INSPIRE Knowledge Base

Slovakia - 2019: 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. 
    • Identification of spatial data with relevance to the environment (step 1)
    • Documentation of the data (metadata) (step 2)
    • Accessibility of the data through digital services (step 3)
    • Interoperability of spatial data sets (step 4)
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 DECISION regarding INSPIRE monitoring and reporting on the 5th of June 2009.

This country fiche highlights the progress in the various areas of INSPIRE implementation and presents an outlook of planned actions for further improvement of the INSPIRE implementation. The country fiche includes information until May 2019 as an update of the information acquired through:

  • member states update,
State Of Play

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

Coordination

National Contact Point
Name of Public Authority: 
Ministry of Environment of the Slovak Republic
Postal Address: 

Tajovského 28

975 90 Banská Bystrica

Slovakia

Contact Email: 
Click to email
Telephone Number: 
+421 048 4374 523
National INSPIRE Website: 
http://inspire.gov.sk
MIG Contacts: 
Contact Person: 
Martin Tuchyňa
Email: 
martin.tuchyna@enviro.gov.sk
MIG T Contacts: 
Contact Person: 
Martin Tuchyňa
Email: 
martin.tuchyna@enviro.gov.sk
Contact Person: 
Martin Koška
Email: 
martin.koska@enviro.gov.sk
Coordination Structure & Progress: 

  • Coordination Structure
    • Coordination of the relevant stakeholders in Slovakia is facilitated on two main levels:
      • Strategy / Main public sector stakeholders’ level represented by Coordination Committee of NSDI (NSDI Council / KR-NIPI)
      • Technical / implementation level represented by Expert Group of NSDI (NSDI Expert Group / ES NIPI). The ES NIPI coordinates the work of ad hoc Technical Working Groups).
    • Main responsibility for the INSPIRE implementation and coordination was assigned to the Ministry of Environment of the Slovak Republic, supported with the Coordination Council (KR NIPI). KR NIPI is representing the main central public authorities, including the representation of local governance.
    • Ministry of Environment of the Slovak Republic is also in charge of National Geoportal, Spatial Data Registry as well as National INSPIRE website maintenance, communication with the Slovakian stakeholders, communication with European Commission, and provides the primary contacts in both Maintenance and Implementation Groups (MIG) political and technical.
  • Progress
    • The implementation of INSPIRE in the country remains ongoing. The process so far, was mainly driven by the efforts in the components of the metadata, partially in network services and interoperability (mainly for INSPIRE Annex 1), together with the rising focus on INSPIRE priority datasets and awareness of the utilisation of the Copernicus programme.
    • Together with the fulfilment of the INSPIRE legal obligations for the harmonised spatial data and services exchange, support for the use of the digital spatial resource becomes of high importance, ensuring the synergy with the eGovernment and Open Data activities.

Functioning and coordination of the infrastructure

  • Recent coordination activities mainly focused on the KR NIPI level as well as in the specific thematic groups (INSPIRE priority datasets, Hydrography, Land Cover & Use and Transport Networks).  
  • In connection to improvement of the interaction with the stakeholders and better understanding the needs and expectations for the spatial data provision and use „Better GeoData for Slovakia“ survey took place. Resulting observations were taken into the consideration for design of two national project proposals aiming to improve the situation also in the overall coordination, taking into the consideration also aspects of the value for the money:
    • ESPUS: Effective management of spatial data and services
    • JPPÚS:  Uniform access to spatial data and services
  • Aside of the project activities further analysis of the current content of the Slovakian NSDI with aim to improve the quality of the metadata, availability of the network services providing the interoperable spatial datasets with clear data sharing provisions will continue, using the coordination framework and where needed appropriate stimulations and available legal enforcement tools.

Usage of the infrastructure for spatial information

  • The overall use of the infrastructure is limited with the quality of the spatial data and services description by metadata and availability of the access to these resources via network services.
  • Based on the outcomes of the above mentioned survey motivation for spatial data use was almost equally distributed among the business, legal requirements,  public interest, personal use and support for added value development. In addition to that set of spatial data and services use cases was also identified, ranging from:
    • business use of data for the various customers,
    • in public sector via execution of various analysis in the field of environment, human health or land use planning,
    • for education and in academia in area of knowledge transfer,
    • crowdsourcing and non-governmental sector in integration and enrichment of the Open street map and similar products. 
  • Set of new use cases addressing the public sector agenda as well as real life scenarios is also foreseen to be supported via above-mentioned national projects.  

Data sharing arrangements

  • Despite the small modifications, to the Slovakian national metadata profile encouraging the use of INSPIRE licenses defined in the Guidance on the 'Regulation on access to spatial data sets and services of the Member States by Community institutions and bodies under harmonised conditions', these did not prove to improve the situation.
  • Based on that Slovakia would appreciate to improved guidance on EU level ensuring the consistency with data sharing impact of the related legislation and application practice (PSI, GDPR, Open Data).
  • By that time, small improvements are foreseen to be proposed in order to easier distinguish data and services falling under the Open Data regime and other specific data sharing arrangements, to support easier distribution and re-use of the spatial resources via National Open Data portal.

Costs and benefits

  • The cost and benefits evaluation is based on the information collected in the structured information from the relevant stakeholders. It is important to highlight the information was collected based on the best available information resources for the period of the 2016-2018.
  • The total indicative costs related with the INSPIRE implementation:  822 232 € and 8716 person days.
  • From the Benefits perspective, these were identified mainly as direct and indirect, although some stakeholders has not identified any benefits yet.
  • Detailed information about the costs and benefits can be accessed via this summary table.
Key facts and figures

In addition to the above mentioned issues, the implementation of INSPIRE Directive requires Member States to take four main steps in relation to management of spatial datasets which fall under the Directive:

  • Step 1: Identify spatial datasets
  • Step 2: Document these datasets (metadata)
  • Step 3: Provide services for identified spatial datasets (discovery, view, download)
  • Step 4: Make spatial datasets interoperable by aligning them with the common data models.

The key facts and figures presented in this country fiche are based on the information provided by Slovakia on the INSPIRE dashboard. The provided statistics is not reflecting the data available on INSPIRE geoportal. The INSPIRE geoportal is updated on a regular and ongoing basis, whilst the INSPIRE dashboard is typically updated after every reporting round, on a yearly basis.

The conformity of the implementation is assessed against the full set of legal specifications set out by the Directive and the Implementing Rules and the commonly agreed good practices set out by the technical guidelines.

 

MDv1.1: number of spatial data sets for Annex I that have metadata
MDv1.2: number of spatial data sets for Annex II that have metadata
MDv1.3: number of spatial data sets for Annex III that have metadata

 

 

 

DSv2.1: number of conformant spatial data sets with conformant metadata for Annex I
DSv2.2: number of conformant spatial data sets with conformant metadata for Annex II
DSv2.3: number of conformant spatial data sets with conformant metadata for Annex III