INSPIRE Knowledge Base

Italy - 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 Italy. More detailed information is available on the INSPIRE knowledge base.

Coordination

National Contact Point
Name of Public Authority: 
Ministero della Transizione Ecologica
Contact Email: 
Click to email
National INSPIRE Website: 
https://www.isprambiente.gov.it
http://www.pcn.minambiente.it/mattm/inspire/
MIG Contacts: 
Contact Person: 
Teresa Federico
Email: 
Federico.Teresa@minambiente.it
Contact Person: 
Alessandra De Cesare
Email: 
DeCesare.Alessandra@minambiente.it
MIG T Contacts: 
Contact Person: 
Carlo Cipolloni
Email: 
carlo.cipolloni@isprambiente.it
Contact Person: 
Michele Munafò
Email: 
michele.munafo@isprambiente.it
Coordination Structure & Progress: 
  • National Contact point

Name of public authority

Ministero della Transizione Ecologica

Mailing address

Via Cristoforo Colombo, 44 – 00147 Roma

Telephone number

 

Fax number

 

E-mail

 NCP.Inspire@mite.gov.it

Website address

 https://www.mite.gov.it

Contact person

 Alessandra De Cesare

Telephone number

 

E-mail

 

Contact person substitute

Teresa Federico

Telephone number

 

E-mail

 

 

Coordination Structure

According to adopted coordination strategy (January 2016) there are three levels in the governance structure (figure above):

  • Top: governmental level, including the NCP (Ministry of Ecological Transition) and the consulting and supporting body created in May 2016 (CNITA), website: https://www.mite.gov.it; website: CNITA

  • Middle: technical coordination level, including the coordination structure (ISPRA, the Italian Institute for Environmental Protection and Research) and the national body for the Digital Agenda (AGID),

  • Bottom: operational level, including the National Geoportal (GN), the National Environmental Information System (SINA) and the national geographic metadata catalogue (RNDT).

In May 2016 Italy has set up a body in charge of linking all the public administrations providing spatial data, this body called "Consulta Nazionale per l’Informazione Territoriale e Ambientale" (CNITA) was already envisaged in 2010 in the law transposing the INSPIRE Directive, but never established so far; the figure below shown the coordination structure picture in Italy.

Progress

  • During 2020, the coordination structure (ISPRA) in conjunction with the manager of the national metadata catalogue (RNDT) published guidelines to support administrations to enrich more the compilation of metadata and the correct configuration of network services. Furthermore, in compliance with the new metadata guidelines, AgID as the managing body of the RNDT has updated the catalogue with its national profile, so that it is in line with the technical guides of metadata 2.0, publishing a new updated national guideline on metadata and metadata catalogues (https://geodati.gov.it/geoportale/manuale-rndt).
  • In continuity with what was done, also in 2021, ISPRA and AgID organized training and support seminars for PAs for the compilation and improvement of the quality of metadata and network services connected to the datasets. A specific action to assign in the monitoring only the metadata of the datasets that have a value for the purposes of the Directive and that were effectively aligned with the regulations in force was carried out by the coordination structure by filtering the national metadata. This action has allowed an improvement in national performance without reducing the quality of the geographic information provided and in particular, while recording a significant decrease in the number of dataset metadata, the number of compliant network services has increased.
  • In parallel, ISPRA as the coordination structure of INSPIRE and reference for e-Reporting towards the European Environmental Agency has launched a process of comparison, through workshops, with regional agencies and national authorities in order to bring the two activities together. This action, launched at the end of 2020, lasted throughout 2021, allowing at national level an increase in the priority datasets to support the data flows of environmental directives.
  • In 2021 the competences of the previous Ministry of the Environment merged into the new Ministry of Ecological Transition which also includes some of the key competences in the ecological transition process, including the energy sector. A deep re organization of the Ministry was therefore initiated which assigned competences relating the INSPIRE theme, aimed at strengthening and promoting the CNITA’s activity.
  • The actions related to the compliance of metadata to the latest TGs and the accessibility of spatial data sets through the network services have been included in the national Three-Year Plan for ICT in the Public Administration. In addition, the coordination and integration of spatial data and open data has been consolidated through the interoperability of the two national catalogues (RNDT mentioned above and the national open data portal https://dati.gov.it); consequently, the open spatial data are discoverable in both catalogues.
  • In 2021, many regional nodes on the stimulus produced by the webinars organized by AgID and ISPRA, they have made a further effort to improve the accessibility of metadata, data and services, in compliance with INSPIRE. Some regions have reviewed a large amount of metadata and services, such as the Lombardy Region more than 270 objects including data, maps and services on which a specific action has been made for reclassification, through appropriate keywords, to identify the priority datasets. In addition, a thorough review was carried out in order to finalize a complete conversion to the CC-BY 4.0 license for all available open data.

     

Functioning and coordination of the infrastructure

  • The coordination of the infrastructure takes place through the Cooperation Board (section 1 of the CNITA) which is chaired by ISPRA and where common policies on the use of data are adopted; at the same time the board applies a coordinated  orchestration of the components of the National Infrastructure for Territorial Information and Environmental Monitoring (INITMA).
  • The main access point to information about the CNITA and the INITMA components takes place through the National Geoportal (http://www.pcn.minambiente.it/mattm/).
  • A strategic action of convergence between open data and geospatial data has been launched in order to reduce duplication.

  • At the end of 2021, CNITA drew up a specific governance plan, supporting as a country the action to improve its metadata and services and produced an operational action plan (POA) for each element necessary for the full implementation of the INSPIRE Directive, as well as for the promotion of geographic information in general. One of the actions envisaged by the POA is to accompany public administrations by anticipating specific training and information webinars on a quarterly basis, as well as preliminary monitoring actions with the same frequency in order to evaluate the evolutionary trend of the country.

Usage of the infrastructure for spatial information

  • Information on the use of geospatial data at national and regional level is fragmented but indicates a growing trend in interoperability between public administrations.
  • Training actions were activated to strengthen the activity to harmonize data and to access network services and their use.
  • The metadata statistics are presented in the monitoring report, but also in detail in the RNDT portal (https://geodati.gov.it/geoportale/) from the difference between the two it can be understood how the improvement and filtering action has led to monitoring only of the datasets and network services that produce accessible and useful data for national and European policies. The presence of over 19,000 documented datasets and about 2300 network services in the national report allows to document a rich documentation often of historical geographical information provided available in static or paper formats (i.g. pdf, jpg).
  • Each region has its own access portals both to open data and to territorial data with their own access and use statistics.

Data sharing arrangements

  • The Italian Ministry of Ecological Transition (formerly the Ministry of the Environment) has signed more than 200 data sharing agreements from 2009 to date and through the CNITA has started a support action for the sharing of data also in open format in continuity with the provisions of Directive 2019/1024/EU.
  • Two main barriers to data sharing have been identified:
    • One of the obstacles to full compliance with INSPIRE is identified in the current legislative landscape which in many cases predates the INSPIRE Directive and therefore applies limitations to data sharing.
    • Especially local administrations have difficulty in financing the right skills / infrastructures that would allow harmonization towards INSPIRE formats that would feed the national data infrastructure with local data "ready for use".

Costs and benefits

  • The 2019 Country Report contains information on the costs of building the infrastructure in terms of man-months, and broken down for the different actors (Ministry of the Environment, ISPRA), but the estimate is based approximately on what has been implemented by the Italian organizations who manage the components of INITMA.
  • On the benefits:
    • among the qualitative benefits outlined, the rationalization of economic investments and operating costs, thanks to the elimination of duplications.
    • The widest use of public data thanks to the sharing, standardization and harmonization of data required by INSPIRE.
    • Greater development of applications aimed at citizens and public utility services.
Key facts and figures