MIG-T ad-hoc group on SDS interpretation and scope–Status report November 2015

Progress

Since the Commission Regulation (EU) No 1311/2014 of 10 December 2014 amending Regulation (EC) No 976/2009 and Commission Regulation (EU) No 1312/2014 of 10 December 2014 amending Regulation (EC) No 1089/2010 came into force last year there have been uncertainties regarding what was required by the member states.

At the MIG-T meeting in Madrid,11-12thMarch 2015, Christina Wasström raised this issue and presented briefly how the amendment could be interpreted.The general interpretation was discussed and some statements were agreed by the participators. It was then agreed that Christina should elaborate these statements in a document and present it to the EC for agreement (MIG-T task #2377).

The document, that was named “SDS – a discussion paper” (version0.4) was presented for MIG-T by the end of April. At the meeting it was decided that the members of MIG-T should have the possibility to give comments on the content until the middle of May. It was also agreed to include the clarifications in the Technical Guidelines for SDS, either in the introduction or as an Annex.

Very few members gave input to the next version of the document that was ready by the end of May. Comments were received from; Germany, Netherlands, Norway and Poland. But some important issues were raised based on the comments and the following discussions within MIG-T;

  • Need of clarification regarding the deadlines presented at the INSPIRE web
  • How to handle the existing term “Invoke Services”.
  • The importance of cooperate with MIWP-8 since there are dependencies between TG SDS and TG Metadata

Since there were many complex issues to resolve, it was decided that a small group should be established to finalise the document. The “SDS group” consisted of the following members; Christina Wasström (SE), Daniela Hogrebe (DE), Joeri Robbrecht (DG ENV), Daniele Francioli (JRC) and Michael Lutz (JRC). By the end of October the group was extended with two members from temporary sub-group for metadata; Ine De Visser (NL) and Michael Östling (SE).

Due to summer holidays the SDS group was not able to meet until 12th August. After the meeting the document was updated again, some major changes were done; flowchart was added to support decision regarding scope, type and category of spatial data. The section about practical issues concerning metadata was deleted because that part should instead be covered in the updated version of TG Metadata.

At a MIG-T meeting 27th August the updated version (0.7.1) was presented and discussed. An important issue that still remained was whether non-invocable SDS should be considered within the scope of INSPIRE or not. It was agreed to collect further feedback on the updated document (and in particular on the open discussion points) until 11 September. Comments during this period were received from Finland, United Kingdom and also from the SDS group (Michael Lutz and Christina Wasström).

In parallel, JRC started to draft a first proposal for how to include the content of the discussion paper in the current TG SDS. The draft TG SDS will also be updated based on the comments received on the discussion paper. The technical guideline should then be moved to the approval process according to the agreed MIF workflow.

It was also discussed how to inform the wider INSPIRE community about the SDS discussions. It was proposed to present some of the content from the discussion paper on the INSPIRE web site, as well as in the ARE3NA Reference Platform. It was also suggested that we should also try to reach out to the software community.

The SDS group had its second meeting 28th October, where the remaining issues before having the final version were discussed and agreed.

Both the discussion paper “Scope and definition of Spatial Data Services” and the proposed TG SDS update were sent out to the MIG-T in early November for comments to be sent by the end of November. The aim was to discuss any comments received and endorse (if possible) the document at the coming MIG meeting in Rome.

Participation

From the start this was a task given to one person. Later on a small group of volunteers was created to support the work.

  • Christina Wasström (SE), chair
  • Daniela Hogrebe (DE)
  • Joeri Robbrecht (DG ENV)
  • Daniele Francioli (JRC)
  • Michael Lutz (JRC)

This group was in October extended with two members from temporary sub-group for metadata;

  • Ine De Visser (NL) and Michael Östling (SE)

The whole group contributed actively, even if the work would have gained from having more than the two meetings we were able to schedule. But it was difficult to find the time needed. From mid-September Christina as a chair had other commitments and was not able to find the time needed. Therefore it was very good to have the great support from Michael Lutz, JRC.

Running the action – Lessons learned

This task is not within the endorsed MIG work program, it was a specific given task from a MIG-T meeting. From the start the task seemed simple; the document what was presented and agreed at a meeting. But rather soon it was obvious that there were more questions than clarifications. One main problem was that even if all members agreed on a definition or clarification it could formally contradict the INSPIRE Directive, for example:

  • The Directive states that the different services that have to be set up by the member states are discovery, view, download, transformation services and a 5th type of network service: “services allowing spatial data services to be invoked”. Since all services can be invoked when metadata is published and accessed through a discovery service, we agreed that there is no need to have a special service to invoke other services. Instead the discovery service will take the role as making it possible to invoke a service.
  • The Metadata Regulation states that the metadata element spatial data service type can have the following values: discovery, view, download, transformation, invoke and other. But we agreed that the value “invoke” should no longer be used within INSPIRE, since it has no significant meaning. The last amendment to Commission Regulation (EC) 1089/2010 describes SDS in a more useful way by the Invocable Category.

Since it is more complicated to change a Directive and its regulation than the technical guidelines, we have been struggling to find solutions that can be agreed by the members and the Commission.

The task was extended during the process. Initially it was just a few agreed statements that were supposed to be documented. But since there was a need to clarify the whole scope and the consequences regarding SDS, the work task was extended. It was a good idea to create a specific group to take the task further, but since it was not planned from the start it was difficult to plan for the coming work, especially when there was a long break during summer.

Looking back, it would have been good to have had the dedicated group established from the start. Then we could have divided the work between ourselves and it would not be so critical if one of us had other commitments during the process.

Beside the SDS group, the support from JRC and the Nordic network have been very important to take this activity further.

Outlook and planning

My own time as a chair for this task has been very limited since September due to other commitments. Thanks to Michel Lutz and Ine De Visser the work have continued and at the coming meeting in Rome during the first week of December, we are hoping to have the final documents endorsed.