Royal Decree 1545/2007, dated 23rd of November, regulating the National Cartographic System.
The Law 7/1986, dated 24th of January, for the Regulation of Cartography, regulates the framework within which official cartographic activity has been carried out in Spain. Its greatest success has been its contribution to the effective development of cartography by the corresponding Public Administrations, although the system designed has not been able to avoid (in some cases) a duplication of public expense and effort in this area. For this basic reason, it was decided that there was a need to establish a National Cartographic System which -- according to the provisions of the Law and based on the Constitutional Court Ruling 76/1984, dated 29th of June -– should be a rational, operative system within a collaborative and efficient framework that encourages cartographic activity as a common ground for the economic and social development which is the aim of all of the Spanish Public Administrations for their citizens and territories.
Cartographic production, being an activity based on objective data which reflects the basic reality represented by land itself, does not allow for the kinds of discussion typical in more speculative disciplines. For this reason, it is sufficient to agree on representative cartographic criteria so that any agent can interchangeably use either its own cartographic productions or those of another agent, provided that the productions are based on the same criteria. This immediate capacity for collaboration – once the method to be applied has been standardised in accordance with the European Union models – permits significant savings in terms of effort and public expense, and facilitates a correctly designed regulation of the National Cartographic System, due to the shared responsibility of its members and to the establishment of security clauses that ensure freedom of action within the System. This double guarantee of voluntary submission to the System (while maintaining an autonomous ability to separate from it) and of the System´s extensive use, is the basis for the National Cartographic System --designed according to the provisions of Law 7/1986 --and for its management by the various Public Administrations.
But this double guarantee is not enough to guarantee the necessary efficiency and transparency of the System, which therefore includes some mechanisms to ensure that its principles remain objective and public and that their application is easy and flexible.
Thus, the National Cartographic System, which is defined and regulated by the present Royal Decree, constitutes the mandatory framework for any actions related to cartography by the General Administration of the State and by any other Public Administrations that may voluntarily adopt it as a model for cooperative action in the general interest, while safeguarding and maintaining the established distribution of responsibilities. However, this model cannot be regarded as a formula that removes responsibilities from any Administration in its particular area of operation; nor does it give any Administration the ability to add new responsibilities. It is the result of a standard established by a Royal Decree of the National Government which defines, according to the principle of cooperation among the Administrations, a framework guaranteeing the participation of all entities involved in decisions, given that the current system for the distribution of competencies promotes joint action on the part of the Public Administrations. The development of this regulation (which required three years of work toward a full consensus) follows the doctrine expressed so many times by the Constitutional Court -- for instance, in its Ruling 68/1996, dated 4th of April. In the same vein, it is important to recognize the exceptional nature of this policy, which, in keeping with Law 7/1986, is used as tool to develop the regulation of all essential aspects of this subject, which, due to their distinctly technical nature, have been agreed upon by the different Administrations.
To this end, the Royal Decree includes the description of this cooperative framework for action, and regulates the essential instruments created by the aforementioned Law 7/1986, reviewing and completing the contents of the Royal Decree 2039/1994, dated 17th of October, which approves the Regulations governing the Legal Regime and Working System of the Central Cartography Registry, as well as the contents of the Royal Decree 1792/1999, dated 26th of November, which regulates the composition and operation of the High Geographic Council, and developing the provisions in Art. 8 of the Law related to the National Cartographic Plan. Similarly, in keeping with the regulatory provisions, and responding to the need to guarantee the availability, dependability, and accessability of geographical data, it defines and regulates the National Infrastructure for Geographic information and allocates the various responsibilities for organising it.
Specifically, with the objective of updating the role of the High Geographic Council and adapting it to the operative reality of the National Cartographic System as well as ensuring its full efficiency as a National Geographic Authority, its capacities will include setting the requirements and technical specifications or criteria for accreditation that should fulfilled by the official cartographic production. Additionally, it will contribute to defining and encouraging the development of a National Infrastructure of Geographic Information; it will be in charge of authorising productions outside of those assigned by the National Cartographic System and whose regulation is established by this Royal Decree; it will have, among its capacities, power of arbitration in possible conflicts between the parties within the System, and it will foster the dissemination of the official standard toponymy. Finally, a Territorial Commission will be created, with the participation of the Autonomous Regional Governments, which will have an executive representation in governing the System, while the Technical Secretariat will provide the guarantee and technical support required for the efficient running of the Council as an organisation in an eminent position within the Cartographic System.
Furthermore, after sufficent time has passed since the first regulation of the Central Cartography Registry and taking into account the development of official cartographic production and information technology (particularly geographic information systems), it establishes that a new regulation of the Central Cartographic Registry should take place to guarantee a more up-to-date and suitable administration and with the additional goal of strengthening the cooperation and coordination among the different Public Administrations within the National Cartographic System.
Additionally, it designs the mechanisms which will make it possible to achieve the full efficiency of the System, both in terms of planning and in the production of official cartography, adopting a certain distribution which reflects the responsibilities of the agents involved and guarantees a true collaboration among them.
This Decree develops the contents of Article 8 of Law 7/1986, which provides for the development of a National Cartographic Plan and entrusts the High Geographic Council with coordination of the plans and cartographic production programmes of every Public Administration. To this end, the National Cartographic System has been analysed to determine those functions necessary for the elaboration, tracking, and evaluation of the Plan and to ensure the coordination among Plans as well as the collaboration and cooperation of public agents, with the necessary exceptions, all with the aim of achieving a system of optimal efficiency.
The minimum standards for the creation, operation and maintenance of a National Infrastructure of Geographic Information have been established with the objective of developing the ambitious idea contained in the Law’s Temporary Provision. However, in spite of the precise detail in which this idea is described, it has not yet been possible to achieve it due to the lack of either an appropriate instrument or the necessary technology. Today, the technology finally exists, and the idea should be fine-tuned and developed without further delay to guarantee that it is applied to full advantage.
Finally, the text includes specific provisions for the cartographers of the General Administration of the State, with the sole aim of guaranteeing an efficient use of public funds in this area and ensuring a coherence in the efforts of all involved agents under the direction of the National Government.
The process of preparing this Royal Decree involved the Regional Governments and the High Geographic Council, the latter issuing a favourable report in the meeting held on the 17th of May, 2007.
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ETRS89: A new official geodesic reference system for Spain.
The purpose of this Royal Decree is the adoption in Spain of the global geodesic reference system ETRS89 -- replacing the geodesic regional system ED50 currently being used for official cartography in the Iberian Peninsula and Balearic Islands, and the REGCAN95 system currently being used in the Canary Islands -- to permit a complete integration of official Spanish cartography with the navigation systems and cartography of other European countries. At the same time and in the same vein, the Decree also establishes the adoption of the coordinate representation systems that should be used to collect and publish official cartography and geographical information in accordance with its features.
This Royal Decree is issued under the scope of the provisions of Article 149.1.13.ª of the Constitution, which gives jurisdiction to the State over the basis and coordination of the general planning of economic activity. The Constitutional Court policy endorses the existence of national standards which should guarantee the use of a single technology and its coordination, and also that the scope of this standard is, by way of exception, considered sufficient given its markedly technical nature.
The process of preparing this Royal Decree included the Regional Governments and the High Geographic Council, the latter issuing a favourable report in the meeting held on the 17th of May, 2007.
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Law 37/2007, dated 16th of November, on the reuse of information from the public sector.
The information generated by the public sector, enhanced by the development of the Information Society, is of great interest for businesses when operating in their various spheres of activity and contributing to economic growth and job creation, and to citizens as an element of transparency and a guide for democratic participation. The European Parliament and Council Directive 2003/98/EC, dated 17th of November, pertaining to the reuse of public sector information, reflects both visions and was adopted with a view to exploiting the information potential of the public sector and overcoming the barriers of a fragmented European market, establishing homogeneous criteria based on fair, proportionate and non-discriminatory conditions for the treatment of information that could be reused by private individuals or legal entities.
The various Administrations and entities in the public sector collect, produce, reproduce and disseminate documents in order to carry out the public service mission that has been entrusted to them. As is expressed in the Directive 2003/98/EC, the use of these documents for other ends, whether commercial or non-commercial, constitutes reuse. On the one hand, there is an attempt to coordinate the exploitation of public sector information -- in particular, that collected on digital media by different entities associated with a variety of interest areas (such social, economic, legal, geographic, meteorogoical, or tourist information, information on companies, patents, and education, etc.) -- with the following objectives: to facilitate the creation of information products and services based on public sector documents; and to strengthen the efficiency of the cross-border use of these documents in order that citizens and companies will offer value-added information products and services. On the other hand, the public availability of all documents in the public sector that refer not only to political procedures, but also to judicial, economic, and administrative ones, is an essential tool for the development of the right to knowledge, which is a basic principle of democracy.
These are the objectives pursued by the current Law, which -- by means of incorporating the Directive 2003/98/EC into our legal system and taking as the starting point the varied treatment that the Administrations and entities in the public sector have made of the exploitation of the information -- provides a minimum general framework for the conditions for reuse of public sector documents, while taking into account the different approaches that might be adopted based on the heterogeneity of the information itself. Consequently, the Law provides that it should be the Administrations and entities in the public sector which decide whether to authorise the reutilisation of the documents or categories of documents which they have kept for commercial or non-commercial ends. Similarly, it promotes making the documents available through electronic media, fostering the development of the Information Society.
The law has very specific boundaries which separate it from the general system of access anticipated by Article 105 b) of the Spanish Constitution and its legislative development, essentially represented by the Law 30/1992, dated 26th of November, for the Regulation of the Public Administrations and of General Administrative Procedures. It is therefore necessary to specify that it does not modify the system of access to administrative documents established in our legal system; rather, it adds value to the right of access, taking into account the basic regulatory framework for the exploitation of information controlled by the public sector in the context of free competition, and regulating the minimum conditions which should protect a second level of management of the information generated in the public sector.
Title I of the law anticipates the subjective scope of application, which includes the Administrations and entities in the public sector as defined in Article 2, in accordance with the boundaries established in the standards for public sector contracts. From the point of view of its objective application, the law contemplates a generic definition of the term “document” that is consistent with the evolution of the Information Society, encompassing all of the different ways of presenting acts, facts and information as well as any collection of these, regardless of the media (e.g. written on paper, electronically stored or recorded on audio, video or audiovisual media), which is kept by the Administrations and entities in the public sector, and includes a negative delimitation of application, listing those documents and categories of documents that are not affected by the law based on various criteria. Here, it is important to point out that the Law does not apply to those documents protected by intellectual or industrial property rights (such as patents, designs and trademarks), especially on the part of third parties. For purposes of this Law, copyrights and related rights are understood as intellectual property rights, including sui géneris protection. In this respect, the Law neither affects the existence of intellectual property rights belonging to the Administrations and public entities, nor in any way restricts the exercise of such rights outside the limits established in its articles. The obligations imposed by this law should only be applied to the extent that they are compatible with the provisions of the international agreements on the protection of intellectual property rights; in particular, the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works and the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement). Nonetheless, the public authorities must exercise their copyrights in a way that facilitates reuse.
Title II provides for basic aspects of the legal reuse system, stating that Administrations and entities in the public sector will be able to choose between allowing reuse without any particular conditions or issuing a license which will impose upon the holder a series of conditions for reuse -- conditions which should, in all cases, be clear and fair, non-discriminatory among comparable reuse categories and which should follow the principles of free competition and public service.
To this end, the use of standard licenses which can be made available via electronic media appears as a key element. On the other hand, the expectation is that the different Administrations and entities will communicate which documentation is available for reuse by publishing online lists and indexes of available documents, with the goal of promoting and facilitating petitions for reuse. In order to increase the possibilities of reuse, the Administrations and public sector entities should find ways to offer the documents via electronic media in the original formats or languages.
The reuse system guarantees full respect for the principles that protect personal data in the terms established in the Organic Law 15/1999, dated 13th of December, on Protection of Personal Data and its implementing regulations.
At the same time, the Administrations and entities in the public sector must adapt to the rules of competition, avoiding exclusive agreements. Nonetheless, the law allows for an exception to this principle when, with a view to providing a service of general economic interest, it could prove necessary to concede an exclusive right to the reuse of specific public sector documents.
Similarly, the law provides the principles applicable to those cases in which the Administrations and entities demand financial compensation for allowing the reuse of documents for commercial ends. In such cases, the financial compensation should be of a reasonable amount and related to the cost, and the total income obtained should not exceed the total costs of gathering, producing, reproducing, and distributing the documents.
In Title II, some aspects of the reuse of the information are stipulated, anticipating the possible conditions to be applied to the reuse which might arise from questions such as the correct use of the documents, the guarantee that they will not be modified, and referencing of the source. Some minimum content for the licenses is also indicated.
In Title III, the law establishes the procedure for arbitrating the requests for reuse, in which the timeframe for resolution is especially relevant, an essential aspect for the dynamic content of the information, the economic value of which depends on its immediate availability and regular updating. It also guarantees that within the resolutions adopted, there should be an indication of the means at the applicants´ disposal to appeal any decisions affecting them.
Finally, a system of penalities is established for the General Administration of the State in connection with the improper use of any information of which the reuse has been authorised.
The present law is considered basic legislation, within the scope provided for in Article 149.1.18ª of the Constitution. Article 11 and Sections 1 (second and third paragraphs), 3 and 8 of Article 10 are excepted.
For the preparation of this law, information has been used from the report of the Spanish Data Protection Agency.
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Public dissemination policy for the information generated by the National Geographic Institute.
The Directorate-General of the National Geographic Institute, hereinafter IGN, in order to carry out the public service mission with which it has been entrusted, generates and maintains a large volume of geographical information. An especially notable part of this information is the data reflected in the national cartographic series and bases, in aerial orthophotography and satellite orthoimages, and in aerial photograms as initial documents documents in the process of orthophotography and of cartographic production and updating. These digital-format sets constitute the bulk of the geographical information available for the complete and continuous reference of all of Spain.
The dissemination, distribution and marketing -- when applicable -- of these products is the responsibility of the National Centre for Geographic Information (hereinafter CNIG), an Autonomous Agency created by Article 122 of Law 37/1988 and regulated by its own Bylaws, approved by Royal Decree 663/2007, dated 25th of May. Although there has always been demand for this geographical information on the part of Spanish society, this demand has recently been growing dramatically, driven on the one hand by the needs of the Ministery of Public Works and the General Administration of the State, and on the other hand by the requirements of the Regional Governments and Local Entities, as well as universities, research bodies, private and public companies, and private users in general. This increase in demand, combined with the wide availability of geographical data and the development of the techniques offered by the Society of Knowledge, defines a new model for the exploitation of geographic information which allows for dramatically reducing individual costs.
These are some of the objective grounds that have led the Council of Ministers to approve, by means of the Royal Decree 1545/2007, dated 23rd of November, the creation of the National Cartographic System. In this Decree, the Ministry of Public Works is entrusted with the proposal of a National Cartographic Plan, which should include “a data policy applicable to the dissemination and accessibility of geographic information”, as well as the preparation of a Ministerial Order to establish “the public prices to obtain or gain access to the official cartographic products and services”, considering that “within the scope of the General State Administration, a policy will be fostered of free dissemination of official cartographic products” and the CNIG will be entrusted with its dissemination and marketing.
Furthermore, the recently approved Directive 2007/2/CE, which establishes a spatial information infrastructure in the European Union (INSPIRE), states in its Preamble that the Member States’ spatial information infrastructures should be conceived in a way that guarantees the storage, availability and maintenance of spatial data at the most appropriate level of detail; that it should be possible to combine coherently spatial data from different sources anywhere in the European Union, and that the data should be compatible for different users and applications; that the spatial data collected at a certain level of public authority should be shared with other public authorities; that the spatial data may be disseminated under conditions that should not unnecessarily restrict its general use; that it should be possible to locate the available spatial data, assess its appropriateness for a certain purpose, and learn the conditions for its use; all without prejudice to the existence of intellectual property rights or the possession of these rights by the public authorities.
In addition, the Directive establishes the requirement that a series of free services be offered to the public, such as the location and display of spatial data.
A new paradigm thus becomes apparent, based on the cooperative, decentralised action of separate agents, which in order to function requires the maximum ease of access and use of geographical data. In addition, the Law 27/2006, dated 18th of July, regulating the rights of access to information, public participation, and access to justice in environmental matters, which transfers the Directives 003/4/CE and 2003/35/CE and incorporates them into our legal system, also guarantees and protects the right of citizens to access environmental information. As this is information related to geography, the cartographic bases for its presentation should facilitate its access and use. The Directive 2003/98/EC, dated 17th of November, on the reuse of information from the public sector (incorporated into the Spanish legal system through the Law 37/2007, dated 16th of November) also recognises the importance of digital content in the evolution of the Information Society, establishing a general framework for harmonisation at European Union level which facilitates the general dissemination of the information generated by the Public Administrations, including geographic information. Similarly, the General Plan for Official Publications of the General Administration of the State, approved by an Agreement of the Council of Ministers on 18th of January, 2008, sets as one of its main objectives the dissemination of cartography. For all these reasons, and with the aim of adapting the processes of dissemination, distribution, and marketing of the geospacial information generated by the National Geographic Institute to meet the objectives of the aforementioned regulations, it has become necessary to establish a regulatory framework for its data policy, according to the report of the Higher Geographic Council´s Permanent Commission.
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