****POLICY ISSUES****

Agency/Organization name: Ravi, Netherlands Council for Geographic information

Mailing address: P.O. Box 508, 3800 AM Amersfoort, The Netherlands
E-mail address: Ravi@euronet.nl
Telephone number: +31 (0) 33 460 41 00
Fax number: +31 (0) 33 465 64 57

Name of agency head or primary contact person: Bas Kok, Secretary General, Ravi

Organizationally spatial data are being made available though cooperation between parties within the Ravi by coming to agreements and consensus on how to make the data sets available. For example at the moment certain elements of the NSDI are being subject to business plans on how to make these elements available, i.e.:

· Standardization 
· Knowledge Infrastructure
· Information on buildings

The Ministry of Interior Affairs is engaged in the project OL2000 to enhance the government information accessibility towards citizens, the public sector land businesses.

Only a minority of agencies provided all of their spatial data sets to third parties, whether or not free of charge (see 9. Pricing). Thus not all governmental data sets are available to third parties, some of them due to the obligation to secrecy, privacy protection or protection of business interests. Some of the restrictions have been laid down in legislation.

Practically all organizations decline to accept all forms of liability, explicitly laid down in supply contracts. Also if data sets are supplied by government to third parties, without exception, resale is forbidden in the supply contract and the copyright of the supplier will be invoked. In general a data set is not sold outright, but the user is licensed to use it, often limited to a certain task, a certain project or to use within an organization.

Some findings of a survey done by the State Secretary of Interior Affairs on the nature, number and use made of public sector data files (Proceedings Seminar 'Free accessibility of GI in the Netherlands, the United States and the European Community', 2 October 1998):

· Approximately half of the files are used by other parties.
· 80% of that use is by other public sector bodies.
· Copyright is reserved on files provided to third parties in 70% of those cases.
· In all cases, care is taken to ensure protection of data relation to personal privacy.
· More than 70% of the files made available are provided free of charge. The remaining 30% are charged, sometimes in part and sometimes in full.
· When files are provided, conditions for use are set in 60% of the cases. These conditions are mostly concerned with internal use and restrictions to ensure that data is used only for the aim the data set has been collected for.

As mentioned before (see 4. Leadership) coordination has been divided between the coordinating minister and the Ravi. The Ravi supports the minister in this task by providing a clear vision on how to develop the NSDI (see 3. Policy NSDI, e.g. SVI, 1992; NGII, 1995; Ravi,1996) and for example promoting the harmonization of fundamental data sets, the relationships among them and working methods through stimulating the use of standards, to facilitate the development of the actual NSDI.

The data sets are being developed, maintained and integrated by the organizations that produce and make use of the data and can be known by signing up with the NCGI, the Dutch metadata service.

1. In the BIOS-3 memo 'Back to the Future' (July 1995) it states that the government electronic information desk 2000 (in Dutch: Overheidsloket 2000) does not focus its attention on public organizations but mostly on the public and on industry.

2. The commission Market and Government concluded in its final support (February 1997) that market activities should be separated and hived off. The Cabinet has given guidelines how to handle this. Also it advises not to distinguish different customers categories.

3. In the Cabinet memo 'Towards accessibility of Government information' (June 1997) it is stated that a policy must be developed in order to provide access to data banks. The Cabinet concludes that a standard policy for the exploitation of the files of the administration must be developed and it has announced its intention to carry out an investigation into the feasibility of such regulations.

4. In the public sector a general tendency towards self-financing and thus cost-recovery is becoming evident. Therefore legislation has been draw up, for example the Land Registry Act, which states that the Cadaster must be totally cost recovering.

This overview illustrates that the policy lines are conflicting. However a   standard working method has often been developed within organization on the workfloor:

· Some organizations do not vary prices per client in principal, e.g. Statistics Netherlands (as rule only charges the costs of distribution to clients) and the DLO Staring centrum for the products Land cover database of the Netherlands and the Land cover ecological database of the Netherlands.                                                                                                                        

· Other organizations supply data sets to governmental bodies free of charge or at the most for the cost of supply, e.g. the provinces.                                                                                  

· Sometimes customer categories are being discriminated that receive data sets for a reduced price, i.e.:

· Partners
· Customers within the same ministry
· Training
· Libraries and universities.

For example provinces price policies varies per client and use, varying from free distribution, the cost of the medium and, up to and including, charging for part of the initial costs of the information production.

More and more public sector bodies are switching to the paid provision of data sets to third parties. For example the Cadaster by law has to be 100% cost-recovering by selling data sets, while the Ordnance Survey (TDN) has to be for 50%.

The private sector is involved:

· As subcontractor
· In value adding and developing information products based on the government data sets, e.g. route planners, digital atlases, retail marketing, etc.

Due to the high quality of the government data sets there is but a few commercial data sets and the market for commercial data sets accordingly small. As an exception to the rule the fundamental geometric data set Large Scale Map is a public-private-partnership initiative.

There are very few business to business activities.

Commercial data sets are meeting the NEN standards, Dutch standard for GI developed within the Ravi. Also they are willing to adopt CEN 287 and ISO/TC211.

Also some 70% of these agencies provide data sets free of charge, however slightly value adding the data sets or adjusting it in scope of privacy protection and/or secrecy.

However, for some elements of the NSDI the need has been recognized for further development, partly by laws and partly by agreements made between the government agencies, e.g.:

· The Act for Valuation of Real Estate (WOZ) set up various standards and regulated the Large Scale Base Map of the Netherlands (GBKN), the public-private-partnership mentioned earlier.

· The Commercial Register Act 1996 for regulating the Chambers of Commerce Register.

· The Land Registry Organization Act 14 February 1994 Stb 1994, 125, Land Registry Act, Stb 1994, 640, the Land Registry Tariffs Decree 18 July 1995, Stb 1995, 376 concerning the Cadaster and the Commercial Tariffs Decree for the Land Registry Service.