INSPIRE Maintenance and Implementation Group (MIG)

Draft Minutes of the Workshop on the INSPIRE registry and registers, Ispra, 22-23 January 2014

Title Draft Minutes of the Workshop on the INSPIRE registry and registers

Creator Michael Lutz

Creation Date 2014-01-27

Date of last revision 2014-02-05

Subject Workshop on the INSPIRE registry and registers

Publisher European Commission – Joint Research Centre

Type Text

Description Minutes of the Workshop on the INSPIRE registry and registers, Ispra, 22-23 January 2014

Contributor Robin S. Smith, Lorena Hernandez Quiros

Format Microsoft Word (docx)

Rights Public

Identifier http://inspire.ec.europa.eu/mif/miwp-6/mom/20140122-23

Language En

Workshop on the INSPIRE registry and registers

PrefaceThe document reports on participants’ presentations, group work and discussions during a two-day workshop to explore developments in registries across Europe, at national and European levels, and gain stakeholder input for the current and future developments of the open source Re3gistry software and its INSPIRE Registry instance that the EC Joint Research Centre are currently developing.

The creation of these tools is helping to manage codes for a range of interoperability tasks, including the references that aid the transformation of data into the INSPIRE data models, as well as opportunities to provide tools and reference codes for reuse in other organisations and, potentially, contributions for Linked Open Data across European public administrations. At the same time, interoperability is an issue for the exchange of details between registries, alongside the management of the content/items in the registers they contain, that needs wider discussion. The Agenda and details of the participants are available in Annexes 1 and 2, respectively, and provide further details of the topics covered in the workshop.

The remainder of this document is structured in two main parts. The first covers main topics uncovered in a selection of registries (at different geographical/governmental levels and thematic domains) to understand some common or/and specific requirements, including data flows and management issues. The second part reports on concrete requirements and features that workshop participants have indicated as potential enhancements for the development of the INSPIRE Registry and underlying Re3gistry software.

All the presentations from the workshop are available at https://ies-svn.jrc.ec.europa.eu/projects/inspire-registry/documents.

Actions from the meeting are summarised below.

Actions

No. What Who When Done

1 Draft minutes of the meeting JRC 31/01/2014 x

2 Upload workshop presentations JRC 27/01/2014 x

3 Share draft details of WP task in the MIF JRC 31/01/2014

4 Set up wiki and issue tracker JRC 15/02/2014

5 Call for participation in the MIG sub-group JRC Mid-end Feb

6 First Teleconference JRC 10/03/2014

7 Development roadmap (functionality and content) for the central INSPIRE registry

8 Schedule next conferences

9 Setting up initial testing instances JRC,DE,UK,SK Feb-Apr

10 Submission to INSPIRE Conference 14/03/2014

11 Explore the development of technical guidelines and best practices that explain how to build registries and how to link them to EU registry.

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1 Introductory presentationsThe first part of the workshop centred on giving an overview of the registries and registers implemented at different government levels. Firstly, the current version of the INSPIRE Registry was presented. This was followed by presentations from the EU Publication Office and the European Environment Agency, highlighting the ways they deal with registry related issues. Then Member State representatives outlined their experience and development plans for registries and the ways they were planning to link to the central INSPIRE Registry. More details of these presentations are outlined below.

1.1 INSPIRE RegistryMichael Lutz, Daniele Francioli and Emanuela Epure gave a presentation on the current version of the INSPIRE Re3gistry software and the service instance, the INSPIRE registry, including a live demo to show the interface, the recent features that have been added and what additional features are planned. The current INSPIRE Registry service1 (in Italian) is shown below (Fig. 1).

Figure1: Current version of the multilingual INSPIRE Registry (January 2014)

The underlying Re3gistry software that the INSPIRE Registry is built on is available on the ISA Programme’s Joinup platform2. This work is an important contribution of ISA Action 1.17, A Reusable INSPIRE Reference Platform (ARE3NA), which aims to identify and share reusable components for INSPIRE implementation while addressing in missing items in the infrastructure as open source software and guidelines that support implementation and build bridges with other, broadly speaking, cross-border/cross-sector e-government activities in Europe, including open data portals and the Europe 2020 flagship initiative, the Digital Agenda for Europe. More details on the underlying architecture and other technical details are available in the presentation. After the presentation, participants expressed their interest in the features supported and in cooperating in future developments. Interest also included if there are plans for an API to access and query the INSPIRE Registry content by machines (see Section 2.1.2, below).

1 http://inspire.ec.europa.eu/registry/2 https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/software/re3gistry/description

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1.2 European registries and registersTwo European organisations were invited to explain their experiences in registry and register management. Later, some comments on likely ways to promote interoperability for INSPIRE and across Europe institutions was discussed.

1.2.1 European Union Publications Office (EU OP)

Willem van Gemert, from the EU OP, the publishing house of the institutions and other bodies of the European Union, made a presentation on their Metadata Registry (MDR3). He showed the aims of its creation, the content included (metadata schemas, large list of authorities’ tables…), functionalities implemented, including a semantic technology approach, their workflow and finally he pointed out some work in progress and plans for future for the MDR, including coordination with the contents of the INSPIRE Registry and possible reuse of technology. Experiences and lessons from the governance of registers that the EU OP has been dealing with in recent years could be useful for work on the central INSPIRE Registry and registers/registries in the Member States.

1.2.2 Environment European Agency (EEA)

Søren Roug, from the EEA made a presentation on the way they manage registers in his organisation, which supports monitoring and reporting for a series of data flows related to environmental policy in Europe, including Member States reporting on progress in INSPIRE. He gave an overview of the scope and content of the registers they are maintaining and the EIONET Data vocabularies4, including technical information, its important relation to external content and workflows established to keep it updated. This included their work to create URIs for a range of registers that regularly harvest content from other sources, including items managed by Eurostat.

He outlined some requirements the (future) INSPIRE registry would need to support for the EEA to be able to synchronise the content automatically (as INSPIRE-related content is integrated in the EEA manually). In particular, a semantic approach for the INSPIRE Registry was seen as being useful (including the use of sparql endpoints and support RDF formats).

1.3 Member States experiences on registries and plans to link to the INSPIRE registryParticipants gave presentations on the development of registries at a national level and possible links with the central INSPIRE Registry. Presentations covered (planned) developments and experience in the topic and were made by Germany, France, the Netherlands, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, the UK, Sweden, Norway, Bulgaria and Italy. A PowerPoint template was circulated to participants to have a common frame to compare approaches. The themes covered by the presentations were:

Registry developments and plans Technical overview Connecting registries Future development of INSPIRE registry Pointers and additional information

Presentations in this session focussed on the first three points, with other details to support discussion in break out groups and for reference.

Participants had varying experience in registry development, with the presentations from France, Germany and the United Kingdom showing how varying reusable, proprietary and centralised approaches have been created and adopted. Other participants are currently developing their registries in a wider context, including work in Slovakia to support national data models and in Italy as part of wider e-government needs. Other countries are planning registry development and conceptual work (as seen in the Netherlands, along with their namespace registry) and the notion of reuse of current developments to manage nature protection code lists in Sweden. The open source choice for licencing was mentioned very often and is an important aspect in creating a reusable set of tools, which has influenced the approach for the Re3gistry software’s development.

3 http://publications.europa.eu/mdr 4 http://dd.eionet.europa.eu/vocabularies

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It was suggested that the registry architecture be flexible so that it can respond to different specific architectures (including a federated approach). Participants also sought the development of APIs to support different ways of accessing and using registry content in a standard way.

Potential obstacles were also discussed. This included the need for a system can handle persistent identifiers and the governance of updates and register workflows, including how updates should be done and the different roles that could be taken in register maintenance.

In addition to the Central INSPIRE registry meeting INSPIRE requirements work on this topic was also seen as beneficial to related domains in e-government and cross-border/sector interoperability and reuse. This includes high demand for material from INSPIRE to be made available in linked data formats, offering increased visibility of the INSPIRE registry’s contents to a wider audience and for the reuse of this content to be made easier, including beyond the spatial domain.

A matrix with the all the issues answered is offered in annex ***:

2 Improvement of the INSPIRE Registry

2.1 Break-out groups: How to extend central INSPIRE registers and how to connect national registers/extensions to the central INSPIRE registry

2.1.1 Break out groups formation

Participants formed three groups to discuss: Architecture & Governance, Exchange formats & APIs and Conceptual model for extensions. During the course of the discussion, the groups on “Architecture & gov-ernance” and “Conceptual model for extension” merged because of related topics.

The focus for each group’s discussion is outlined below.

Architecture & governance

• Should the central INSPIRE register imported/harvested/linked by national registers?• Should national registers be imported/harvested/linked by the central INSPIRE register? (“known ex-

tensions”)• What should searches in the central INSPIRE register return?• Who can register extensions with the central INSPIRE registry? How do extensions need to be ap-

proved?

Exchange formats & APIs

• How to exchange data between the central and national INSPIRE registries?• Is there a need to APIs? If so, which operations are needed?• What should be the exchange format (SKOS/RDF, ISO 19135 XML, others?)• Is there a need for register metadata?

Conceptual model for extensions

• How to represent extensions to another register?• Use the same or a different data model than for “normal” registers?• What type of extensions should be supported

o Additional itemso Code lists (narrower terms, additional values at any level, additional child code lists)o Additional translationso Additional attributes

• Others?

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• Identifiers for core and extensions

2.1.2 Group conclusions

Following discussion over the two days, several key issues where raised:

Architecture & governance + Conceptual model for extensions group

• Harvesting vs. declaring national or thematic registers/extensions in the central INSPIRE registryo Participants suggested that it is doubtful that the central registry would need to register extensions to

itemso Instead, it was recommended that countries participating in INSPIRE will need to have an official na-

tional registry that defines the official (legal) national extensions and which bodies/authorities are re -sponsible/involved. This should be discussed in national coordination structures.

• Need for a central registry of registers (including national and thematic registers)o Participants identified a need for technical guidelines for building registries as a first step in this con-

texto Technical Guidelines for URIs and namespace for registers and items was also discussedo Metadata to describe registers and registries was also a topic of interest, including INSPIRE

Metadata elements could be used and mappings defined for standards, such as the metadata used in the ISA programme to describe interoperability ‘assets’ using the Asset Description Metadata Schema (ADMS)

• Code list values and application schemas defined in the Technical Guidelines should also be included in the central INSPIRE registry. It was suggested that values from legal acts and those from Technical Guidelines (or other sources) would need to be identified

• Like national registries, it was also felt that thematic users will not add content to the central registry, in -stead preferring to manage their own registers and extensions

• Participants indicated that the initial focus for registry development should be for INSPIRE first but that the information and experience should be shared with the wider e-government and open data com-munities

• Developments were also seen as being timely, as the experience from the JRC and participants can help to illustrate good practices and share information about software developments towards further guid-ance, including as most Member States are likely to start developing registries in the near future.

Exchange formats and APIs groupThe need for APIs was outlined in presentation and discussion before the group was formed. A particular need for REST APIs was noted alongside proposals for functions related to access, validation, search and user management (workflow). Use cases and requirements, however, still need to be clarified, including how to separate proposals for new items from general discussion, how to update registers, how to access latest versions of registers and items, if it is necessary to mirror/federate registers to enhance performance or discovery.

It was noted that a detailed API would require a real design effort. The design should include, for example, establishing a precise list of operations, consistent URL patterns, a precise data model, specific exchange formats and status flags.

Participants suggested it would be preferable to focus on content rather than on metadata and that several formats should be provided (such as RDF, CSV, JSON (LD), XML ISO 19135-2) to enable access to registry content. To support using RDF, there was also a suggestion that other vocabularies should be explored as well as SKOS.

2.2 Additional features and content for the INSPIRE registry This session was introduced by a summary of the additional features proposed by participants. for details, see the participants’ presentations.

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Participants appreciated work to enhance the internal management of the INSPIRE registry (for example, the incremental update functionality the registry team are doing) but their main interest was in functionalities that would ease the connection between national and EU registries.

After discussing the new features and content that could be added, the workshop established the following plans for the work on registries:

Functionality

- Versioning of registry items- Search filters- RDF responses to http requests (SKOS properties, plus other RDF properties for anything that cannot be

expressed in SKOS). The serialisation(s) (RDF/XML, Turtle, JSON-LD) to be supported is still an issue for further discussion.

- Prioritise functionality that provides access to register content to both humans and machines. The management functions are less urgent, as well as there being a need for a minimum level of API to search the registry

- Offer additional formats: XML (ISO 19135)

Additional content in the INSPIRE registry

- First priority: code listso Include Technical guidelines’ code list values and application schemaso Inclusion of external code list values defined in the Implementing Rules (for information)

- Second priority: Feature Concept Dictionary and data models (application schemas)- Third priority:

o Additional attributes for application schemas (e.g. link to XSD)o The INSPIRE Glossary

2.3 Specific implementation issues

2.3.1 Versioning of register items & Persistent Identifiers

All participants highlighted versioning management as a crucial area for implementation, not just to be able to find the current version of an item easily or track any changes that have been produced (when needed), but also to build coherent software that can both handle and offer Persistent Identifiers (PIDs).

Two approaches for the versioning management of register items have been identified and discussed with the audience.

Firstly, if there is a change in an item’s property (for example its description), then this item would keep its identifier (URI) despite the change, but a new version of the item should be created. Secondly, a change that could imply the creation of a new item (with a new identifier) that supersedes the previous item, which is retired (or deprecated). In both cases, it is the choice of the register maintainer to distinguish which case he or she is facing and which approach may apply. The overall approach should be documented for each registry (or individual registers).

It was argued that it is also possible to handle the versioning by providing two different URIs, one that always leads to the current version (i.e. the content can change but the URI remains the same over time) and another that leads to the previous version(s). It was also suggested that different versions can also be distinguished by adding a publication date inside the URI so that the item history is easily traceable in the timeline.

Overall, participants also noted the need for an automatic change log and a means to provide comments that explain the reasons for any change, as these may not always be obvious to all users.

To see more details and examples on the approaches above mentioned go to the presentation.

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2.3.2 Translations of content

As outlined by the initial presentation, the interface of the INSPIRE Registry service is available in all official EU languages but not all the content is translated in all languages.

Participants were asked about the amount of content they felt should be translated for the central Registry. Responses varied, where some participants asked for translation to be integrated, as the registry is supposed to be used by many different stakeholders who may not understand English, while others asked that instead it may be more useful to use the available translation resources to translate the executive summaries of the INSPIRE data specifications.

It is doubtful that the European Commission Translation Service will translate all the INSPIRE Registry content. It is possible that some national organisations have already translated INSPIRE documents to help implement INSPIRE and a voluntary approach could allow this content to be submitted for reuse in the INSPIRE registry.

3 Discussion & ConclusionsThe workshop has been an important step in the development of the Re3gistry software and INSPIRE re -gistry service, allowing the development team to directly gather feedback and involve stakeholders more closely in the next steps of its development, while setting the scene for potential reuse of both tools and con -tent of relevance to the wider scope of ARE3NA to both aid INSPIRE implementation and create reusable tools and guidelines for use in other sectors. A notable outcome of the workshop is the decision to create a sub-group in the INSPIRE Maintenance and Implementation Group (MIG) to deal with registry and register-related issues and related themes. It was agreed that MIG representatives will ask registry experts (from the pool of experts and other interested parties) to participate in the sub-group.

The sub-group would have the following tasks:• Provide requirements and set priorities for the development of INSPIRE registry and underlying Re3-

gistry software• Test new releases of mainly the service (and possibly the software) and provide feedback• Help to develop Technical Guidelines and Best Practices for both registries and registers• Participate in technical discussions on implementation issues• Participate in test-bed development for connecting national registries to the central INSPIRE registry,

where Bulgaria, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Slovakia and the United Kingdom have already expressed an interest to participate

• Define metadata for registries and registers• Define procedures and decision-making rules for a control body for the INSPIRE Registry (with the

possibility to form a separate sub-group if needed)

The main outputs of the sub-group will be:• Roadmap for INSPIRE Registry development• Updated version of the central INSPIRE registry• Technical Guidelines on how to set up registries and registers for INSPIRE (including connecting to

the central INSPIRE registry), covering topics such as versioning, http URIs (while interacting with groups working on this topic elsewhere in the MIF)

• Testing instances of the INSPIRE registry deployed in different participants’ organisations

The participants also suggested several key stages in this work:• Present intermediate results (test-bed) at INSPIRE conference, e.g. in a workshop• Technical Guidelines will need more time • Detailed description of the tasks related to this work should be in the Maintenance and Implementa-

tion work programme by the end of January• A wiki and issue tracker should be set up by mid-February• A teleconference should be organised for early March• Initial test instances should be set up by the following groups by the proposed times

• JRC: mid-Feb• UK: TBD• DE: April/May

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• SK: mid-March• A paper should be submitted to the INSPIRE conference by the 14 March• Possible development of test scenarios by the end of April• Initial draft / proposal for TOC for Technical Guidelines, including:

• A discussion paper on the reuse of the Re3gistry and INSPIRE Registry Service instance (including reuse of content)

• Collect and define use cases (based on information shared via the wiki)• Work on the test-bed will provide input for how registers/registries can be connected

• Presentation / workshop at the INSPIRE Conference

Organisation• The facilitator for this work could be the UK or the JRC (TBD)• Regular teleconferences could be planned• An initial teleconferences should take place in early March.

Funding• The JRC will investigate possible funding sources for this work• If available, funding should be used for a technical facilitator and editor of the Technical Guidelines• All participants are requested to investigate synergies with on-going (research) projects

Other relevant events/activities

• Work on the Re3gistry/INSPIRE registry is due to be presented at the linking geospatial data work -shop: http://www.w3.org/2014/03/lgd/program

• The ISA programe’s SEMIC conference may be an opportunity to raise awareness about this work and the wider context of reusing elements to support other activities in Europe: https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/semic/event/semic-2014-semantic-interoperability-conference

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Annex 1: Agenda

Michael welcomed the participants, next they introduced themselves. Then, an overview of the issue to treat was done and finally the following agenda was approved:

Wednesday, 22 nd of January 2014

Building 36b, Room 2

*** ARRIVAL AND COFFEE *** 10:00 – 10:30

1. Welcome to JRC, introductions and overview of the workshop 10:30 – 11:00

2. Outline of the Re3gistry/INSPIRE Registry and recent requests for development from ISA SIS and the INSPIRE MIG 11:00 – 11:45

3. Overview of European registries and registers 11:45 – 12:30a. EU Publications Officeb. EEA

*** LUNCH *** 12:30 – 14:00

4. Overview of current developments of national registries and registers and requirements for connecting national registries to the central INSPIRE registry 14:00 – 16:00

a. Germanyb. Francec. Netherlandsd. Slovakiae. Czech Republicf. UKg. Swedenh. Norwayi. Bulgariaj. Italy

*** COFFEE BREAK *** 16:00 – 16:30

5. Break-out groups: How to extend central INSPIRE registers and how to connect national registers/extensions to the central INSPIRE registry 16:30 – 17:30

a. architecture & governanceb. exchange formatsc. conceptual model for extensions

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Thursday, 23 rd of January 2014

Building 36b, Room 2

6. Break-out groups: How to extend central INSPIRE registers and how to link national re-gisters/extensions to the central INSPIRE registry (continued) 9:00 – 10:00

7. Report from break-out groups and wrap up 10:00 – 10:30

*** COFFEE BREAK *** 10:30 – 11:00

8. Additional features and content for the INSPIRE registry 11:00 – 12:30

a. Summary of features/content identified by participantsb. Discussion on how to prioritise and address them

i. Items to be implemented within the Re3gistry softwareii. Items to be implemented within ARE3NA to aid interoperability across/between

registries iii. Items that are needed but that should be developed elsewhere to aid interoper-

ability between registries

*** LUNCH *** 12:30 – 14:00

9. Specific implementation issues 14:00 – 15:00

a. Versioning of register items & persistent identifiersb. Re-using INSPIRE registers for e-government and other sectors

*** COFFEE BREAK *** 15:00 – 15:30

10. Discussion & Conclusions 15:30 – 16:30

a. Setting up a Registers and registry MIG sub-groupb. INSPIRE Registry "sand pit"c. Future development of the Re3gistry once ARE3NA has ended d. Discussion about the role of registries in public/base registers and the reuse of (com-

mon) tools (including ISA)

11. Wrap-up and next steps

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Annex 2: List of participants

Name E-mail OrganisationAnders Foureaux Anders.Foureaux@naturvardsverket.se Swedish EPA

Dave Reynolds dave@epimorphics.com epimorphics

Alex Coley Alex.Coley@defra.gsi.gov.uk Defra, UK

Martin Tuchyna martin.tuchyna@sazp.sk Slovak environmental agency

Eliane Roos eliane.roos@ign.fr French Mapping Agency (IGN)

Paul Janssen p.janssen@geonovum.nl Geonovum, NL

Andreas von Dömming Andreas.vonDoemming@bkg.bund.de Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (BKG), DE

Marcus Walther Marcus.Walther@bkg.bund.de Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (BKG), DE

Rene Thiele rene.thiele@fb1.fh-frankfurt.de Fachhochschule Frankfurt, DE

Zhenya Valcheva z.valcheva@info-logica.com Infologica, BG

Antonio Rotundo antonio.rotundo@agid.gov.it Agenzia per l'Italia Digitale, IT

Marc Leobet Marc.Leobet@developpement-dur-able.gouv.fr

Ministry of Ecology, Sustainable Development and Energy, FR

Pavel Vanis Pavel.Vanis@cuzk.cz Czech Office for Surveying and Cadastre - Land Survey Office

Frederic Houbie frederic.houbie@geomatys.com Geomatys, FR

Henning Jensen henning@arkitektum.no Arkitektum AS / Norwegian Mapping Authority

Vanja Pajić vanja.pajic@gmail.com Croatian Institute of Public Health (HZJZ)

Søren Roug Soren.Roug@eea.europa.eu European Environment Agency

Willem van Gemert Willem.VAN-GEMERT@publication-s.europa.eu

EU Publications Office

Michael Lutz michael.lutz@jrc.ec.europa.eu Joint Research Centre (JRC)

Robin Smith robin.smith@ext.jrc.ec.europa.eu Joint Research Centre (JRC)

Andrea Perego andrea.perego@jrc.ec.europa.eu Joint Research Centre (JRC)

Emanuela Epure emanuela.epure@ext.jrc.ec.europa.eu Joint Research Centre (JRC)

Daniele Francioli daniele.francioli@ext.jrc.ec.europa.eu Joint Research Centre (JRC)

Chris Schubert chris.schubert@jrc.ec.europa.eu Joint Research Centre (JRC)

Lorena Hernandez Quiros

lorena.hernandez@jrc.ec.europa.eu Joint Research Centre (JRC)

Dragan Divjak dragan.divjak@ext.jrc.ec.europa.eu Joint Research Centre (JRC)

Anders Friis-Christensen anders.friis@jrc.ec.europa.eu Joint Research Centre (JRC)

Vanda Nunes de Lima vanda.lima@jrc.ec.europa.eu Joint Research Centre (JRC)

Vlado Cetl vlado.cetl@jrc.ec.europa.eu Joint Research Centre (JRC)

Andrej Abramic andrej.abramic@jrc.ec.europa.eu Joint Research Centre (JRC)

Jiri Hradec jiri.hradec@ext.jrc.ec.europa.eu Joint Research Centre (JRC)

Chrysi Tsinaraki Chrysi.Tsinaraki@jrc.ec.europa.eu Joint Research Centre (JRC)

Alex Kotsev alexander.kotsev@jrc.ec.europa.eu Joint Research Centre (JRC)

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