The basic registers are national information systems that identify the basic units of society. These basic units include natural persons, corporations, buildings including dwellings, and real estate units. The basic registers contain information on those properties and relationships of the basic units of society that are of vital importance for individuals or society. Each register describes the state of the basic unit, as well as the events that have caused changes in its state.

The characteristics of the basic registers include broad coverage, reliability, versatility, and data protection. Another characteristic is that they have been prescribed by law or statute. Broad coverage and reliability are quality properties of the basic registers. Broad coverage means that all basic units in accordance with the definition are entered into the register and also given an official identifier. The reliability results from the authorities’ responsibility to maintain the basic registers. The data is usually collected from those being registered, from their representatives, or from the appropriate authorities, and is subject to a rectifying procedure.

The versatility and data protection relate to the rationality of the systems. According to the principle of versatility, all data should be collected only once, after which it can be used via the information service by other authorities and by those who need the information. Data protection means that the access to and delivery of data are strictly regulated.

The basic registers met by the above criteria are the Personal Information System, the Company Information System, the Real Estate Information System, and the Building Information System.

Unregulated use of information systems may violate the right of privacy of an individual. Data protection is to be taken into account in the legislation concerning the basic registers. The use of registers containing personal data, the integration use of registers and the combining of their data with other data must be realised technically in a way that ensures data protection. Protection techniques are to be further improved in a way that enables to use the information systems rationally and thus reduce their costs.

Concerning the operation of the basic registers, the crucial point is the standardised system of identifiers. The benefit society obtains from the registers depends on how well the identifier relationships between the systems function. This requires carefully considered regulations and reliable data protection in order to prevent unauthorised combining of data. The annual census can be considered a good test of the functioning of the system. The abandonment of expensive form-based information gathering for the census was possible due to the system of basic registers.

The largest theme, measured in object quantity, is topographic data. Nation-wide data production is the responsibility of the NLS. Data is available nation-wide corresponding the graphical scale 1:10 000 and smaller scales. Data collection with an accuracy of the scale 1:5000 is under way and will be available nation-wide (with the exception of the northernmost part of Finland) in 2005.

In urban areas municipalities produce large scale data, typically 1:500 and smaller. Those areas cover some per cents of the whole of Finland.

The Geological Research Institute has produced a long array of different geological data sets. Most of them are point type observations, part of them are polygon based, e.g. soil maps.

Environment administration has a long list of registers containing data of environmental observations. They also have registers of protected areas. All data are determined with co-ordinates.

There are a lot of organisations which produce data from one or few themes. Such are e.g. the Post and their address database, the Road Administration having their Road Database, Forest Research Institutes’ Invention of National Forests, etc.

All in all, we have altogether over 320 different geographical data sets in Finland. Those are marketed and available through different market channels.

In Finland, the public sector is mainly responsible for data collection while the private sector takes care of value added products and information services. It is also possible for many public bodies to enter the markets with their products and services, but in many cases it is not profitable, because the costs and expenditure of the production are often much higher than in the private sector. For this reason, the NLS, for example, is not producing road maps even if it would be technically very easy. Instead, we have chosen the strategy of co-operation with the private sector. The biggest publishing house in Finland (WSOY) uses our road data in their road maps. This also concerns tourist maps. Also, the maintenance and updating of real estate information service including the maintenance of basic register data systems and databases are taken care of by a private company, although all the data of the system is collected by the public sector. The public sector also provides many other services in the production line. They also do marketing and reselling of data.

Another form of co-operation between the public and private sectors are joint ventures. The NLS has established from its Satellite Image Centre with a big Finnish software and hardware company (Novo Group) a joint company called Novosat. It sells satellite images and provides services in the field of satellite image processing. The NLS owns 40 % of the company and Novo Group 60 %.

In Finland the data collection of the most important data sets is the responsibility of the public sectors. As mentioned above, the responsibility and data contents of the basic registers are provided by laws. This is the most straightforward way to guarantee the desired result. The law is a heavy weapon and does not suit or it is not even desirable in most cases. There is under preparation a draft for the decision in principle of the Council of State in order to secure the production, data quality and information services of the most important geographical data sets, which are called core datasets. This decision would be less obligatory than those provided by law. However, we have great expectations from this decision, because it would be the first guiding decision on the governmental level and maybe the first step to the real GI strategy in Finland.

The basic registers constitute a national resource whose maintenance and development is taken care of by the public administration, i.e. the municipalities and the state authorities. The Advisory Committee for Data Administration in the Public Management, JUHTA, subject to the Ministry of the Interior, aids the municipalities and the state in maintaining and developing the registers. The basic registers have had their own forum for co-operation. This kind of forum has worked already over 10 years. Its aim has been to develop the co-operation between parties, information services and inform potential users about the available services.

In the early 80s the importance of geographical information was verified. A project was established for developing standards for geographical data classification, reference systems, data transfer and administration. The project which consisted of several sub-projects worked in 1985 - 1988. In the project there were altogether 28 different organisations involved, most of them from the public sector. They represented data producers and users. The project developed standards for classification of the most important dataset which were also standardised at the national level. Data transfer standards were based on EDIFACT standard. Query and reply messages were developed and implemented.

The implementation and usage of standards were lower than expected. The project had, however, other effects. The idea of integration of data sets affected deeply the design of new systems. De facto standardisation of definitions and terminology in the Finnish language used in the field of geographical data must be put on the credit of the project.

In order to promote the use of geographical information a new co-operation group was launched in 1993. The co-operation group consisted of representatives from 13 different organisations. Its activity covered: pricing of geographic information, user contracts, data security, data directory and data service matters. The co-operation group also leads the production of the issue: ”National Geographical Information Infrastructure”. The group worked until 1996.

As one can recognise, the co-operation and its organisation among public sector organisations has been very active. The role of the private sector cannot be underestimated, however. In order to widen the forums for a larger audience, a new society was established.

ProGIS is a Finnish association for geographic information. It aims to promote, stimulate and support the development and use of geographic information in the Finnish society.

It is an open forum for users and data producers, system and service providers. ProGIS organises seminars, excursions and workshops. ProGIS members are about 40 organisations and 140 private persons. Its role and operational procedures are similar to those of its sister organisations in many countries like Ravi in the Netherlands, AGI in UK etc.

ProGIS is a member of EUROGI which has the mission:

EUROGI has currently 18 members - 17 national associations and one pan-European sector organisation. EUROGI is an association of associations.

The idea - the need for a political document was identified during discussions between EUROGI and DG XIII of the European Commission during the JEC conference in 1995.

A drafting team of GI experts with strong EUROGI representation, working with DG XIII, prepared the draft European Geographic Information Infrastructure (EGII) policy document.

EUROGI helped DG XIII to organise and run the EU-wide consultation meetings held with commercial GI data providers, GI users, GI vendors, GI researchers and developers and national mapping agencies. This group drafted "GI2000: Towards a European Policy Framework for Geographic Information", Communication to be presented to the European Parliament and Council of Ministers. During this phase EUROGI and its members (particularly CERCO) encouraged national ministers to exert political pressure on the European Commission to move the document through the internal EC process.

During the late (Santer) Commission of EU the draft version was not given to the EU Parliament, neither to the Council of Ministers. Now that the Commission has been appointed, we can hope that the proposal will be accepted by the Commission in the near future.

The Vice President of the USA, Al Gore, has launched an idea of ”Digital World” where all data in the world would be in digital form and could be linked together with the help of spatial element.

Indeed, a start with the work for the creation of the Global Spatial Data Infrastructure has been made. The first meeting was held in Bonn in 1996. Since then the meetings have taken place in North Carolina and in Canberra. The next meeting will be held in South Africa in March next year.

The GSDI - formed by the linking of national and regional spatial data infrastructures - is a global and open process for co-ordinating the organisation, management, and use of spatial data and related activities.

The definition of GSDI comprises the policies, organisational remits, data, technologies, standards, delivery mechanisms, and financial and human resources necessary to ensure that those working at the global and regional scale are not impeded in meeting their objectives. When we see the existing difficulties even on a national level, we can only imagine the huge difficulties we will face on the global level.

The implementation of a national Geographical Information Infrastructure is a long lasting task. It involves a lot of different players. Some of the co-operation and managing problems can be solved by legislation. In the whole of the task it is a small part, however. A good result can be achieved only by co-operation. The role of the public sector is vital. It has the role of collecting and maintaining this data which is absolutely necessary for a modern society both from a citizen’s or administration’s point of view. The private sector can contribute to this task.

Because data collection is often very expensive and the price of the data e.g. for a citizen must not be too high, subsidies are often a necessity. Privatising different phases of tasks of the public sector is a trend in the European administration. This must be thoroughly considered, of course. Some points must be remembered, however. When privatising the skills in the organisation especially in the field of the rapid progress-making information technology will diminish. There is a danger that solutions are directed from other interests than those of the financing organisation.

When new systems are under development, theoretically sound solutions must be established for identifiers, data classification etc. Standards are also of vital importance. The same concerns co-ordinate systems and other reference systems. These items are extremely important for the integration of different data sets.