Internet portals and geoportals are indispensable elements of information systems created to satisfy public information needs. Local governments face particular challenge in this context. City of Częstochowa has a great tourist potential. The city council took initiative to create Municipal Tourist Information System (MSIT). Its geoportal is available in Internet and in 50 info kiosks. The system includes an information database for tourists and pilgrims. The city council cooperates with local businesses providing services to the tourists (e.g. restaurants, hotels) to keep the database up-todate. This paper presents the technical architecture of the solution as well as the process of system implementation, including formal, legal and financial aspects. Usefulness of geoportal and its relation to INSPIRE is discussed.
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The paper presents major trends recently observed in the area of development of the GIS technology and applications of geoinformation (GI) in local Polish administration. The paper also discusses obstacles to these developments. In the beginning, the paper discusses overall importance of GI in land management by local administration. Against this background, directions of GIS development and current applications of GI in Poland and in the world are presented. The authors suggest that the following four interlinked trends are most important: m Moving from isolated geoinformation .islands. raising problems in access to GI to local government GI infrastructure providing unrestrained access to the whole GI necessary for local society and administration. m Strategy for moving from GI islands to GI infrastructure usually involves introduction of standards (e.g. XML/GML) and technology and components (e.g. data warehouses) integrating existing GIS systems and databases. m Traditional specialist GIS technology is replaced by modern IT based on Internet, Web Services, object-oriented methodologies and standard tools for development of IT applications plus tools for GI processing. m The most visible and popular manifestation of current changes involves development of .WebGIS . represented by Geoportals often integrated with data warehouses and metadata catalogues replacing traditional desktop GIS in many application areas. The final part of the paper discusses development directions of practical implementations of GI involving systems providing GI access and processing for public administration and for the society and business. It is unfortunate that these developments are faced by many problems. The most critical of them involves obstacles in access to GI administered by geodetic public service. These obstacles include, between others, extremely high prices for GI data and application of discretionary procedures for making data available or rather unavailable. We can see how harmful this policy could be not only for local administration but also for other GI users on the examples of implementation of .WebGIS. technology and Geoportals for the needs of business and the society in general. In this area of GI applications one can notice a clear trend of moving away from the use of geodetic data as the reference layer of Geoportals in the result of the above mentioned problems. This trend is particularly visible in many recent tenders for various Portals and Geoportals for the local government. The tender organizers frequently require the tenderers to provide maps and other forms of GI for the Geoportal instead of providing them themselves from the official geodetic centres. This results more and more often in low quality data from doubtful sources and in difficulties in data maintenance. Such a situation raises many other problems adversely affecting development of GI applications in Poland. In the authors. opinion only resolute legislative initiatives regarding development of GI infrastructure in Poland, and specifically conditions for implementation of the EU Directives on INSPIRE and Re-use of PSI may facilitate development of national spatial information infrastructure in Poland.
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Paper discusses issues related to the initiatives directed at development of regional spatial information systems in Poland. Such systems should be considered as components of future spatial information infrastructure (SII) at the regional (voivodeship) or regional and local (district, municipality) levels. In particular, the paper describes experience gained during development of similar infrastructures in Silesian and Western Pomeranian Voivodships resulting in two systems:. Regional Spatial Information System in Silesian Voivodeship, called RSIP, and .- Regional Spatial Information System in Western Pomeranian Voivodeship, called ZSIP. Data describing geographical space are registered in various independent databases managed by many different agencies and institutions. Access to this information by potential users, which should be complementary and integrated, requires co-operation of many institutions and their resources. However attempts at such integration and access are being met with many problems of legal, organizational and technical nature. Some of these problems are extremely difficult to overcome. This notwithstanding, development of widely understood spatial information infrastructure (SII) cannot be stopped as such infrastructure (SII) is required for the economic growth of a country to the same extent as the road or telecommunication infrastructure. Exceptional importance of undertaking such challenges is being continuously confirmed by the EU initiatives in the area of SII and in particular by such programs as e-Europe and INSPIRE. The paper presents models for the system architecture and functioning of both Silesian RSIP and Western Pomeranian ZSIP and briefly describes their assumptions and implemented tasks. Practical examples of results produced by both systems were used to describe methods of integration of data originating from many sources. The paper also describes data collected and loaded into both systems as well as the institutions being data custodians. Problems related to integration of spatial data and potential benefits of accessing many databases storing spatial information. The paper ends with a summary of practical experience gained during development of regional spatial information systems in Poland. Where it was proper and based on experience, some recommendations for development of similar future systems has been offered. Conclusions and recommendations for further development of regional spatial information systems aimed at becoming components of SII in Poland, presented in the paper, have been divided into five categories related to five basic requirements formulated in a draft EU Directive for INSPIRE.