Serbia: Draft NSDI law reviewed during IMPULS project workshop
The President of the Council of the National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) and Director of the Republic Geodetic Authority (RGA), Borko Drašković, opened a national workshop on 23 March 2016 which was organized as part of Work Package 2 of the IMPULS project concerning "data exchange policy and regulation." Drašković emphasized the importance of both the "open data" initiative for the development of NSDI in Serbia and the connection to other SDI efforts at the European level.
Experts and authors of Serbia's draft law on National Spatial Data Infrastructure presented the challenges and obstacles that they encountered. Colleagues from both Sweden and Croatia shared their experience regarding the transposition of the INSPIRE directive into their national legislation.
Representatives from the RGA also presented the outstanding issues they are encountering as the INSPIRE Directive is fully incorporated into Serbian national legislation. These issues primarily relate to the financing of the NSDI, pricing policy, and provision of free data sets and services.
Further development of NSDI in Serbia is being supported through the World Bank project, "Improvement of land administration in Serbia." The project funds will finance the development of national geospatial capacity, which will allow spatial data held by different state institutions and public companies to be easily connected and shared through the Internet, and data sources, connected to each other, will be readily accessible to end users.
In addition to representatives of the RGA, the national workshop was attended by the members of the Council of the NSDI and the members of the working group on the legal framework, technical framework and cooperation.
