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The INSPIRE Public Consultation 2014 Report of Findings has been published.

Executive Summary

This report presented the findings of the public consultation on INSPIRE organised by the European Commission in December 2013 - February 2014. Almost 700 responses were received to the consultation from public and private sector, academia , and private citizens.

The key messages from the public consultation are:

• INSPIRE is starting to work and address the key barriers identified at the outset of this initiative that prevented the sharing and use of the spatial info rmation needed to support environmental policies and policies affecting the environment.
• Most progress has been done in documenting data, and making such data discoverable and viewable through web services. There are however delays, particularly for Annex I and II data that should all have become available by the time of the survey. Delays are also present for Annex III, both for completing the metadata and for making data available via download services.
• The area of greater concern is the delay by the Mem ber States in putting in place measures necessary to remove obstacles to the sharing of data at the point of use among public administrations. Only about half of the data producers indicated that such policy measure had been put in place in their organisat ion, and this was felt by users still finding data policy as a major barrier. Taking into consideration that such measures should have been in place since 2009, this delay is clearly significant.
• Improving communication, and sharing of best practice, reduc ing as far as possible complexity of technical specifications, and improving coordination are key suggested changes.
• There was almost unanimous view across all participants in the public consultation that the objectives of INSPIRE of making spatial data a nd services more easily shared and used are still as pertinent as ever.
• INSPIRE is delivering benefits to public administrations through improved data management processes and increased skills/competences in managing and publishing geographic information a nd related services.