Printer Friendly Format

Page 1 of 3
| Next |

1. INTRODUCTION
A lot of developments on the technical and the administrational sector follow some global trends. E-government and SDI-projects have been initiated and launched in most developed countries and reached different stages of implementation. These projects influence the Land administration sector because it is or should be an essential part of these projects.

Researchers in Germany found out that about 80% of all governmental decisions have a spatial component. Spatial information from small to large-scale data sets became an enormous value for governmental authorities on all levels during the last few years. Beside the public sector who since years is an important user of these data, the private sector is a growing partner for geodata in general. For the geodata market in Germany a volume of more than 250 million EUR is estimated with an annual growth rate of 10-30%. The cadastral authorities with their data are part of this market and try to meet customer requirements as good as possible.

Customers want to get access to data more and more via internet. Governmental authorities in Germany are busy establishing E-government programs and services on all levels of the administration (international, federal, regional, local). Geodata play a key role in E-government projects. The establishment of geodata portals and meta data catalogues in SDI-projects are therefore necessary prerequisites for operating cadastral data in E-Land Administration.

This is the reason for politically and economically driven decisions in order to establish international and national spatial data infrastructures (SDI). On the European level the INSPIRE initiative is a major factor to establish a European Spatial Data Infrastructure (ESDI). The Federal government in Germany together with the surveying authorities in the 16 states are working in the INSPIRE initiative as well as on national level to establish a national spatial data infrastructure (Geodateninfrastruktur-Deutschland GDI-DE).

At least on national level cadastral data and the topographical data sets ATKIS (Authoritative Topographic-Cartographic Information System) of the surveying authorities in the 16 states are identified as a basic element in GDI-DE. The German cadastral authorities are now establishing the new ALKIS-system. This new standard will help meeting some of the major past obstacles, nation wide provision of standardised cadastral data.

The technical development on the internet, communication and E-commerce sector is opening completely new ways and opportunities of data acquisition, administration and distribution. E-application and E-conveyancing of official data will open new ways of co-operation between the public and private sector in Land Administration. This requires a new legal and organisational framework. The technical solutions are more or less already available. They allow to establish a new designed workflow in the cadastral authorities, but it still is a big task to maintain the data in such a way that the benefits of a complete digital workflow can be earned.

2. DEVELOPMENTS IN EUROPE

2.1 INSPIRE
INSPIRE is a legal framework being developed by the European Commission services with officials and experts in Member States and accession countries from the national, regional and local levels.

The European Commission has decided to submit to the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union a proposal to make interoperable spatial information available in support of both national and Community policy and to enable the public to access to this information.

It is to be implemented throughout the European Union (EU) from 2006/7 onwards with different types of geographical information gradually harmonised and integrated, resulting in a European Spatial Data Infrastructure. A key objective of INSPIRE is to make spatial data available for Community policy-making and implementation in a wide range of sectors, starting with environmental policy and later extended to other sectors such as agriculture, transport etc. (from the web page of INSPIRE http://inspire.jrc.it).

The INSPIRE Geo-Portal is Europe's Internet access point for Spatial Data and Services. It is available in the moment as an experimental prototype version under http://eu-geoportal.jrc.it/.

Page 1 of 3
| Next |