In February 2018 the report was presented to the Government about the potential financial and practical gains of opening certain geospatial data sets that currently are available as paid service.
The report was created together with stakeholders — enterprises who gave some estimates about the extra amount of taxes that would be paid if the data is open and used by the businesses. The responsible government institutions provided information about the resources required to provide the data sets. The conclusion of the report was that the potential benefits of opening data sets are far greater than keeping the datasets closed and generating revenue by selling data sets.
After the report was reviewed by the Cabinet of Ministers, the decision was made to open the data sets mentioned in the report.
The Cabinet of Ministers gave order to Ministries to organize the opening of 8 data sets of the State Land Service (subjected to Ministry of Justice) and Latvian Geospatial Information Agency (subjected to Ministry of Defence).
Datasets to be opened (during year 2018):
- The Official list of Addresses
- The Borders of Administrative regions
- Orthophoto map
- Topographic map
- Overview map
- Digital surface model
- The Database of Local names
- Geodesic Network data base