Monitoring the FAIRness of geospatial data: Lessons learnt from the European Union

Abstract. The Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable (FAIR) principles were introduced to mitigate challenges in discovering, accessing and ultimately reusing data. They still represent the backbone of current, public sector-driven geospatial data infrastructures worldwide, and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are used to measure the progress towards their implementation. This work reflects on the experience of the European Union (EU) geospatial data infrastructure, driven by the INSPIRE and the Open Data Directive requirements. Analysing the results of the monitoring process in the last six years, we draw a number of lessons. First and foremost, the way in which KPIs are defined steers the development of an infrastructure against specific directions, and maximising the KPIs used to measure the FAIRness is not enough. A shift would be needed to more user-centric monitoring approaches, which originate from user needs and assess the actual value generated from data reuse. The analysis also demonstrated the importance of employing automated, transparent and reproducible monitoring processes powered by open source tools, as well as the need to define an inclusive governance approach grounded on a continuous involvement, dialogue and trust with the affected stakeholders.