I'm Angela Baker, I'm the Programme Manager at Eurogeographics. We are a non-profit membership association based in Brussels, and we represent the national mapping and cadastre and land registration authorities across geographical Europe.

We work with our members in three ways. We work on representation, we work on knowledge exchange and we work on data. One of the challenges at the moment is to really facilitate access to our members' data.

One way we do that is through the creation of pan-European datasets, and that helps promote their data outside of their national boundaries. We have a project just now called Open Maps for Europe, which has made the pan-European datasets open and easily accessible. So that's a really positive way that people can access the data and use it,

and it's there for use and reuse and it's easily accessible. However, it's not always possible for our members to make the data available as open, and this can be for many reasons, political, technical, they maybe don't have the resource to implement it, so that's something we're working quite hard on just now.

Talking really about geospatial topographic data, we have five main datasets that we're making available. So we have two topographic datasets with different themes included, a one-to-one million and a one-to-250,000. We also have a digital elevation model gazetteer,

and we've also made available an open cadastral map, which is very much a prototype dataset, but it makes the cadastral data that our cadastral members have more visible and accessible. We don't have full coverage on all the datasets just now. We have very good coverage on the topographic datasets. We have full coverage on the digital elevation model,

because some of the areas have been infilled with open data, and the cadastral dataset is very much a prototype. So we have started with four countries, and we plan to extend that. We will also want to use it to get feedback from the end user so we can develop it further. We were using our pan-European datasets to fulfill that requirement

to promote our members' data outside of their national boundaries, and we've been creating these datasets for 20 years. We were then licensing them for a fee, and the income from that licensing was then putting back into the association to support membership activities.

However, we started to see that the requirement for the datasets was falling off, not because of the quality of the datasets, but that people weren't willing to pay for them. That really linked into the requirement of users to access open data, so to have much better access to the data with better licensing conditions.

We were also finding that our members were trying to open up their data as well, and so we reviewed our data strategy and went back to our members to ask them what they wanted us to do, and really the key was to make the data accessible, so it wasn't to fund further activities within the association.

So we reviewed our data strategy, and we completely moved it from a sales activity to a data access, and then through that we started to make the datasets open. Members are all the national mapping and industrial agencies from across geographical Europe, so we have over 60 members from 46 countries,

and the users vary. We have key large users within the European Commission, and they're using the authoritative data because they use it for policy-making. So they do use other data sources, other geospatial data sources, but for policy and decision-making they have to use official authoritative data,

and that's where our members' data comes in. We also have other commercial users, academic users, nonprofits, but really our focus initially is with the European institutions who need that official pan-European view of the data.

What we found is that by opening up the data, and by making it easily accessible, so they both go hand in hand, you're reducing the restriction on licensing for the end user, and you're making it easy for them to get their hands on the data. We found that the use has increased significantly, and this has been fantastic for us,

because our aim is to increase the use, and for people to be aware of the official authoritative data that's coming from our members, and for them to use it. We've had some excellent case studies coming out of the European institutions as well, so use within the External Action Service, the UN,

the European Environment Agency, as well as some of our existing key users within the European Commission, because they can now get the data when they want it, and they can use it in a multitude of ways, because there are so few restrictions on the use of the data. The next step is to really look at their requirements further, and then try and meet those requirements with new data sets,

and that's what we're looking at next. So we ran some user requirement workshops last year, with GEOINT users within the European Commission, so lots of different types of people, policy people, technical people, across many different directorates,

so we had environmental people, and transport people, and lots and lots of different users who were using geospatial information. And we took on board a lot of their requirements, and we prioritised them, and really what they need for them to fulfill their jobs is to have harmonised, edge-matched, quality, official data at 1 to 10,000 scale.

So that's something that we've really taken on board, and we've discussed with our members about how we could possibly achieve that, because currently we don't offer that. With other users who are currently using our open data, we do have an issue, because with true open data,

you don't collect user information. So that is an issue, and we have tried to communicate with the users to get feedback. So we have allowed them to sign up to a newsletter if they wish, it's not a requirement of the use of the data, and we're trying to communicate through that newsletter, and also through our social media channels.

But it's very difficult to understand the users who are currently using the data, and what they're using it for, when you can't identify who they are. So that is a challenge going forward. The general system expects data to be accessible, and easy to use, and understandable.

And a lot of our members, because they work in the public sector, they are servicing the citizen, and so they are looking at that, and they are fulfilling not just their national agreement, but they're looking at what their citizen is requiring. And so a lot of them have moved to very open data policies, and especially within the EU, there is a mandate for them to do so,

through the open data directive, and with the new high-value datasets, there are set requirements within the geospatial theme, about which geospatial data will be made open as we move forward. So I think for the EU countries, there's a political mandate,

and then there's a requirement coming from the citizen as well. For EU Geographics, we want to replicate what our members are doing, and we want to support our members, so I think there's very much a move to the open data, and to get people using the data, because if they're not using it, there's no point having it.

So yeah, we really want to move towards that open data model. It's a really interesting question, because I think there's a requirement for added value, and I think not every end user is going to take the raw data, and either as the capacity, or the technology, or the requirement,

or the want to transform it into what they need it to do for their business. And I think it's the added value point, where there is maybe a gap. So the data might be open, but actually, what does the end user need, and do you need to add something on top of the data to give the user what they need?

And we've already had feedback on some of our data saying, okay, the data's fine, but I would like it in a slightly different specification. And actually, in a true open data world, you make the data open, and the responsibility moves to the user. And it's finding out where that line is, and where we stop, and we let the user carry on.

So I think, to answer your question, I think there is a requirement for closed data, even as we move forward to an open data environment, because there will always be an added value that is required by end users. Just to make the general public aware that there is official data that is available,

and it is open, and it can be used. And we would really like feedback on what we are offering, so that we can feed back to our members, and we can then create new data sets that fulfill the needs of the end user.