The Federal Ministries GIS concept 2020

Logo Digitalisierung

Within the competence of the Federal Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, Regions and Water Management Geographical Information and Systems (GIS) are not only processed, analysed and made available to the broad public in an adequate form, but sometimes also collected.

The coordinated use of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) in all forms and parts (software and hardware, geodata) is essential for this purpose.

Every day a large number of employees of the Federal Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, Regions and Water Management and its agencies and associations work with large amounts of spatial data of most different type and contents. Within the Federal Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, Regions and Water Management, GIS coordination is the responsibility of Directorate II/1. 

Efficient implementation of the large scope of coordination activities requires specific guidelines, which are laid down in the Ministry’s GIS concept in a regular cycle. This was last done in 2016. The concept serves theFederal Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, Regions and Water Management as a tool to meet the requirements set out in the INSPIRE Directive of the EU (establishing an Infrastructure for Spatial Information in the European Community) and to describe the operative implementation until 2025.

Key elements in the implementation of the central spatial data infrastructure (SDI) include: 

  • Provision of a central INSPIRE-compliant SDI for optimised resource use in the context of data storage and/or INSPIRE-compliant network services
  • Ensuring the timeliness of the data through standardised processes of central procurement, storage, management, and provision. Likewise, comprehensive synergies can be used, especially in the fields of IT processes, data backup, provision and the like.
  • Active communication on the part of the GIS coordination at the Ministry in coordination with the geodata providers of the Ministry and its agencies for the assessment of needs to the central geodata infrastructure.
  • Focussing on user-oriented handling, public administration is to become simpler and more efficient. Digitisation is an interdisciplinary subject which has to be addressed and advanced actively.  If necessary, regulatory issues must be fully clarified, necessary infrastructure has to be created, and priorities must be defined. The GIS of the Ministry fits in perfectly with the principles of the Austrian digitisation strategy. Basically, it can even be called the motor of digitisation. The disciplines of the geographical information systems are pioneers for a large variety of most different new processes in the IT sector, such as big data or pattern recognition using artificial intelligence (AI).