EU Twinning Project for Improving Spatial Data Services in the Republic of Moldova: interactive activities mark the end of 2021

The end of 2021 proved to be very active for all parties involved in the EU-funded Twinning project „Improving spatial data services in the Republic of Moldova following EU standards.”

The Twinning partners have prepared the groundwork for the implementation of the pilot project, the purpose of which is to test the six Guidelines developed in the scope of the Twinning project. The Guidelines will be used by the Moldovan public authorities dealing with spatial data to convert their analog maps into digital form, to improve the quality of digital spatial data and to document them through metadata. Ungheni city and Ungheni district were chosen as pilot regions. Several online meetings were conducted with the Agency of Land Relations and Cadaster (ALRC), Twinning experts and the representatives of the local public authorities from Ungheni. The main purpose of these working sessions was to create a common vision of future collaboration and to identify available data sets required for implementing the six Guidelines. The workflow with the selected data sets was tackled during a joint online meeting with the presence of Twinning experts, ALRC and Pilot Project partners.

Additionally, the draft National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) Programme and Action Plan were presented to the representatives of 20 different central public entities responsible for spatial data and other stakeholders. The vision, objectives and planned activities were the highlights of the online meeting hosted by ALRC. In 2022 the documents will be circulated to public entities for gathering opinions, with further submission to the Government.

In parallel, an in-depth analysis of the Government Decisions: No. 254/2018 on data sharing, No. 737/2017 on network services and No. 738/2017 on metadata creation and maintenance, was performed by the Twinning experts. The output of these missions resulted in recommendations and proposals for possible amendments of the concerned legal documents. Two online sessions took place related to Capacity Building and Awareness-raising, with the participation of ALRC and the academic environment: an assistant professor at Zagreb University, Faculty of Geodesy, and representatives of State Agrarian University of Moldova and Technical University of Moldova. The discussions

were held with the purpose of sharing educational experiences as well as conducting analysis of Moldovan University programs dealing with main project topics.

Related to the Communication plan activities, the Twinning partners were involved in the creative process of developing a script for an animated video that aims at promoting the NSDI in the Republic of Moldova and will be shared publicly in early 2022.