Beneficial impact of INSPIRE directive on national legislation: the case of Poland

The transposition of the INSPIRE Directive in Poland is carried through a separate SII Act together with the amendments of some related acts and regulations concerning the spatial data resources already existing in Polish legislation. The spatial data resources which constitute the Polish spatial information infrastructure are dispersed among various institutions responsible for development, maintenance and dissemination of these data. For the effective establishing of the infrastructure it is essential to concern the proper organization ensuring collaboration of interested authorities. New solutions introduced in the Polish law enable fulfilling this crucial condition for successful implementation of the Directive. Legal provisions secure the governmental bodies with tools for monitoring the process of creation and development of the infrastructure. Moreover the public institutions responsible for the implementation become engaged in operational management and planning of the process. Transposition of the INSPIRE Directive in Poland, gives an opportunity for comprehensive revision of the national data resources, technical standards, data flow and procedures of updating. As a result number of technical regulations were prepared in order to reorganize the system of conducting the public registers, especially in the field on geodesy and cartography. The new strategy for implementing this system includes the legal, financial and organizational issues. Moreover, in accordance to the governmental strategy for building the information society, INSPIRE constitutes a coherent SDI module of this interdisciplinary infrastructure and sustains its harmonized development. As a part of mentioned above strategy further modernization of administration systems is foreseen. The paper presents the Polish approach to the implementation of national spatial information infrastructure with the emphasis on the legal and organizational solutions and their influence on the development of public administration systems.