4 Framework conditions

Development of the geospatial data infrastructure is part of the Government's efforts to digitalise and streamline the public sector.

Public enterprises have a great deal of interest in the infrastructure. In digitalisation work, gains shall be realised from the investments made in the knowledge base. Geospatial information shall be used on a broad basis and across the sectors and administrative levels, and provide efficient decision-making processes and a more knowledge-based management.

Figur 4.1 Property boundaries visualised on mobile phones

Kilde: Photo: Jan Hausken

The financing of the infrastructure is partly through ordinary appropriations, government charges for acts by public authorities and revenue from the sale of data. In addition, various forms of co-financing by the participants in the infrastructure play a large role, through structures such as Geovekst and Norway Digital, for example. A new elevation data model is a recent example of broad co-financing from a number of sectors. These agreement-based co-financing schemes have been effective due to the fact that they have contributed to the ownership of needs, and that they have distributed the risk among several actors. However, it is a question of whether such measures alone are sufficient as funding mechanisms for critical societal infrastructure. The funding mechanisms that support the strategy and provide security for all the actors must be studied more closely.

The public sector will continue to bear the brunt of the financing of the geospatial data infrastructure. Collecting, maintaining and managing geospatial data is associated with relatively large costs. This is especially true of the most detailed data. At the same time, the demand for such data is increasing as a consequence of the digitalisation of society, among other things. Even though new data capture methods and new technologies streamline data production, we must expect that the cost of data collection, maintenance and management will increase compared to today’s levels.

The fact that the geospatial data infrastructure is critical for many societal functions calls of course for assurance of the necessary financing of new data, ongoing operations and maintenance of the data content and related services. This is safeguarded today to a great extent through the budgets of the public sectoral agencies or through a sharing of expenses by the actors who see a common benefit of the investments. From experience, cooperation, sharing expenses and joint investments in data capture and maintenance programmes have proven to safeguard the priorities of key users and provide good utilisation of the actors’ combined resources. It is not given that this is a sufficiently predictable structure for the future.

A fundamental problem is that the benefits of high-quality data are often realised by parties other than those who have incurred the expenses. Even though free access to the best data is expected in isolation to be socio-economically beneficial, the actor in question does not necessarily have the economy to pay for all the costs associated with collecting and maintaining data with a high level of detail or quality.

Achieve more innovation based on open data

A large part of the data in the geospatial infrastructure is currently available through viewing services and application programming interfaces (APIs). Most of the data is free and can freely be reused without restriction, but there are some exceptions, for example, for the most detailed data (Joint Geospatial Database) as accounted for under sub-goal 1.7. Making larger portions of the data content in the infrastructure available free of charge is a goal.

Focusing on open, free data can make it necessary to study alternatives to the current funding model. Any loss of revenue from the detailed data will reduce the scope of funding and may also weaken the co-financing model. This will require adjustments or new sources of funding. The framework conditions must be developed in step with changes in the needs, opportunities and challenges. The Ministry of Local Government and Modernisation will therefore initiate a study of cooperation models and funding models for a common geospatial data infrastructure.

All actors who base themselves on the geospatial data infrastructure and use the data content as “raw materials” for their own services will be dependent on assurance and a long-term perspective related to data deliveries and their costs. In particular, commercial actors will be dependent on economic predictability. In the geospatial area, licenses that support reuse shall be used. The licences shall provide value adders, innovators and others an opportunity to establish viable business models.

Today, each sector largely makes independent decisions about the need for data, update frequency, data quality, coverage, etc. – within "their own" thematic data. When geospatial information increasingly supports applications and critical societal functions across sectors, the data quality and needs for new data are no longer just a matter for the individual enterprises or sectors. Overviews must be obtained of the available data, data needs and maintenance needs. Thereafter, the principles and possible mechanisms for national prioritisation of the efforts in the area of data maintenance, collection of new data sets and improvement of data quality and the interoperability of existing data sets must be studied.