UN Member States participate in 3rd Plenary of UN-GGIM: Europe

More than 100 delegates representing 31 countries gathered in Budapest, Hungary recently for the 3^rd Plenary of UN-GGIM: Europe.

The meeting, which was officially opened by Katalin Tóth, Deputy State Secretary on International Relations of the Ministry of Agriculture, Hungary, included a review of the past year’s activities and examples of how statistical and geospatial organisations are working together in Ireland, Poland and Slovenia.

In addition, Member States approved the 2017 to 2020 work plan and requests for observer status from the Global Spatial Data Infrastructure Association (GSDI) and specialist IT consultancy, ConsultingWhere. Delegates also approved the appointment of Janusz Dygaszewicz from the Central Statistical Office, Poland to the UN-GGIM: Europe Executive Committee.

The keynote was delivered by Gabriella Vukovich, President of the Hungarian Central Statistical Office and Co-Chair of the United Nations High Level Group

for Partnership, Coordination and Capacity-Building for post-2015 monitoring who spoke on building a partnership between the geospatial and the statistical community. Greg Scott from the UN-GGIM Secretariat also gave examples of how the committee of experts is making a difference by fulfilling its global geospatial mandate and looked to its future activities which focus on work with the Inter-Agency Expert Group on Sustainable Development Goal Indicators

Chair of UN-GGIM: Europe Executive Committee, Bengt Kjellson from Sweden said:

“Our aim is to build on existing frameworks in Europe by avoiding duplication of effort and encouraging data interoperability, harmonisation and sharing to optimise the overall management of geospatial information.

“Engaging with the wider geospatial and statistical communities in Europe is vital for achieving this and for meeting user needs. We are therefore delighted to welcome GSDI and ConsultingWhere as UN-GGIM: Europe observer organisations. With the explicit recognition of the role of geospatial information in various UN policy agendas, along with the endorsement and broadening of UN-GGIM’s mandate, this is a really exciting time to be part of the global geospatial community.”

GSDI and ConsultingWhere join the European Environment Agency, EuroGeographics, EuroSDR, the European umbrella organisation for Geographic Information (EUROGI), European Forum for Geography and Statistics (EFGS) and

European Spatial Planning Observation Network (ESPON) as observer organisations. The European Commission, is granted permanent observer status in the Articles of UN-GGIM: Europe.

For more information about this meeting, visit http://un-ggim-europe.org/meetings/plenary-meetings/3rd-plenary-of-un-ggim-europe/