring – the dynamic part of the country fiche delivering Key Performance Indicators (KPI)Part 2 of the Country Fiche builds further on the results of MIWP-16 (Monitoring2) and MIWP-5 (Validation and Conformity3). The main target is to fully automate the gathering and validation of monitoring information based on metadata made available by the Member Stated through their registered discovery services. To assess the possibility of automatic harvesting of information for measuring the performance of the INSPIRE implementation, existing monitoring indicators will be

2 Final activity report of the MIWP-16: https://ies-svn.jrc.ec.europa.eu/documents/56

3 Wiki page of MIWP-5: https://ies-svn.jrc.ec.europa.eu/projects/validation-and-conformity-testing

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reviewed. A lot of the work in this area has already been done in MIWP-16. The results of this MIG work package are the starting point for further streamlining of the monitoring process, fit for purpose screening of the Reporting Decision and the impact assessment on the metadata regulation.

The main conclusions from the MIWP-16 can be summarized as follows:

Conclusions from the Report on activities carried out under MIWP-16

Indicators proposed to be discarded in case of fully automated monitoringNOTE: A fully automated monitoring would exclude relevant spatial data sets and services not yet described and accessible via metadata records available through INSPIRE Discovery services.

MDi1: Existence of metadataIn case of moving to a fully automated monitoring we recommend that the general indicator MDi1 and its specific indicators MDi1.1, MDi1.2, MDi1.3 and MDi1.4 are removed from the list of INSPIRE monitoring indicators. Article 3 of the Commission Decision (2009/442/EC) needs to be dropped.

NSi1: Accessibility of metadata through discovery servicesIn case of moving to a fully automated monitoring we recommend that the general indicator NSi1 and its specific indicators NSi1.1 and NSi1.2 are removed from the list of INSPIRE monitoring indicators. Article 7 of the Commission Decision (2009/442/EC) needs to be dropped.

Monitoring variables proposed to be added (on a voluntary basis)In order to improve the quality and usefulness of the monitoring data, it is proposed to add the variables described in the section Proposed non mandatory additional elements to be reported for spatial data sets and/or services : metadata UUIDs of spatial data sets; metadata UUIDs of the discovery, view and download services related to a spatial data set; metadata UUID of the discovery service servicing the metadata of a network service; direct accessibility of a service.

Indicator proposed to be addedThe MIWP-16 proposes the addition of an indicator on spatial data service similar to the indicators existing for discovery, view, download, transform and invoke services. Once revised metadata technical guidelines have been approved (work on-going in MIWP-8), the process to identify spatial data services from metadata will be clear. This will guarantee that this indicator can be calculated automatically.

Open IssuesThe proposed modifications on the INSPIRE monitoring indicators require an update of the Commission decision implementing the INSPIRE Directive as regards monitoring and reporting (2009/442/EC) and the corresponding Guidance documents.

In addition to the above modifications these updates should consider the following issues:

- usefulness of indicator DSi2 (conformity of spatial data sets) to monitor the implementation status in the Member States: not all INSPIRE relevant data can be transformed into INSPIRE data models

- new understanding of Spatial Data Services (SDS) - Maintenance of the “prototypes”/production systems

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- Information about direct accessibility of services through conditions applying to access and use should ideally be harmonised.

Additional COM monitoring requirements with impact on metadata IRThe new MIWP 2016-2020 is setting priorities on environmental reporting and fit for purpose of INSPIRE implementation in view of use by the larger digital community and end-user applications. One of the main instruments to guide the implementation towards these priorities is the rolling list of priority datasets. To be able to monitor the progress of making these priority datasets available within an automated system and to be able to find data related to reporting obligations in an easy way, data set metadata should include a keyword from a controlled vocabulary (e.g. EUR-Lex) that references the legislation under which the data has been made available or reported.

To facilitate the use and the accessibility of data sets and services in end-user applications, it would be recommended that the comprehensive description (service endpoint, UUID, view or download request, name of view layer or download file, protocol – WMS/FTP/File/…) of view and download service endpoints is mandated in the dataset metadata. This is already foreseen to some level in the INSPIRE metadata regulation and supported by the ISO19115 profile. See also the following discussion on the thematic clusters for more insights.

Part 3: MS Action Plan – Objectives for each MS and the actions to achieve them, aligned with the objectives of the INSPIRE implementation strategy 2016 – 2020This part of the Country Fiche contains the forward looking aspect for closing identified INSPIRE implementation gaps in the MS and delivering on INSPIRE implementation objectives (priority data sets, harmonisation …). A common set of objectives need to be developed to steer MS INSPIRE implementation towards a common direction/goal. Based on the INSPIRE state of play in the MS, every MS develops a country-specific action plan for realising the common objectives. National actions and their timing can differ, the common objectives and timing for achieving these objectives are the same. Where the MIWP 2016-2020 is the common INSPIRE Action Plan outlining the EU implementation strategy and EU objectives, the MS Action Plans outline the country-specific operational actions for aligning with EU implementation strategy, EU objectives, national strategy and national objectives. For the Country fiche our focus is on EU-level objectives. Country specific objectives can be used to build a case for national INSPIRE benefits.

For every EU-level objective, indicators to measure performance need to be developed and if necessary added to the monitoring requirements. Ideally all information needed for these new monitoring indicators is harvested automatically through the monitoring process by assessing the metadata provided by the MS discovery service endpoints. For some indicators it might be necessary to initiate separate information gathering (e.g. by doing surveys) if it is not opportune to integrate them in the metadata.

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Annex 1 - Country Report TemplateINSPIRE Directive – legal obligations

Article 21

1. Member States shall monitor the implementation and use of their infrastructures for spatial information. They shall make the results of this monitoring accessible to the Commission and to the public on a permanent basis.2. No later than 15 May 2010 Member States shall send to the Commission a report including summary descriptions of:

a) how public sector providers and users of spatial data sets and services and intermediary bodies are coordinated, and of the relationship with the third parties and of the organisation of quality assurance;

b) the contribution made by public authorities or third parties to the functioning and coordination of the infrastructure for spatial information;

c) information on the use of the infrastructure for spatial information;d) data-sharing agreements between public authorities;e) the costs and benefits of implementing this Directive.

3. Every three years, and starting no later than 15 May 2013, Member States shall send to the Commission a report providing updated information in relation to the items referred to in paragraph 2.4. Detailed rules for the implementation of this Article shall be adopted in accordance with the regulatory procedure referred to in Article 22(2).

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DRAFT TEMPLATEST

ATU

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Coordination

National Contact point Coordination Strategy (image if available) Progress

Functioning and coordination of the infrastructure

[Fixed template to be followed consisting of a detailed set of questions]

Usage of the infrastructure for spatial information

[Fixed template to be followed consisting of a detailed set of questions]

Data Sharing Arrangements

[Fixed template to be followed consisting of a detailed set of questions]

Costs and Benefits

[Fixed template to be followed consisting of a detailed set of questions]

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Monitoring info (dashboard)

Online data coming from (revised) monitoring indicatorso Existence of metadata (spatial data sets) + MS trendo Conformity of metadata (spatial data sets) + MS trendo Accessibility of metadata through discovery services + MS trendo Conformity of spatial data sets + MS trendo Accessibility of spatial data sets through services + MS trendo Conformity of services + MS trendo …

Availability of spatial data relevant to environmental reporting obligations (based on specific indicators derived [partly?] from the revised monitoring)

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OK

MS action plan info (actions, action timeline, action progress indicators)

Coordination Metadata Network services Data Interoperability Data sharing and exchange … O

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EXAMPLE – SLOVENIA Coordination

National Contact point

Name of public authority MINISTRY OF THE ENVIRONMENT AND SPATIAL PLANNINGSURVEYING AND MAPPING AUTHORITY OF THE REPUBLIC OF SLOVENIA

Mailing address Zemljemerska ulica 12, LJUBLJANA

Telephone number +386 1 478 48 00

Fax number +386 1 478 49 09

E-mail Pisarna.gu@gov.si

Website address http://www.gu.gov.si /

Contact person Tomaž Petek (MIG-P and MIG-T representative)

Telephone number +1 478 4903

E-mail Tomaz.petek@gov.si

Contact person substitute Mag. Irena Ažman

Telephone number +386 478 4804

E-mail Irena.azman@gov.si

Coordination Structure

Progresso The Republic of Slovenia abolished the discrepancies with the passing of the Act

Amending the Infrastructure for Spatial Information Act (Official Gazette of RS 84/2015) along with supplementing the ISI Act with Article 17 (3) of the INSPIRE Directive.

o First Slovenian INSPIRE day organised in 2015

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Monitoring information (to be completed with trends over the past years)Datasets per theme 2015

Conformity of metadata for datasets 2015

Conformity of datasets 2015

Services per theme 2015

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OU

TLO

OK

MS action plan info (to be completed with action timeline and action progress indicators)

Coordinationo Task 1. Strengthening cooperation.

Activities: strengthening the cooperation and connection od individual initiatives like eSpatial, eWater, eEnvironment in the frame of the MESP and eGovernment in the frame of MPA and other authorities

Institution in charge: NCP and MESP Completion Date: Regular task for the period 2016-2020

Metadatao Task 1. Metadata for the national infrastructure for spatial information

(NSI). Activities: creation of metadata for new datasets and network

services Institution in charge: Each provider for their own datasets and

services Completion Date: Continuous task controlled once per year with

the filling out of a monitoring table Network services

o Task 1. Working and accessible network services compliant with the implementation rules for all new and substantively renewed spatial data

Activities: production of a compliant view network service for spatial dataset – WMS for new and substantively renewed spatial data

Institution in charge: Each provider for their own datasets and services

Completion Date: 10 December 2016 Data Interoperability

o Task 1. Harmonization of spatial datasets to ensure interoperability (identifiers, code list, data model, definitions…)

establishment of a code list register and unique identifiers for defining and classifying spatial objects published on the Slovenian INSPIRE geoportal

Institution in charge: All data providers together with the NCP 10 December 2021

Data sharing and exchangeo Task 1. Ensuring data sharing and reuse.

Activities: agreements on data sharing Institution in charge: NCP Completion Date: Regular task

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