Strategiczne aspekty tworzenia polskiej infrastruktury informacji przestrzennej

The Spatial Information Infrastructure (SII), known also as the Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI), is one of the most serious concerns of national and international bodies and professionals dealing with the geoinformation (GI). Following the experience of an international association Global Spatial Data Infrastructure (GSDI) - one can formulate some general recommendations for implementation of the Infrastructure. They relate to the creation of a common vision of the SII, definition of its status and the scope, GI knowledge dissemination, involvement of decision makers, financial support, private-public partnership and establishment and implementation of first components of the SII. Polish experience in this field dates back to 2001 when an inter-agency working group on geoinformation infrastructure started its activity. Last summer the Surveyor General of Poland asked the authors of the paper to prepare a feasibility study on establishing Polish Infrastructure for Spatial Information (PISI). Some ideas of the study are presented in this paper. The overall goal of the PISI is rationalization and improvement of the delivery and use of the geoinformation, which is essential for sustainable development of Poland and its regions in the period of establishing an information society. The PISI will encompass legal and technical regulations harmonized with the European directive INSPIRE, GI systems and databases of the Polish territory, computer networks and geoinformation technologies, organization structure, economic solutions as well as producers and users communities. In order to enable successful implementation of the PISI it is recommended to establish Spatial Information Infrastructure Council supervising, supporting and coordinating all activities in the field of GI cooperation in Poland. The Council should be supported by the Centre of the PISI . an operational unit implementing several initiatives and particular tasks leading to creation and successful operation of the PISI. A strategy of PISI development should be also elaborated in order to respond to the international initiatives (GSDI, INSPIRE, Geography Network) and fast technological progress. The strategy for the next 3.5 years should address: institutional structure and organisational arrangements of the PISI, standardisation activities, easy access to information, coordination programme and legal issues. The most important activities for the forthcoming years have been also presented in the paper. One of them is Polish Geoportal - an integrating tool enabling the user community to have free access to the GI resources dispersed in many institutions.