Mature e-Government based on spatial data - legal implications

Abstract

The relation of spatial data and e-Government is important, but not always acknowledged in the development and implementation of e-Government. The implementation of the INSPIRE directive pushed this agenda towards a growing awareness of the role of spatial data and the need for a spatial data infrastructure to support e-Government. With technology, policies, data and infrastructure in place, new iterations of this relationship are needed, in order to reach a higher level of maturity. This paper analyses and discusses the need for the differentiated roles of spatial data as an important step towards more mature e-Government. As part of this understanding, the paper focuses on a subset of data, so-called ‘spatio-legal data’. Spatio-legal data are created within the regulated legal environment of public administration, and used for rulings within a given legal area. Sometimes, the legal status of these data is the wording of the law and the spatial data are just visualisation thereof. Under other circumstances, the spatial data themselves represent the legal status. Compliance between spatial data and the legal administrative framework is necessary, to obtain a mature e-Government. A preliminary test of the hypothesis on a small scale, using Denmark as a case study, supports the need for discussion and awareness of the role of spatial data in e-Government with emphasis on the use of spatio-legal data.