Georegisters for a digital Switzerland
Federal Office of Topography swisstopo
Through the ‘Georegisters’ project, Swiss authorities collaborate to establish and deliver high-quality fundamental geodata in a sustainable fashion. Georeference data provides data for themes which are a fundamental requirement in supporting administrative tasks and meeting the evolving needs of an increasingly digital society.
Fridolin Wicki, Director, Federal Office of Topography swisstopo.
The ‘Georegisters’ project is a collaboration between Swiss authorities at different federal levels. In addition to drafting the future georeference data, they have defined the necessary organisational and legal provisions to support the production and distribution that creates added value.
Inspired by the EU High-Value Datasets and the UN-GGIM standard, swisstopo together with representatives of various national, cantonal and municipal administrative bodies drew up an in-depth concept study based on UN-GGIM’s 14 Global Fundamental Geospatial Data Themes. The goal was to identify gaps in the current provision of authoritative geodata to define the required characteristics of the future georeference data and draft appropriate structure and governance mechanisms.
The concept study was finalised with feedback and insights from numerous stakeholders collected in a broad specialist consultation of the geoinformation sector.
Starting with the initial concept, an expert working group drafted amendments to the relevant legal provisions to the Swiss Geospatial Information Act, which are currently being finalised and will be incorporated into the Swiss legislative process in the near future.
Benefits
- Full national coverage – The future georeference datasets will be complete for Swiss territory with no gaps in authoritative data on crucial themes.
- Always up to date – The future georeference datasets will always contain the latest data available to authorities so there will be no uncertainty about where the latest data is located.
- Defined and uniform quality –The quality of the future georeference datasets will be verified and documented in uniform quality, particularly regarding semantics, geometry, topology, and currency. This will provide certainty about the quality of the data and no need for downstream data quality checks.
- One easy point of entry – The future georeference datasets will be accessible from one central portal for both humans and machines, regardless of where the data is sourced from and hosted so there will be no confusion about where to obtain the data and no inefficient searching.
- Identifiers and linkability – The future georeference datasets will feature object-level nationally unique and stable identifiers enabling data linkage providing traceability at the object level for reliable combination of datasets.
- Usage and user-orientation – The future georeference datasets will adhere to data models defined involving broad user groups. These will follow best practice and will be designed to optimise the cost-to-benefit ratio for maximum added value for authorities and society.
- Leadership of Confederation and cantons – The future georeference datasets will be authoritative data produced by the Swiss Confederation and/or cantons (or their respective mandated parties) which are trusted and competent entities.