Lithuania - 2021: Country Fiche

It is difficult to seperate costs for general LSI development, LSI portal maintenance and development and specific INSPIRE Directive implementation costs. The costs incurred during the reference period are divided into two parts:

• One time project costs for the implementation of INSPIRE network services, metadata and spatial data sets in the LSI infrastructure.
• Annual maintenance costs for the LSI portal covering the following categories:
  
  • Hardware maintenance costs (around 30 % related to INSPIRE),
  • Software maintenance costs (around 25 % related to INSPIRE – reduced by introduction of open source technology),
  • Maintenance work costs (around 30 % related to INSPIRE),
  • Monitoring and reporting costs (around 30 % related to INSPIRE).

LSI data providers (but not all) indicate relatively low annual costs additionally incurred as a result of the implementation of the Directive, mostly in three categories:

• preparation and provision of metadata and network services (between 0 and 2500 EUR on an annual basis);
• management of data sets (of the conformity of spatial data sets with the INSPIRE requirements was achieved as part of the project “development of the services of the Lithuanian infrastructure for spatial information by implementing priority measures of the INSPIRE Directive’) — depending on the volume of the data provided from 0 to 5000 EUR per year.
• monitoring and reporting (from 0 to 1000 EUR per year).

As the costs of the implementation of the Directive are inseparable from the benefits provided by the LSI and the LSI portal, any claims regarding the possible development of the national spatial data infrastructure without the Directive would be speculative. The Directive had an undoubted influence on the spatial data strategy in Lithuania.

Benefits directly related to the INSPIRE Directive (those that would likely not have been achieved without the Directive). These are only indirect and non-quantifiable benefits characterised by the following aspects:

• The directive created a legal framework for pursuing interoperability and common use of spatial data. This made it easier to conclude relevant agreements with spatial data providers, to define data sharing practices and procedures and to publish more information and services online.
• The Directive creates an obligation to provide metadata thus informing users about the existing spatial data sets. As a result of implementation of this requirement, the awareness of the authorities and the public to the existence of information resources collected by the state has increased manifold.
• INSPIRE promotes public provision and monitoring of data. Since public provision of data sets and easy access enables users to notice their weaknesses, this suggests that, in the absence of legal obligations, some data providers would not be interested in disclosing their data sets.

Evidence of direct benefits observed in Lithuania:

• Adoption of the Directive led to focused policy-making in the field of spatial information;
• Benefits observed in the field of environmental policy: obligation to improve the quality of existing data and provide modern spatial data services;
• The understanding among the authorities of the benefits of spatial information, integration of data on the basis of spatial data and the possibilities of using them in decision-making has improved. Thus the groundwork is laid for closer cooperation among organisations;
• The public is better informed and the demand for spatial data services is increasing;
• More projects are implemented and spatial data products created. There is a growing amount of initiatives related to broader use of spatial data and innovative electronic services. The legal basis created by the directive allows better justification of the demand for such projects and ensures their funding.

Much greater economic and social benefits are generated at the national level as the overall outcome of the functioning of the infrastructure for spatial information. Since implementation of the Directive speeds up the development of the infrastructure for spatial information and necessitates an increase in its efficiency, there is no doubt that a certain part of these benefits is linked to the Directive but it is impossible to provide quantifiable evidence of this link. Aspects of the common benefits generated by the LSI are presented below:

1. Economic benefits achieved as a result of increased efficiency. These benefits are primarily quantified in work time costs; by multiplying these costs by an average salary of an employee from a relevant field, an expression of these benefits in financial terms may be obtained; however, it must be noted that work time saving does not in itself guarantee financial benefits, thus it cannot be classified as direct benefits.The assessment of the cost-benefit analysis of the implementation of the Directive during the reference period in each year of functioning of the Lithuanian Spatial Information Infrastructure identified savings of around 40.000 working days. In terms of average wages in the target sectors in Lithuania, in 2020  this amounted to annual EUR 2,9 million.
2. Indirect benefits achieved as a result of greater spatial data and existing LSI tools for decision-making. Where decision-makers are better informed, this leads to less problems and arguments, and the resulting financial and time costs are reduced. Examples of such benefits are as follows:
   
   • Improved availability and transparency of spatial data sets resulted in a smaller number of territorial pre-litigation disputes and legal proceedings arising out of the incompatibility of spatial data sets;
   • The land owners being able to view parcel data online, they are better informed, resulting in lower fines for abandoned land administration; the use (restitution) of land more effective resolution of issues;
   • More effective registration of errors and a smaller number of related errors in spatial data sets;
   • A number of reduced duplication of spatial data sets (it is unnecessary to keep copies available online) and no need for repeated efforts to collect similar data sets.
3. Indirect benefits achieved as a result of increased use of spatial information to create various services and new spatial data sets. Examples of such benefits are as follows:
   
   • Higher number of ongoing projects for the development of spatial information systems, greater demand for professionals, new jobs;
   • New spatial data sets are created by using the main national spatial data sets, thereby conferring added value to the collected information, for example, maps displaying the distribution of criminal offences, tourist routes, objects of folklore and literature;
   • Charter distributed data collection (crowdsourdng) by users create spatial data sets, for example, error or issue notifications, tourist information, etc.
4. Indirect social benefits primarily linked to improved awareness and motivation at all levels:
   
   • strengthened cooperation between different organisations by using the same spatial data as an instrument for interconnection;
   • qualitatively new possibilities for using spatial information, increasing number of creators of spatial data and added-value services, especially among educational institutions; less investments in hardware and software and more investments in innovative products;
   • better citizens’ awareness of the living and business environment, ability to use spatial analysis tools and more active participation in decision-making; better awareness of officials is linked to expected higher rates of “good” decisions (i.e. fully justified taking account of the more influential environmental factors) decisions.