One of the central issues in the digital and environmental transition concerns the need to ensure that public data are genuinely usable, and not merely available online in a formal sense.
It still happens today that citizens who need to consult an urban development plan, verify an environmental restriction, or submit public comments find themselves faced with documents that are difficult to open, platforms that are not user-friendly, or technical files that are nearly impossible to consult without specialised expertise.
This situation risks turning transparency into a merely formal requirement and making information effectively incomprehensible, even when it directly concerns people’s lives, the safety of local areas, and decisions taken by public authorities.
This is one of the key issues at the heart of the revision of the European INSPIRE Directive, the legislation governing the organisation, sharing, and accessibility of territorial and environmental data among public administrations, citizens, professionals, and businesses across Europe.
I serve as shadow rapporteur for The Left group within the Environment Committee. Behind a map, an environmental dataset, or an urban planning document, there is more than technical information: there is a way of governing territory, preventing risks, and ensuring genuine transparency in public decision-making.
The revision of the directive forms part of the EU’s GreenData4All initiative and the broader process of simplifying environmental legislation launched by the European Union.
We are dealing with data that directly affect people’s lives: hydrogeological risk, urban planning, landscape protection, infrastructure, protected areas, environmental risk management, and territorial safety. If this information is not accessible, up-to-date, interoperable, and comprehensible, public decisions themselves risk becoming less effective and less transparent. The danger is that the digitalisation of public administration turns into a new form of invisible bureaucracy, made up of data that are theoretically public but practically difficult to use.
Simplification must not mean making territorial information less readable or weakening the tools that allow citizens, professionals, and public authorities to truly understand what is happening in their territories.
Public data are genuinely useful only when they can be found, verified, visualised, and understood. The digitalisation of public administration cannot be limited to uploading documents onto a platform: it must help citizens and administrations interpret the territory and participate more consciously in public decision-making.
In the parliamentary work on the revision of INSPIRE, the Five Star Movement also aims to strengthen interoperability, transparency, and cooperation among public authorities in the management of territorial and environmental information.
Europe must modernise its rules without retreating on transparency or data quality. Good governance also depends on making the territory more readable, accessible, and understandable for everyone.
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