INSPIRE Knowledge Base

Finland - 2022: Country Fiche

Table of Contents
  • Introduction
  • State of Play
    • Coordination
    • Functioning and coordination of the infrastructure
    • Usage of the infrastructure for spatial information
    • Data Sharing Arrangements
    • Costs and Benefits
  • Key Facts and Figures. 
    • Monitoring Indicators
Introduction

The INSPIRE Directive sets the minimum conditions for interoperable sharing and exchange of spatial data across Europe as part of a larger European Interoperability Framework and the e-Government Action Plan that contributes to the Digital Single Market Agenda. Article 21 of INSPIRE Directive defines the basic principles for monitoring and reporting. More detailed implementing rules regarding INSPIRE monitoring and reporting have been adopted as Commission Implementing Decision (EU) 2019/1372 on the 19th August 2019.

This country fiche highlights the progress in the various areas of INSPIRE implementation. It includes information on monitoring 2021 acquired in December 2021 and Member States update.

State Of Play

A high-level view on the governance, use and impact of the INSPIRE Directive in Finland. More detailed information is available on the INSPIRE knowledge base.

Coordination

National Contact Point
Name of Public Authority: 
Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry
Contact Email: 
Click to email
National INSPIRE Website: 
https://www.paikkatietoikkuna.fi/?lang=en
MIG Contacts: 
Contact Person: 
Antti Vertanen
Email: 
Antti.vertanen@gov.fi
Contact Person: 
Jari Reini
Email: 
jari.reini@nls.fi
Contact Person: 
Hanna Horppila
Email: 
hanna.horppila@nls.fi
MIG T Contacts: 
Contact Person: 
Jari Reini
Email: 
jari.reini@nls.fi
Contact Person: 
Lena Hallin-Pihlatie
Email: 
lena.hallin-pihlatie@nls.fi
Coordination Structure & Progress: 

National Contact point

 

Name of public authority

Ministry of agriculture and forestry

Mailing address

PL 30, 00023 Valtioneuvosto

Telephone number

+ 35829516001

Fax number

 

E-mail

kirjaamo.mmm@gov.fi

Website address

www.mmm.fi

Contact person

 Mari Laakso

Telephone number

 +358 295 16 2171

E-mail

mari.laakso@gov.fi

Contact person substitute

Antti Vertanen

Telephone number

+358295162421

E-mail

antti.vertanen@gov.fi

Coordination Structure

  • The Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry is the national contact point of INSPIRE toward the province of Åland and the rest of Finland. The ministry of Agriculture and Forestry is represented in the MIG as well as in the INSPIRE committee.
  • The INSPIRE secretariat at the National Land Survey of Finland provides support and guidance for national INSPIRE implementers and maintains national SDI services, such as the Finnish Geoportal. The INSPIRE secretariat is represented in the MIG and the permanent technical subgroup of the MIG and acts as the official secretariat of the national Council of Geographic Information and its extended secretariat.
  • The National Council for Geographic Information consists of representatives of ministries, major data providers, Universities and co-operation networks. The following ministries are represented in the council: Ministry of the Interior, Ministry of Defence, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Social Affairs and Health, Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, Ministry of Transport and Communications, Ministry of Environment and Ministry of Employment and Economy.
  • The Extended Secretariat of the National Council for Geographic Information provides policy and implementation support. The following organisations are represented in the extended secreatriat: National Land Survey, Finnish Environmental Institute, Meteorological Institute, Geological Research Centre, Finnish Transport Agency, Natural Resources Institute Finland, Statistics Finland, Digital and Population Data Services Agency, Finnish Transport and Communications Agency and City of Helsinki as the representative of the municipalities.
  • GeoForum Finland is a network established in 2020 that promotes the use of spatial information and location intelligence in society. The network develops cooperation between the geospatial industry and organisations using spatial data; companies, public administration, educational and research institutions.
  • The Nordic INSPIRE Network is an INSPIRE implementation network with Iceland, Denmark, Norway and Sweden. The network has meetings twice a year.

Functioning and coordination of the infrastructure

  • The INSPIRE Directive (2007/2/EC) was transposed in Finland in 2009 by the Spatial Information Infrastructure Decree (725/2009) and the Act on the Infrastructure for Spatial Information (421/2009). The Province of Åland has, on the basis of its autonomy, adopted an Act on the Infrastructure for Spatial Information (2017:54).
  • Finland has connected their national discovery service (Paikkatietohakemisto) to the EU geoportal allowing for the publication of metadata for the available spatial data sets and services on the EU geoportal.
  • The National Land Survey of Finland maintains the Finnish geoportal (Paikkatietoikkuna). The geoportal site also provides information about the national SDI and guidance for INSPIRE implementers.
  • The implementation is guided by a national Geodata strategy. A first version was developed in 2004, a second version in 2010, a third version in 2014, a fourth version in 2016 and a fifth version in 2018. Currently, the sixth version of the strategy, 2022-2025, is in use. 
  • Following a bilateral meeting with the Commission in April 2016 the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry prepared an action plan to address any remaining implementation issues. Special attention was given to addressing provisions of the INSPIRE Directive in relation to other EU Environmental Directives and further identification of environmental datasets that are marked as priority data by the Commission.  
  • The following issues that hinder the implementation have been identified: 
  • In Finland the municipalities are obliged to implement the INSPIRE Directive, which is challenging. Some municipalities lack resources. 
  • Complexity of data harmonisation.
     

Progress: 

  • In 2021 the INSPIRE Secretariat has supported the national data providers in the transition to use version 2.0. of the Metadata Technical Guidelines. The work will be continued in 2022 together with the data providers on municipal and regional level. 
  • An increasing amount of harmonised datasets have been published by the Finnish data providers at state level.  
  • Please note, that Finland has decided to include all as is datasets in the harvesting to the INSPIRE Geoportal, which affects the monitoring results. 
  • There are ongoing processes to build new national systems for the built environment (spatial plans, building permits) and address information. 
  • Finland has evidences in producing INSPIRE Download services by using the OGC API - Features standard. 
  • A report describing the general situation of the implementation of INSPIRE in Finland was published in January 2021. It includes recommendations for further actions: 
  • A centralized authority working with the municipalities would improve the situation and relieve municipalities of a big burden. 
  • Organisation specific status dashboards would give a clear indication of what stage of implementation each obligated authority is at now, and guide what are the next steps to proceed. 
  • The INSPIRE secretariat at the NLSF would benefit from using external consultants to fix the lack of resources and to strengthen technical and business competencies. 
  • Assessments including interviews and surveys to ensure that support and guidance of the secretariat are appropriate and reach the right audiences. 
  • Both the impacts and benefits of the implementation of EU obligations should be better integrated with the national implementation such as national SDI and shared use of spatial data. 
  • A new National Geographic Information Strategy was prepared in 2021 and published in January 2022. GeoForum Finland coordinated the work. Key actions: 
  • Solving environmental challenges with spatial information. 
  • Spatial data as the engine of business. 
  • Spatial information in the structural change of data resources. 

Usage of the infrastructure for spatial information

  • The use of geographic information has grown in recent years, mainly due to the increased public availability of information and the implementation of the INSPIRE Directive. The spatial infrastructure for searching, viewing and downloading has improved the accessibility of spatial data and has raised public awareness. The growth in use of view and download services has been significant the last couple of years.    
  • The national geoportal Paikkatietoikkuna provides a map interface, where the user can access and use over 2500 layers in a comprehensive way offered by about 60 national data provides. The geoportal is developed as open-source code on the basis of the established geographic reference architecture and is available for reuse supporting a wide range of user interfaces and map publication. The geoportal is used daily by more than 3 000 different users. 
  • Broad access to spatial information is provided to the users by many different web applications serving specific use cases including municipal maps, routing and planning services, nationwide routing services, geography education, public points of interest, cultural heritage, agricultural applications and environmental applications. 
  • Access to spatial data has improved and the reported use of data has increased. The increasing use of geographic information has also encouraged data providers to improve the quality of the data and develop data products and services that are better suited to user needs. Spatial information industry companies also played a significant role in promoting the use of spatial information e.g. Finnish Location Information Cluster, a consortium of geospatial information sector companies offering spatial information services. 
  • In the beginning of 2022, 78 (out of 309) municipalities, 18 (out of 18) regional councils and 16 governmental authorities and agencies were actively involved in the National SDI as producers of metadata, data and services (fewer municipalities).

Data sharing arrangements

  • The opening up of public information has continued and most of the nationwide INSPIRE datasets are open. For the conditions of use a broad international CC BY 4.0 License applies (Creative Commons license), significantly simplifying the use of the data in different member states and by EU institutions.
  • Environmental data have been open to the public since 2008. The National Land Survey opened the terrain data in 2012. After that, many other authorities including the largest municipalities have opened or are planning to open data for free re-use. In 2015, already more than half of all the spatial datasets covered by the INSPIRE Directive are available as open data.
  • For fee-charged data, the tariff developed by each authority apply.  

Costs and benefits

  • The costs regarding the implementation of the INSPIRE Directive vary between actors and are difficult to estimate. Overall, no significant changes have occurred since 2016. According to surveys conducted in 2016 and 2019, the key causes of costs can be summed up as: 
  • establishment and maintenance of network services, procurement of software, preparation of metadata, information harmonisation (estimated costs between 2013-2015: EUR 4.4 million) 
  • coordination, support, training, monitoring and development of centralized systems (estimated costs between 2013-2015: EUR 3.4 million).  
  • The identified benefits of the implementation of the INSPIRE Directive vary between actors from large to little or no benefits. The monetary value of the total benefits is difficult to assess and such information is currently not available. Overall, no significant changes have occurred since 2016. According to surveys conducted in 2016 and 2019, the key benefits can be summed up as: 
  • Increased cooperation between actors 
  • Increased (re)use of data 
  • Increased quality of data 
  • Increased discoverability and availability of data  
  • Increased understanding of existing data sources 
  • Easier access to data 
  • Reduced efforts in data maintenance and sharing 
  • More services for citizens are being developed 
  • Better conditions have been created for decision-making

According to survey conducted in 2020, the key benefits can be summed up as:

INSPIRE has acted as a tool and has made spatial data producers implement APIs for data sharing as well as created understanding

  • What does interoperability of spatial data mean and what are the benefits of it. Finnish geoportal Paikkatietoikkuna visualises this concretely. 
  • Open APIs from as-is spatial datasets 
  • INSPIRE showed the purpose and benefits of standard APIs.
  • Oskari software which is an open-source platform originally developed for Paikkatietoikkuna. Oskari is used in several organisations, also in Iceland.
  • Impact on the pricing of spatial data. Implementation of INSPIRE has advanced the opening of spatial data and created technical means to use open data.
  • Development of networks.
  • Spatial datasets have been described and can be easily found.
Key facts and figures