lessons learnt from italian nsdi -...

INSPIRE Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe

Lessons learnt from Italian NSDI

Title

Lessons learnt from Italian NSDI

Creator Alessandro Annoni

Date 2004-03-23

Subject Lessons learnt from Italian NSDI

Status Draft – to be revised by some of the contributors

Publisher JRC

Type Text

Description

Contributors M.Pasca (Ministry of Environment), G.Artioli, G.Ciardi (Region Emilia Romagna), G.Asunis, R.Vinelli, M.Salvemini (Region Sardegna) , P,Cipriano, L.Garretti ,F.Vico (Region Piemonte), A.Oggiano (Province of Bolzano), Watse Castelein (DG ENV)

Format MS Word 98/2000 (doc)

Source Not applicable

Rights INSPIRE task force members

Identifier NSDI_Italy-XIA_Paper_v12 en.doc

Language En

Relation Not applicable

Coverage Project duration (Jan-Mar 2004) These are Dublin Core metadata elements. See for more details and examples http://www.dublincore.org/.

Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe Reference: AANSDI_Italy_FinalApproved_v12en.doc Italian NSDI – lessons learnt 2004-03-23 of 19 TABLE OF CONTENTS

1 Background.................................................................................................................................. 3

2 National Framework - Data Policy and Legal Framework......................................................... 3 2.1 Common technical specifications......................................................................................... 4 2.2 Production of data compliant with the technical specifications ............................................. 4 2.3 Funding and Coordination and Awareness Raising ............................................................. 5 2.4 National Portal ..................................................................................................................... 5 2.5 Areas of improvement.......................................................................................................... 7 2.6 Costs at National Level ........................................................................................................ 7

3 Regions and Provinces ............................................................................................................... 9 3.1 Use of GIS in Regional Administrations ............................................................................... 9 3.2 The Region Emilia Romagna ..............................................................................................12

3.2.1 Costs ..............................................................................................................................13 3.2.2 Benefits ..........................................................................................................................13

3.3 Region Piemonte ................................................................................................................14 3.3.1 Costs ..............................................................................................................................15 3.3.2 Benefits ..........................................................................................................................15

3.4 Region Sardinia ..................................................................................................................15 3.5 Autonomous Province of Bolzano .......................................................................................16

3.5.1 Costs ..............................................................................................................................17 3.5.2 Benefits ..........................................................................................................................17

4 e-Government .............................................................................................................................17

5 Important issues from Italian NSDI experiences ......................................................................18 5.1 National level ......................................................................................................................18 5.2 Regional level .....................................................................................................................18

6 References ..................................................................................................................................19

Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe Reference: AANSDI_Italy_FinalApproved_v12en.doc Italian NSDI – lessons learnt 2004-03-23 of 19

1 Background The political and administrative decentralization has proceeded to an important degree in Italy. With respect to territorial management, the responsibility is given to Regional, Provincial, Municipal and other local authorities and the mandate of the national government and administration pertains mainly to coordination or to a reduced number of national responsibilities (security, defence, ..). In this context, the initiative “Intesa Stato-Regioni per i Sistemi Informativi Geografici” (State-regions Agreement for Geographical Information Systems) led by a Technical Co-ordinating Committee has been launched to develop common vision, guidelines and tools in order to bring together the activities of the public sector at the lower levels. The related projects are constantly in progress and the “Intesa” is becoming more and more a powerful clearinghouse for Geographic Information. It is based on formal agreements between various Ministries and Public Administrations which have put in place a Steering Committee and an executive body.

2 National Framework - Data Policy and Legal Framework The Italian NSDI is based both on the existing old mandate for the collection of Geographic Information assigned to five different Public Services and on a new foundation the so called “Intesa-Stato Regioni per I Sistemi Informativi Geografici” to better address the increased decentralisation. In fact across the years, the national mapping agencies which have been actively involved in the sector were exclusively the Military Geographical Institute (IGM), the Navy Hydrographical Institute (IIM), the Air Force Geo-topographical Informative Centre (CIGA), the National Technical Service (STN) and the Cadastre (Ministry of Finance). In particular, the former four institutions were in charge of the official geographic information and mapping, whereas, the latter, dealt (and still does through a new Agency called Agenzia del Territorio) with the territorial information related to Real Property, both geographical and administrative. More precisely, the four national mapping agencies, with particular reference to IGM, have been responsible for production, maintenance and dissemination of geographical information at medium and small scales (1:25,000, 1:50,000 and above), covering all the country in a standard traditional paper format (IGM is currently updating all maps, bringing them to a standard vectorial form). Regions and municipalities have instead produced larger scale maps in different formats, from paper, raster, up to vectors. Traditionally the production is carried out by private companies, whereas the Public Authorities are responsible of technical coordination and data dissemination. The Regions produce the Technical Maps (normally in scale 1:5,000 or 1:10,000) that are used as reference for various applications including spatial planning and environmental impact assessment. The Cadastral maps (in scale 1:2,000-1:1,000) are in different co-ordinate systems and use a different datum compared to geographic maps. A first agreement was signed in 1996 by various Ministries, the Regions and some other Local Authorities to make access possible to a huge amount of data collected at regional/local level and to proceed to standardise and harmonise the content through the adoption of common specifications. This agreement was adhered to so far by the following public Administrations: the Ministry of Environment and Land Protection, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Defence, the State Treasury, the Authority for the Information Technology in the Public Administration, the Regions, the Provinces, and the Counties (the above mentioned mapping agencies enter the Agreement through their corresponding Ministries). The main objective of the 1996 agreement was to realize, in 6-8 years, the Italian Spatial Data Infrastructure (that in Italy was called “Sistema Cartografico di Riferimento – SCR” (Cartographic Reference System – CRS), now “Sistema Cartografico Federato”) that has been considered as a necessary element for the Governance at local, regional and national scales. The State and the Regions agreed on the necessity to concentrate all efforts towards the co-ordinated development of a geographical database (NSDI) of general interest, essential for the creation of the geographic information systems of the various Public Administrations working at different scales.

Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe Reference: AANSDI_Italy_FinalApproved_v12en.doc Italian NSDI – lessons learnt 2004-03-23 of 19 The agreement also established a co-ordinating body: the Technical Co-ordinating Committee (CTC) that is composed equally from representatives of various Administrations. This Committee has the responsibility to provide guidelines, common technical specifications and formulate proposals and initiatives in order to optimise and speed-up the process for the creation of the National SDI (including organisational and policy aspects). This mission and mandate of this body for the Italian coordination can be compared to the INSPIRE Committee for European Coordination. The Italian Technical Co-ordinating Committee considers awareness raising and capacity building as key strategic elements because it is important not only to provide full information about specifications, standards, tools but also to report on existing experiences and possibilities for funding. The possibility to integrate national and regional resources is particularly relevant. In recent years, the NSDI has been steadily developed in accordance with the State-Region agreement signed in 1996 and the amended agreement of 2000. The amended agreement on the Cartographic Reference System of 2000 is based upon three fundamental basis:

a. The production of common technical specifications;

b. The production of the data compliant with the technical specifications;

c. The production of activities aiming to publish and make available the geographical information through the production of cartographic catalogues.

This new agreement is fully in line with the policy measures envisaged in the proposed INSPIRE legislation.

2.1 Common technical specifications The following technical specifications have been produced or are in the process to be finalised:

– Database for fundamental Reference Layers (1:10,000),

– Digital Terrain Model,

– Density Increase of the fundamental Geodetic Network IGM 95,

– Topographical Database of General Interest. The use of ISO 19111 standards has been considered for some parts of these specifications. These specifications are a good basis for the future INSPIRE specifications together with other existing National specifications in other European countries. The fact that common technical specifications have been agreed is particularly relevant for new data production. This permits, in fact, the production of new data of comparable quality in the future. This is the case for example of the Region Sardinia that has recently adopted these specifications for the creation of the Regional GIS.

2.2 Production of data compliant with the technical specifications Not only were technical common specifications published but also the following data were created in line with these specifications:

– Raster Cartography at national level (1:25,000 to 1:1,000,000),

– Orthoimaginery B/W and coloured (1:10,000),

– Digital Terrain Model (Grid and Tin format).

Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe Reference: AANSDI_Italy_FinalApproved_v12en.doc Italian NSDI – lessons learnt 2004-03-23 of 19 In addition, as part of the agreement “Sistema Cartografico di Riferimento”, a specific budget was dedicated to the creation/harmonisation of some “strategic” reference layers at 10,000 scale mainly through the generalisation of information already available at regional level. As a consequence the following harmonised layers (at 1:10,000 scale) are now available (or will be in the near future):

– Administrative Boundaries,

– Hydrological Grid and Hydrological basin,

– Railways and Motorways Grid,

– Gazetteer,

– Urban Centres and residential areas. These data correspond with data foreseen in Annex 1 of the proposed INSPIRE legislation. All layers are geo-referred under a common Geodetic-Cartographic Reference System UTM-WGS 84. The use of a common Geodetic Reference Framework is also foreseen in INSPIRE.

2.3 Funding and Coordination and Awareness Raising All projects concerning the completion and/or production of the above geographic data of the Regions have been co-funded by the Ministry of Environment. The Technical Co-ordinating Committee manages to interact strictly with Private firms (in particular those working in the data production sector), with the Academic world and with Public Organisations that are constantly kept informed and invited to Seminars and Forums. Within the agreement on the Cartographic Reference System, the Administrations who refer for the Environmental Issues are the Ministry of Environment and Land Protection and the Regions. The Ministry of Environment and Land Protection is acting as co-ordinator toward all other Central Public Administrations. The Ministry promotes the enforcement of the standards adopted and the cartographic products realised. Consequently, its goal is also to promote the adjustment of additional Thematic Layers. Currently, every cartographic institution is ruled under a specific normative system and the distribution of the data generally happens only under payment both for Public Administrations and for the Private Sector. Amongst Public Administrations, adhering to the mentioned agreement, the data are exchanged without any fees. The general strategy is to allow all public administrations to use the data once one of them has sustained the cost so that the latter will keep the property/custody as well as the duty to maintain it. This strategy is fully in line with the first four principles of INSPIRE.

2.4 National Portal In order to start to provide services a National Portal (http://www.atlanteitaliano.it) has also been developed by the Ministry of Environment and Land Protection federating all data providers at various levels. The Portal implements a technical and organizational infrastructure that offers a detailed, secure, and scalable Geographical Information System to the Public Administrations and private organizations, including the citizens. The approach used for building up the entire project was based on the Federation model, in which heterogeneous systems, belonging to the Federal entities, share information by adopting a common conceptual model.

Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe Reference: AANSDI_Italy_FinalApproved_v12en.doc Italian NSDI – lessons learnt 2004-03-23 of 19 The entire system provides the management and monitoring of Land and Environmental resources and the maintenance of official topographic maps using geospatial information technology through a common orthophotocartographic base, geo-referenced in to the system WGS-84. Any new thematic data must be produced according to the common Geodetical Framework. Using the Internet, the Portal provides GIS and alphanumerical data by an open and distributed repository. A user-friendly interface, based over the World Wide Web paradigm, allows navigation between the required data.

The project is based on a network infrastructure (Federal Network Information System) to exchange data and geo-spatial data efficiently between a central Body: the National Digital Mapping Portal, and a network of peripheral nodes: the Federal Administrations, initially limited to the Nation and then expandable to other European and International countries. The approach adopted is the same used to realize a Federal Information System in which heterogeneous systems share the same conceptual model. The National Digital Mapping Portal hosts a common set of national informational layers and a common database, while the Federal nodes offer the local informational layers and their own database. Each Federated system has a component which acts as interface towards the Federation itself concealing the local complexity and data, translating their own schema into the Federal schema. This component guarantees the extensibility of data schema, both local and Federal, since the two models are not coupled. Actually, the Federated GIS is under operative testing in 14 Federated Sites distributed within the 7 “QCS Objective 1” Regions plus the Ministry for Environment and Land Protection; the project has been developed in the frame of EU funding; a summary of its cost is given.


Time Total cost Annual cost Infrastructure 1 1,000,000 € Employees 3 1,800,000 € 600,000 € 20 people for 3 years Instruction Initial for 20 people 1 150,000 € Upgrade 3 150,000 € 50,000 € Start-up 1 600,000 € Total cost for 14 CED 3,700,000 € 650,000 € Average cost 260,000 € 50,000 €

Also the River Basin authorities are working in this framework, with the aim of having their own federated site, or preparing data to be hosted, depending on their dimension and choices. In addition to the reference data mentioned in par 2.2, various thematic data are already available including:

– Area of hydrogelological risk,

– Protected areas,

– Land use,

– Eco-pedological map, .. There are plans to soon integrate the recently available harmonised layers at 1:10,000 in the portal.

2.5 Areas of improvement The agreement Intesa Stato-Regioni is not a law and it makes reference to the old structure of the Italian Public Services. An amendment of the Italian law is necessary in order to formalise what has been agreed though the Intesa, making the use of common specifications obligatory for the production of spatial data and the requiring the publication of available data through the National Portal (currently there is no obligation and some providers are still reluctant to adhear to the Intesa agreement). In parallel, thematic laws and Agreements should include the indications of using the SCR specifications for spatial data productions and sharing. It should be noted however that more and more Regions, in absence of a National law, have published (or are in the process of) specific Regional laws to formalise activities related to the creation of Regional SDI. The INSPIRE Directive can accelerate and step-up the process for a legislation in this area.

2.6 Costs at National Level Some figures about costs have been provided by the Italian Ministry of Environment. Some of them are related to INTESA-GIS, other concern activities directly funded by the Ministry or by the Regions. Costs to develop National common technical specification

- Development of National common technical specifications for topographic database (1:1000/2000, 1:5000/10000, 1:25000/50000, 1:250000), streets, addresses

80,000€

- Development of National common technical specifications for vectorial layers 1:10,000 with national coverage, starting from available data

130,000€

- Development of National Technical specifications for the integration of topographic and cadastral data and for land use DB 1:10,000 and 1:25,000

210,000€

- Development of Technical specification for DTM and digital orthophotos and implementation of the DTM with national coverage

2,200,000€

The last cost also includes the realisation of the DTM and so can not be used in this context.

Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe Reference: AANSDI_Italy_FinalApproved_v12en.doc Italian NSDI – lessons learnt 2004-03-23 of 19 Costs related to the coordination

- Support for the functionality of the Coordination Technical Committee and the Directorate, GIS laboratories, metadata catalogue, information

4,340,000€

- Product, services and actions for the distributed use of available data 310,000€ Costs to set-up the National portal

- Geo-portal 670,000€ Costs related to data (National Coverage)

- Orthophotos scale 1:10,000, WGS84 (elaboration of already existing photos) 260,000€

- DTM scale 1:10,000, WGS84 280,000€

- Administrative boundaries (vector) and gazetteer derived by IGM 1:25,000 210,000€

- Maps IGM (Raster) 1:25,000 and smaller 260,000€

- Geographic Database including IGM95 reference network 280,000€

- Vectorial informative layers 1:10,000 (with available data) 1,140,000€

- High precision leverage lines 670,000€

- Unitary reference network (7 km) 4,350,000€

- Vectorial topographic DB 1:5/10,000 (regions) 8,680.000€ These costs refer only to the development phase. Excluding the costs related to the creation of the data (not required by INSPIRE) the total cost of the development the Italian NSDI ranges from 13-17M€. However this cost includes 8.6M€ needed to develop part of the Regional components. Not considering the latter (which will be accounted at regional level) there remains a budget of 5-8M€ needed to set-up the National system. Annual costs for coordination The coordination committee is based on the participation of functionaries of the different administration involved. There is a technical support to the Committee with costs detailed below

- Metadata catalogue 69,000€ / year

- Laboratory 129,000€ / year

- Training 6,000€ / year

- Information 14,000€ / year

- Technical Support 120,000€ / year

- Support to the Technical Committee 26,000€ / year

- General expenses 49,000€ / year The total cost for the annual coordination is 467,000€ plus some people needed to manage the National portal. If we consider the above cost to set-up the system we can reasonably estimate an annual total cost of about 1-1.3M€ for the National level in Italy over a period of 10 years. Considering that Italy has a population of about 58,000,000 inhabitants this cost seems in line with the cost foreseen for the National level on the INSPIRE extended impact assessment. It should be underlined that some of these costs are expected to decrease when all components of the infrastructure will be developed. Probably when the implementation phase of INSPIRE will start only maintenance and operating costs should be accounted. The expected decreasing of costs is about 30% when the system will be operational.


3 Regions and Provinces With the Italian SDI based on coordinated collaboration between the Central Administration, the Regions, the Provinces and other local authorities it is important to evaluate the costs at various levels. For this reason together with the National costs we have considered the general Italian situation and a more precise analysis on a sample of regions. There are 20 Regions in Italy with competence and responsibility for territorial management and two autonomous Provinces (Trento and Bolzano). The population ranges from about 327,000 inhabitants (Molise) to about 9,122,000 (Lombardia). The territorial surface ranges from about 3,264 Km2 (Valle d’Aosta) to about 25,707 Km2 (Sicilia). The average density is 177 inhabitants for Km2 ranges from 37 (Valle d’Aosta) to 425 (Campania).

3.1 Use of GIS in Regional Administrations Several studies and surveys have been carried out trying to quantify the number of existing Web Services in the Local Administration in Italy. In particular some studies published by MondoGIS1 provide the following figures:

– 100% of the Italian Regions have a GIS, that includes personnel and the necessary equipment normally called “Servizio Cartografico Regionale” under the control of different Departments

o 15 Regions are also providing access to their catalogues via web

o 10 have web-mapping services

– 40% of the Italian provinces have a GIS

Use of GIS in Public Administration (source MondoGIS)

1 MondoGIS Cartographica n.1 e 2 del 2003 (regioni), MondoGIS GeoGuida 2002 (province) Sondaggio MondoGIS sui Comuni 2001/2003, Rapporto sulle Città Digitali 2003 (Rur, Censis, Formez)

Regions Population Area (Km²) Density

Abruzzo 1,281,000 10,794 119 Basilicata 605,000 9,992 61 Calabria 2,043,000 15,080 135 Campania 5,782,000 13,595 425 Emilia-Romagna 4,009,000 22,125 181 Friuli-Venezia Giulia 1,189,000 7,844 152 Lazio 5,302,000 17,227 308 Liguria 1,621,000 5,418 299 Lombardia 9,122,000 23,859 382 Marche 1,469,000 9,693 152 Molise 327,000 4,438 74 Piemonte 4,290,000 25,399 169 Puglia 4,087,000 19,357 211 Sardegna 1,648,000 24,090 68 Sicilia 5,077,000 25,707 197 Toscana 3,548,000 22,992 154 Trentino-Alto Adige 943,000 13,607 69 Umbria 840,000 8,456 99 Valle d'Aosta 120,500 3,264 37 Veneto 4,541,000 18,365 247

Total 57,844,500 301,302

Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe Reference: AANSDI_Italy_FinalApproved_v12en.doc Italian NSDI – lessons learnt 2004-03-23 of 19 Some references to Regional Cartographic Services are given below as example.

Region Sicilia http://195.31.221.130/web/arta

Region Puglia http://www.cartografico.puglia.it/

Region Toscana

http://www.rete.toscana.it/sett/territorio/carto

Region Umbria www.umbriaterritorio.org

Regione Val d'Aosta

www.regione.vda.it/territorio/

Region Veneto www.regione.veneto.it

Regione Sardegna

http://www.regione.sardegna.it/entilocali/pianificazione_territoriale/html/index_sit.htm

Region Piemonte http://gis.csi.it/repertorio/v3/all/SettCart.htm


Region Emilia Romagna http://www.regione.emilia-romagna.it/carto/reper/default.htm

Region Trentino Alto Adige www.regione.taa.it

Region Basilicata http://www.autoritadibacino.basilicata.it/default.htm

Region Lombardia http://www.cartografia.regione.lombardia.it/cartanet/

There are other studies that confirm the above figures, for example the work of the University La Sapienza in Rome (Salvemini)2 that also takes in consideration the observed progress between 2002 and 2003:

o In 2002, around 50% of the analyzed provinces used or were planning to use a GIS, and 29% of those had a webgis;

o In May 2003, around 70% of provinces used a GIS, and 40% of those have implemented a webgis.

o In May 2003, 47% of provinces had a data or metadata catalogue on-line.

Synthetic view of GIS in Italian NUTS 3 using only information available on WEB (source Salvemini)

2 Salvemini, Di Donato, Geographic Information Observatory in Europe, 9th EC-GI&GIS Workshop – June 25-27, A Coruña, Spain

2002 2003

Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe Reference: AANSDI_Italy_FinalApproved_v12en.doc Italian NSDI – lessons learnt 2004-03-23 of 19 Another interesting study (Campagna3) confirms the progressive implementation of web site in the Local Public Authorities.

0

25

50

75

100

REGIONS PROVINCES MAIN CITIES OTHER CITIES

200020012002

Public Administration web sites in Italy(source RUR-CENSIS-FORMEZ,

VII Italian National Report on Digital Cities, Rome, 2003. http://www.rur.it) The above statistics confirm that currently most, if not all, Italian Regions have already a GIS system in place, so they are already equipped with the basic infrastructure required for the services required for INSPIRE implementation. More precisely, the Provinces (90% of Provinces have the required infrastructure in place) appear ready to support INSPIRE (40% of them have also already implemented the basic web services required by INSPIRE) and this number is constantly progressing. The following chapters analyse more carefully the situation in a few Italian Regions that have been selected both because they represent different realities and they were able to provide some quantitative figures:

- Emilia Romagna (long tradition in GIS development, European attitude, collaboration with Cataluna and Bavaria, Integration of Thematic and Reference data, ..)

- Piemonte (multilevel, multi-actors: Communes, Provinces, Region, collaboration with Academia, e-Services to citizens, ..)

- Region Sardinia (new system recently launched adopting INSPIRE principles, huge amount of data, lack of involvement until now of other Local Authorities, ..)

- Province of Bolzano (Provincial level, excellent example of web services for different user categories, full bilingual services, huge amount of well structured data,..)

3.2 The Region Emilia Romagna The Region started to use GIS systems in 1975 but only in 1986 decided to create a specific sector in order to guarantee an autonomous and permanent service for Regional and other Provincial needs related to the governance of the Territory. The Territorial System of Emilia Romagna evolved over years following the new technological changes. So it is not surprising that the Region has anticipated the setting-up of the services that will be required by the INSPIRE legislation. The Region developed, some years ago, a catalogue of its data that were distributed through a specific office. When the Region decided to publish these data via web, the catalogue has been converted in a digital form and is currently migrating to be ISO compliant. The data can be consulted and viewed via web and the majority can be downloaded free of charge. Emilia Romagna was also very active inside the INTESA-GIS and shared the vision of the importance to develop common technical specifications both to make possible to interoperate with other surrounding Regions (for cross borders projects) and for internal coordination with other Local or National Authorities.

3 M.Campagna, G.Deplano, Local Authorities GI-based web sites and spatial governance: Towards an evaluation framework, 9th EC-GI&GIS Workshop – June 25-27, A Coruña, Spain


3.2.1 Costs The costs to produce Regional specifications compliant with the common National specifications can be estimated at 250,000€ (this cost includes 100,000€ for coordination). In order to adapt the Regional specification to existing data collected and under responsibility of Local Authorities additional funds are needed. A rough estimation for costs covering both the Region and related Local Authorities is that about 400,000€ are needed as initial investment for the establishment of common technical specifications. Harmonisation of the data has a cost considerably higher and it is difficult to assess. In fact it is strongly linked to what is already available in digital form and how far the original structure is from the new specifications. According to a rough estimation (individual costs can not be assessed because the costs provided by the Region include the total cost of development of services for the citizens), it will be possible, with 2-3M€, to migrate the current services and harmonise existing data in order to be 100% compliant with INSPIRE. If the transposition will be implemented in 10 years, the result is that an annual investment of 200-300,000€ is needed that includes the Region and the associated local Authorities (about 30). Considering that some costs are fixed (not dependent on the number of inhabitants), this annual cost for a Region of 4,000,000 of inhabitants roughly corresponds to a cost of 40-50,000€ for a Region of 250-300,000 inhabitants.

3.2.2 Benefits As expressed by the Responsible of the Service of the Region, the main benefits to set-up an infrastructure like INSPIRE, are both the quick access to the data, the improved quality of services provided to the citizens and the reduction of time lost to access the data both for internal use of the Public Administration and for the citizens or external professional users. The last can be quantified in:


– About 2% of reduction of time lost yearly by the personnel of the Public Administration. Considering about 1000 operators the budget that can be saved yearly is about 800,000€

– About 10 hours/year of reduction of time lost by the users/citizens. Considering about 4,000,000 people, the budget that can be saved yearly is about 2.400,000€

If we consider as a maximum amount of costs of 1M€/year for the personnel needed to provide the services the budget saved yearly is about 2,200,000€. In addition to those benefits, the costs for data reproduction are avoided. Before the entry in force of web service the reproduction costs were about 5-10€ /map-sheet; now three are not cost associated and the delivering of this information is free of charge for digital downloading.

3.3 Region Piemonte The Regional SDI in Piemonte is the natural evolution of the old GIS (SITAD) that already included some INSPIRE principles (eg data should be collected and maintained at the level where the efficiency is high). The new Region Piemonte SDI has been funded through e-Government and it is more ambitious compared to INSPIRE because it includes not only spatial data but also other Multimedia information. Compared to INSPIRE greater emphasis has been given to the real use of the data and for this reason several services and web applications were specifically developed. All INSPIRE components are supported (catalogues, metadata, standards and interoperability, core data, ..), so it will be possible, to use the current RSDI as building block of INSPIRE in Italy.

Some lessons learnt that can be derived from the Region Piemonte experiences are listed below:

– active participation and involvement of all stakeholders (multi-level, multi-sector approach) is absolutely needed,

– international standards and open generally accepted standards (eg OGC) must be adopted when possible,

– a harmonised and transparent licensing framework is needed to guarantee the real access to the data provide by the technical infrastructure,

– web services are more and more necessary and their design and development should take into account from the beginning real and precise user requirements,


– awareness raising is important and as well pilot projects to better understand, clarify technical or user aspects in order to develop more complex interoperable services.

3.3.1 Costs

According to the figures provided by the CSI Piemonte ,the organisation in charge to develop, maintain and operate the system of the Region Piemonte, the cost to develop the system (Regional Portal) is about 600,000€ of which 25% concerns coordination.

We have also figures related to data acquisition, processing, metadata compilation and re-engineering of the data for web access. It is difficult to use these figures within this context because INSPIRE is not requiring the creation or digitalisation of new data.

The CSI indicated an individual cost per map sheet. In particular, 150€ is the cost for metadata (associated to each map) and about 500€ are needed for re-engineering and web dissemination. Considering a total number of about 1000 maps (the technical map 1:10,000 is composed of 800 sheets) this makes a total cost of about 150,000€ for metadata compilation and 500,000€ for data harmonisation. The total 650,000€ plus the initial development 600,000€ plus the coordination (25% of the cost) corresponds to a total cost of 1,550,000€. If the transposition will be implemented in 10 years, the annual investment is within 150-250,000€ in line with Emilia Romagna figures Again considering that some costs are fixed (not dependent on the number of inhabitants), this annual cost for this Region Piemonte of 4,300,000 inhabitants roughly corresponds to a cost of 35-40,000€ for a Region of 250-300,000 inhabitants.

3.3.2 Benefits A very interesting aspect, raised by CSI Piemonte, concerns the particular pricing policy adopted. Spatial data can be now downloaded free of charge, whereas digital maps (spatial data with additional graphical elements in pre-defined format such as PDF) are charged like paper maps in the past (the cost for digital map is about 10-20€ each). This policy reflects the fact that the maintenance of spatial data is an obligation of the Regional Authorities for their own needs of governance. The costs are therefore absorbed by the Public Authorities and not charged to the citizens, whereas the maps require some extra manual work and are mainly used by citizens or professional users ready to pay for them.

3.4 Region Sardinia The Region Sardinia has recently published a call for tender to create the Regional SDI. The total cost foreseen in the call for tender is of about 9M€ that includes software and hardware for about 10 decentralised offices of the Region and the development of a set of e-services that will be used by the Public Administration to provide information to the citizens. These costs can not really be used because they include offices, training, hw+sw, .. and because the evaluation of the offers is still open (when the evaluation will be completed more precise figures will become available because in the tender the analytical breakdown of costs was required). More interesting is the budget that has already been spent for data harmonisation. This cost of about 1.5M€ included the updating (35% of the total cost) and the re-engineering of the data (from files to database). This figure quantifies the initial investment needed to be included in the ESDI infrastructure (but INSPIRE is not asking for, being limited to information already in digital form). The main benefits of the new system are not only related to a better quality in the services and the increasing number of users but mainly to the possibility to integrate 377 municipalities that are currently users of geographic information only in passive way. They will finally have the possibility to publish and update their information directly.

Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe Reference: AANSDI_Italy_FinalApproved_v12en.doc Italian NSDI – lessons learnt 2004-03-23 of 19 3.5 Autonomous Province of Bolzano The experience of the Autonomous Province of Bolzano – Alto Adige is quite impressive for the ambition and complexity of the solution provided. This Province demonstrates that not only is it possible to implement a SDI at Provincial level but that the benefits are in some cases higher than the National or Regional level, in particular if the infrastructure is making it possible to provide specific services required by different user communities. The cartographic service of the Province of Bolzano, has been recognised nationally and internationally (it is one of the 65 selected for the "eEurope-Awards" in 2003 and received a special award at the ESRI International User Conference in 2002). The main lessons that can be derived from the Bolzano experience is that it was successful because it is “bilingual” (this is mandatory for any Official document of the Public Authorities in this region) and because it provides various types of services as illustrated below (urban browser, ecobrowser, geobrowser, ..) accessing both reference and thematic data.

Urban Browser Eco Browser

Bauschutt Browser Geo Browser

Panorama dei tematismi downloadable || no download

Il panorama dei tematismi offre una vista d'insieme dei temi presenti in ciascun browser CHIUDI

Temi disponibili Geo Browser »

Urban Browser »

Land Browser »

Eco Browser »

Earth Browser »

Bauschutt Browser »

Stone Browser »

Com Browser »

Amministrazione

Unità amministrative europee

Regioni

Comprensori

Comuni

Città

Località

Sezioni di Censimento 2001

Disponibilità catasto

Mappa catastale

Demanio forestale

Infrastrutture per le comunicazioni

Dati ambientali

Copertura del suolo CORINE 1:100.000

Uso del suolo 1 : 10.000

Zone di rispetto idrologiche

Sorgenti

Catasto Acque Potabili

Acque correnti

Laghi

Zone umide

Cave e torbiere

Zone di Rispetto Idrologico

Piani paesaggistici

Biotopi

Monumenti naturali

Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe Reference: AANSDI_Italy_FinalApproved_v12en.doc Italian NSDI – lessons learnt 2004-03-23 of 19 3.5.1 Costs The following figures have been provided by the responsible of the Service of the Province of Bolzano:

- The estimated cost to develop the technical specifications in order to be compliant with INSPIRE is about 40 man/days (20,000€)

- Data harmonisation according to new specifications requires about 50 man/days (35,000€)

- The compilation of all metadata now missing is about 100 man/days (70,000€)

- Web access to the data (including sw licenses and sw development) requires about 150k€

- For coordination 2 people are needed but they cover also the maintenance and the help desk. According to these figures and to the fact that most of the services provided by the Province will not be required by INSPIRE, an annual cost of about 70-90,000 will be necessary that includes the initial necessary development. It should be noticed that the Province of Bolzano is obliged to maintain the service as bilingual so the estimated additional cost required by INSPIRE is higher comparing to the estimated average of other regions with similar population (457,370 inhabitants).

3.5.2 Benefits Based on the experience of recent years, the responsible of the service of the Province of Bolzano underlines noticed has been observed a reduction of costs for the Public Administration for data dissemination and, in grater measure, for hardware, software, .. as a consequence of the choice to use the web technology. The Province of Bolzano shares the same opinion of the Emilia Romagna considering as main benefits the reduction of time lost by the personnel of the Public Administration, the improved quality of services (that includes 24 hours availability), the increasing number of users (local and remote), the easier possibility to develop advanced services (for example for river basin management or environmental impact assessment).

The Report “WebGIS - Pubblicazione dei geodati della Provincia Autonoma di Bolzano in Internet Rapporto annuale 2003”4 provides interesting statistics about the number and the type or requests of users. In particular there were 40,196 visits to the GeoBrowser (41,83% of all Web applications).

4 e-Government e-Government is playing more and more an important role in the modernisation of the Italian Public Administration and it is not surprising that one of the best e-governement projects is the Geographic Information Dissemination Service of the Province of Bolzano. Other big e-Government projects are currently running that can build additional blocks of the Italian NSDI and help in improving interoperability in Italy. The SIGMA-TER project, for example, aims to create an infrastructure for land registry and territorial information exchange and integration, and to develop a wide range of services for citizens, professionals and companies, supporting land management and tax-collection. The project budget is 21,547,500 € and is endowed with a 3,800,000€ co-financing by the Department of Innovation and Technology. 4 The report is available at: http://www.provinz.bz.it/informatik/news/news_i.asp?art=66583&HLM=1

# total number of visits: 96.105 ( + 56% bzgl. 2002 ) # daily average: 263 Besuche - Spitzen bis zu 406 Besuchen/ Tag # total number or server requests: 8.598.378 # max number of contemporary access: 53 # number of WebGIS apps.: 7 (since october: 8) (only 5 in 2002) # total utilization time (for all apps): 24.799 hours # average time for a visit: 15:35 minutes


5 Important issues from Italian NSDI experiences This chapter aims to summarise/simplify the figures presented before as input to the INSPIRE extended impact assessment. The investments presented are those relevant for the implementation of INSPIRE and represent a subset of the total investments identified in this document, as other activities have been carried out in the context of the Italian NSDI initiative that are not covered by the scope of INSPIRE. The figures give an indication of the order of magnitude of investment requirements for the implementation of INSPIRE as they correspond to the costs of implementation of a part of INSPIRE. They correspond to the investments that have really taken place to co-ordinate, develop and implement elements of a spatial data infrastructure in Italy, in conformity with the principles of INSPIRE. Of course, additional investments will be needed to ensure complete geographical coverage and complete coverage of the scope of INSPIRE. But as the experience covers all the key measures considered in the framework of INSPIRE, the case study is very useful to cross-validate the assumptions and estimations of the extended impact assessment of INSPIRE.

5.1 National level Costs for coordination and development (implementation) incl. metadata

- Development of National common specifications 300,000€

- Development of the geoportal 600,000€

- Coordination (development phase): support to Technical Committee and the Directorate, GIS laboratories, metadata catalogue, information, …

4,000,000€

- Development of product, services and actions for the distributed use of available data

300,000€

National level Costs in Euro

Total Development Costs 5,200,000

Annual costs for coordination 500,000

Total cost over 10 years 10,200,000

Global Annual cost (over 10 years) 1,020,000

5.2 Regional level Costs for coordination and development (implementation) incl. metadata

- Development of specifications 300,000€

- Coordination (development phase) 100,000€

- Development of product, services and actions for the distributed use of available data

600,000€

- Metadata plus data harmonisation 600,000€

Regional Level region of about 4,000,000 inhabitants

Costs in Euro

Total Development Costs 1,600,000

Annual costs for coordination 100,000

Total cost over 10 years 2,600,000

Global Annual cost (over 10 years) 260,000

Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe Reference: AANSDI_Italy_FinalApproved_v12en.doc Italian NSDI – lessons learnt 2004-03-23 of 19 The Italian SDIs are mainly focusing on Reference Data under responsibility of the Cartographic Offices of the Regional Authorities. Thematic data foreseen in INSPIRE are only partially covered (e.g. Land Use). Therefore these figures should not be interpreted as covering the total investment costs for the implementation of INSPIRE. On the other hand, current trends suggest that by the time INSPIRE will enter in force, most of the basic “technological” infrastructure (Hardware+Software) will be in place in many of organisations that would need to bring their information in the framework of INSPIRE. This is likely to result in a reduction of the costs for developing and implementing the required services. The overall figures suggest that the order of magnitude of investments required for the implementation of INSPIRE corresponds to the estimation of the extended impact assessment. The fact that the two analyses carried out according to different methodologies come to similar conclusions raise the level of confidence one can have in the outcome of the extended impact assessment for INSPIRE.

6 References • Documenti del Territorio, Anno XIII, Numero Speciale sull’attuazione dell’Intesa Stao-Regioni-

Enti Locali sui database geografici di interesse nazionale. • Intesa Stato-Regioni_Enti Locali sui sistemi informativi geografici (approvato dalla conferenza

Stato-Regioni il 26 settembre 1996) and other technical documentation about the IntesaGis, http://www.intesagis.it

• B. Agricola, M. Pasca, A. Venditti, The Italian National Digital Mapping Portal, 9th EC-GI&GIS Workshop – June 25-27, A Coruña, Spain

• Salvemini, Di Donato, Geographic Information Observatory in Europe, 9th EC-GI&GIS Workshop – June 25-27, A Coruña, Spain

• M.Campagna, G.Deplano, Local Authorities GI-based web sites and spatial governance: Towards an evaluation framework, 9th EC-GI&GIS Workshop – June 25-27, A Coruña, Spain

• MondoGIS Cartographica n.1 e 2 del 2003 (regioni), • MondoGIS GeoGuida 2002 (province) • Sondaggio MondoGIS sui Comuni 2001/2003, • RUR-CENSIS-FORMEZ, VII Italian National Report on Digital Cities, Rome, 2003.

http://www.rur.it • P.Cipriano, P.Foietta, L.Garretti, S.Griffa, G.Rossini, F.Vico, Produzione e uso condiviso di

informazione geografica tra enti e soggetti diversi: la costruzione di una infrastruttura di dati spaziali multilivello nella prospettiva di inspire, 7a Conferenza Nazionale ASITA L’informazione Territoriale e la Dimensione Tempo, 28-31 ottobre 2003, Verona

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