Edinburgh, 27 June – 1 July 2011

(By Katleen Janssen)

From the 27th of June until the 1st of July, the 5th edition of the INSPIRE conference took place in Edinburgh, Scotland. The theme of the conference was “INSPIREd by 2020 – Contributing to smart, sustainable and inclusive growth”.

During the conference, a lot of attention was given to open government data and its importance for the development of spatial data infrastructures, e-government and the information society. Open data was mentioned in each of the plenary sessions as a key element for the future!

While there were specific sessions on licensing and data policy issues, most countries also reported on their initiatives for licensing government geographic data in other sessions. The presentations can be found here.