Geographic Information System in Baltic Sea Environmental Cooperation
 

GIS in practice - present state of adoption and purpose of use in the organization

When was the Environmental Administration formed and how is it organized?

-What is the role of the Local Administration?

-Who co-ordinates? Who executes?

In what purpose is GIS being used?

What hardware and software have been used? (How many licences?)

How many employees does the organization have? How many of them use GIS?

-What is their educational background and task in organization? (Average age? Recruitment and public sector as career option?)
 

Implementing and adopting GIS

When was the GIS implemented?

-Has it replaced work requiring processes? Decreased and eased work?

-Has the adopting phase increased work and made tasks more difficult to execute temporarily?

-Have the workers found the GIS convenient in use?

-How has the organization as a whole responded to GIS? Has it legitimized its role as a means of decision making? How has GIS spread within the organization?

-Free access to information as a post-communist phenomena. (Communist heritage - maps, exact and valid information)

-Has implementation of GIS overemphasized the role of experts?

How have the requirements and possibilities of Information Technology been taken into account in the forming of Environmental Administration?

-Is it a part of Estonian Information Society strategy?

-Is the implementation of GIS being co-ordinated by someone?

-Is the legislation up to date? (Copyright law, Acknowledgement of digital maps)

-Has the adopting of new technology advanced the administration?
 

GIS in Baltic Sea context

How suitable is GIS for monitoring Baltic Sea? Has GIS been used in this purpose?

-What special requirements or problems does the environment set for GIS? (Taking samples, monitoring the environment)

What sort of data is being produced on Baltic Sea?

-Where does the initiative come from?

-Does someone else use the same data (any interest or demand)?

-Is the data being seen as Public Domain?

-How are the production costs being covered?

Is there an exchange of data between organizations?

-From whom, what and why?

-What is the copyright law on developing data made by others?

-How do you receive information about the GIS-data that is being produced by someone else?

How wide spread is the exchange of data in Public Administration?

-What could be gained by it? Have any problems occurred (price, copyright, quality, compatibility, transfer, format)?

-Should the exchange be improved? By whom and how?
 

GIS related international cooperation in the Baltic Sea Drainage Basin area

Have you taken part in international cooperation?

-EU projects? Bilateral projects? Others?

-Are you aware of international projects related to GIS in the Baltic Sea Area (Grid, EU)? Could your organization benefit from these?

-What problems might be related? (Map projections, unequal development, variety of actors)

-How would you see the role of EU and the possible membership of the Baltic countries?