Legal Framework

The legal framework for the Norwegian SDI goes back to theLand Division Act 1995 and the Land Registration Act of 2005. The latter wasadapted in 2007, and the amendments have entered into force in January 2010,linking the Cadastre to the national Register, the cultural heritage registerand the register for polluted areas. Norway which is part of the EuropeanEconomic Area (EEA) has always followed closely the INSPIRE initiative. The EEAdecided in 2010 to apply INSPIRE as well even though the member countries arenot member of the EU. In order to implement INSPIRE there is a new law whichshould be approved by the parliament before summer 2010. This new law, calledGeodata Act is broader than Norway Digital since the initiative only deals withthe public sector, not the public. A discussion took place during thepreparation of the law on what is public sector and what not. Although the lawis very brief, it goes further than a simple translation of INSPIRE. The lawwill be complemented by bylaws (comparable to the implementing rules ofINSPIRE). The law is different in that 1) it can also deal with other data thanunder INSPIRE; 2) the duties are not applicable for all authorities in the sameway (e.g. municipalities should not make their geodata accessible themselves5).

Other important elements are the Freedom of Information Act,the Public Administration Act and the Act on the re-use of public sectorinformation (cf. infra). International conventions and agreements also have animpact on the arrangements of the SDI work in Norway. As a member oforganisations like IMO, IHO and IALA, Norway has obligations towards theinternational maritime community.

Of vital importance for the Norwegian SDI, is the June 2003White Paper of the Parliament Stortingsmelding nr. 30 (2002-2003) entitled“Norway Digital: A Joint Fundament for Value-adding”. This paper defined theconcept of the Norwegian SDI, starting from the development of Norway Digital,a geo-portal in cooperation between a large number of public authorities, bothon the national and the regional level (counties and municipalities). Theportal should offer view services free of charge, while download services are providedvia commercial distributors and value-added resellers. The public authoritiesagree to pay an annual fee based on the size of the organisation and theimportance of the datasets for its activities (see further).

Norway Digital is closely related to the eNorway 2009 ActionPlan for a digital society. This action plan focuses on three main targets: theindividual in the digital Norway, innovation and growth in business andindustry, and a coordinated and user-adapted public sector. Norway Digital is seenas part of the second target.

Before the agreements on Norway Digital were concluded, theNorwegian public authorities already cooperated in the domain of large scaledigital geographic data under the Geovekst programme. The general agreement onGeovekst was signed in June 1992 by the State Road Department, the Board ofElectricity Companies, the Norwegian 5 It is felt that implementing rules, whoare applicable for all public authorities, thus also for the local authorities,may cause certain problems. E.g. most local authorities might not be able topublish their data through web services. Norway 20 Association of LocalAuthorities, the Norwegian Mapping Authority and Telecommunication Department.The Ministry of Agriculture joined the co-operation half a year later (.KareKyrkjeeide, GEOVEKST: Norwegian cooperation on reference data).

Public-privatepartnerships

Public-private partnerships have been in place since thedevelopment of Geovekst, and this has continued under Norway Digital. Theproduction under Geovekst is generally outsourced to private companies Severalcompanies have worked or are working with the NMA via collaboration agreements.The Norway Mapping Group, for example, is an alliance of seven major Norwegiancompanies offering mapping systems and services regarding GI technology thatconcluded such a collaboration agreement with the NMA. Another example is theAssociation of Enterprises in Geomatics (GBL), an association of privatecompanies involved in the data production for Geovekst. In the standardisationfield there is a broad co-operation between both public and privatestakeholders that has led to a core national standard SOSI that is accepted byall stakeholders in Norway for more than 15 years.

Policy andlegislation on access to public sector information

Norway has aFreedom of Information Act. This act is giving any member of the public a rightto access public files. (Act no. 69 of 19 June 1970 relating to public accessto documents in the public administration, as amended by Act no. 47 of 11 June1982, Act no. 86 of 17 December 1982 and Act no. 7 of 10 January 1997). In 1985this right was extended to computerised files. Since May 2003, a law relatingto environmental information transposed the rules of the Aarhus Convention: Actof 9 May 2003 No.31 relating to the right to environmental information andpublic participation in decisionmaking processes relating to the environment. Theact entered into force on 1 January 2004.

The national plan eNorge 2005 -published in May 2002-includes a strategy to increase access to PSI and exploit electronic content(Strategi for Elektronisk Innhold). This action plan was followed up by the eNorway2009 Action plan, which included an action to promote the re-use of PSI. Thegovernment was given the task to develop a holistic and clear pricing policyand to put forward guidelines on when PSI should be charged for. Norway Digitalwas asked to make its information available to commercial players.

Even though the Norwegian authorities were aware of the needfor a PSI policy, the PSI directive was only transposed by a new Act on theright to access to objects in the public sector (Offentlighetsloven), whichcame into force on 1 January 2009.

During the visit in May 2010, it was said that the newGeodata Act does not full comply with PSI on certain aspects (e.g. with regardto how the information on real estate is organised). The report of 2011 willgive more details on this aspect.

Legal protection ofGI by intellectual property rights

Norway is a member of the Bern Convention. The NorwegianCopyright Act (Act no. 2 of 12 May 1961 relating to copyright in literary,scientific and artistic works) was last amended with the implementation of theEU Directive on harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and relatedrights in the information society by the Act of 9 January 2005 amending theCopyright Act.

Under the obligations of the EEA (European Economic Area)Treaty, EEA states (Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein) must also comply withEuropean legislation in the field of intellectual property, such as theDatabase Directive 96/9/EC. Norway, like the rest of the Nordic countries, hadenacted provisions for the protection of non-original and comprehensivedatabases before this Directive was even discussed: in article 43 of theCopyright Act. In 1999 article 43 was somewhat modified to correspond with theDirective. This includes protecting “investments” as well as “largecompilations” and prolonging the protection period from 10 to 15 years.

Article 43a of the Copyright Act stipulates that a personwho produces a photographic picture shall have the exclusive right to makecopies thereof and to make it available to the public. This exclusive right toa photographic picture shall subsist during the lifetime of the photographerand for 15 years after the expiry of the year in which he died, but for notless than 50 years from the expiry of the year in which the picture wasproduced. This protection is for photographs that are not copyright protectedand therefore particularly interesting for aerial photography.

Restricted access toGI further to the legal protection of privacy

The 1814 Constitution does not explicitly recognize theright to privacy, although a provision concerning the freedom from searches ofprivate homes in section 102 implies certain privacy rights. The Supreme Courtruled in 1952 that the law recognizes the legal protection of"personality," a concept which contains a right to privacy.

The Personal Data Registers Act of 2000 (Lov no. 31 ombehandling av personopplysninger) was approved on 14 April 2000. It is designedto follow Directive 95/46/EC. It mainly restricts access to spatial informationcontaining detailed information on ownership to properties.

Directive 2002/58 on privacy and electronic communicationswas implemented in Norway by the Electronic Communications Act of 4 July 2003and the Regulations on Electronic Communications Networks and Services.

Limitation of access is in general approached in a pragmaticway. In the new cadastral system the owner information is not given. But inreality there are other existing mechanisms through which you can obtain alsovery specific information, e.g. there is an existing service where citizens canSMS to ask for the owner of a car based on the car plate number. The newGeodata Act is not changing anything with this regard. The protection ofpersonal data will also be tackled in the new law on land registration.

Licensing framework

The partners of Norway Digital can use all data that areincluded based on a set of two contracts: the general agreement of NorwayDigital and a specific contract between the partners involved that includes theannual cost, the delivery and specific conditions or limitations. Distributionto commercial companies was organised by a private company, NorskEijendomsinformasjon, but will be taken over by the NMA from 2010 (seepresentation on Norge Digital).

Currently, the NMA has a pricing policy with two main categories:usage rights for any internal purpose and marketing rights to make the data ora value-added product available to the public. On 1 December 2009, the NMAannounced that it will make on-line access to the maps free for individuals ornon-profit associations for a trial period of six months (seehttp://www.statkart.no/Gratis+karttjenester.d25-SwJfY1-.ips and http://www.epsiplatform.eu/news/news/norwegian_free_map_services).

Funding of SDI andpricing policy

Financing comes from government funds, user payment, andjoint ventures with public authorities and public owned organisations. With thenew law (Geodata Act) also new budgets are foreseen. While the NSDI developmentwas still largely voluntary based, the implementation of the new law foresees 2million € for the national level, and 2 million € for the municipalities. Inturn, the municipalities should contribute with data (not own services), whilethe national level is responsible for putting services on top of the(aggregated) data. At the national level the money is meant also for support,including 2 additional people for Monitoring & Reporting.

With regard to pricing, it is the tradition that governmentinformation is charged for. However, under the new Act implementing the PSIdirective, the starting point should be that public sector bodies deliver theirinformation free of charge. An exception is made for organisations dealing withgeographic data and property information. They are still permitted to chargethe costs of gathering the information and a reasonable return on investment.During the visit in May 2010 it was stated that the fees calculated for theusage of the services of the NSDI should probably be recalculated to bring itmore in line with the principles set out in the PSI Directive. Themodifications in the field of the pricing policy will certainly influence thefunding and might create some financial gaps that should be resolved in one oranother way. There might be also some implications for the partnerships withinthe SDI. The fact that Oslo did not join so far has also to do with the issuesof charging based on “cost recovery” and/or “ROI” models. Although the currentlaw does not directly speak about these issues, the regulation(s) that willfollow will tackle this in on or another way.

Within the Geovekst forum, each partner contributes to theprojects with funding and personnel. The resulting databases are accessible toall participants for joint use. Under Norway digital, each partner pays anannual fee for the use of the data that has been brought in by all thepartners. A system of partnership fees has been elaborated, called the “DigitalNorway-calculator” which is a flexible pricing mechanism based on the type ofdatasets needed (and related interest factor), base value and other parameters(e.g. the importance of the data set for the users, the intensity of use basedon service requests).

This mechanism has been agreed upon between the partners ofthe SDI. Towards commercial partners, the information is made available by thegovernment owned company called Norsk Eiendomsinformasjon, which isdistributing all information about land registration on behalf of the government.This company is supposed to have full user payment for its products(www.eiendomsinfo.no). The distribution will be taken over by the NMA from2010. The NMA has also announced in December 2009 that it will start makingsome of its information available free of charge for non-commercial use, in atest phase of six months. Commercial use will remain charged for. As anotherexample of more freely available data, Statistics Norway (www.ssb.no)distributes its information largely free of charge or at most at marginal cost.The same is the case for Norwegian Geologic Survey, Directorate of NatureProtection and Norwegian Soil and Forestry Survey. They have a policy not tocharge for the information, only for the cost to distribute it. Pricing forcadastral information is based on statutory requirements.

 Conclusions of component 2: Legal and funding issues

Based on the above description we can conclude that Norwaywho decided to implement INSPIRE within the framework of the European EconomicArea cooperation, has a clear vision and strategy, and since 2010 a new GeodataAct which transposes the INSPIRE Directive into national legislation. Also theformer white paper is serving as a baseline for development of the NSDI.Although the private sector plays a role in the development of the NSDI, thespecific tasks might be further clarified and it is not so clear whether theytake the form of PPP’s. There is no specific (new) information availableregarding IPR and FOI. Privacy issues and the treatment of personal data is anissue that receives attention, rather through concrete measures at databaselevel (e.g. filters) than through specific legislation. There is a clear policyregarding sharing between public authorities and also standardized licenses forpersonal use exist now for some time. The sharing policy might be furtherstreamlined in view of the new legislation. Norway has a solid mechanism forfunding its NSDI. Even though the new law, as well as the PSI Directive mightresult in the review of certain practices. A real pricing framework forcommercialising GI is not really in place.

Based on these conclusions we score the indicators asfollows:

·There is a legal instrument or framework determining the SDI-strategy or –development (Geodata Act to be approved by the parliament)

·There are true PPP’s or other co-financing mechanisms between public andprivate sector bodies with respect to the development and operation of the SDIrelated projects (partially)

·There is a freedom of information (FOI) act which contains specific FOIlegislation for the GI-sector (not scored)

· GIcan specifically be protected by copyright (not scored)

·Privacy laws are actively being taken into account by the holders of GI(Partially true)

·There is a framework or policy for sharing GI between public institutions (Yes)

·There are simplified and standardised licences for personal use (Yes)

· Thelong-term financial security of the SDI-initiative is secured (Yes)

·There is a pricing framework for trading, using and/or commercialising GI (No)