Significant investments have already been made across the EU towards INSPIRE, providing metadata/data, standards, FOSS, and SDIs. On the other hand, PSI and open data policies aim to provide a plethora of open data, with an emphasis on promoting growth (Data Economy). In this context, INSPIRE can be an excellent source of geospatial data, as well as a best practice for general-purpose geospatial data publishing. Vice-versa, open data catalogues can provide de facto INSPIRE conformance, in addition to broader web services for the private sector. This emerging convergence can be a win-win situation for both communities.

PublicaMundi is an FP7-funded research project originating from everyday problems faced by open data publishers and data consumers alike. Simply stated, open geospatial data are cumbersome to easily publish and consume for non-GIS experts. While most data publishers and developers are familiar with handling and using typical data, they are not familiar with the intricacies of geospatial data. Different coordinate reference systems, geospatial databases, map servers, special standardized APIs are some of the tools and know-how required to publish and reuse open geospatial data.