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INSPIRE-MIF / helpdesk-registry

Community for the discussion of change proposals by the submitting organisations for the central INSPIRE registers and register federation and their resolution by the control body.
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The code list for the country codes has to refer to the Interinstitutional style guide #71

Open heidivanparys opened 8 months ago

heidivanparys commented 8 months ago

The code list for the country codes, https://inspire.ec.europa.eu/codelist/CountryCode, has to refer to the Interinstitutional style guide, available at https://publications.europa.eu/code/en/en-000100.htm. This is required by the regulation on the interoperability of spatial data sets and services.

Currently, the code list for the country codes refers to the Country Named Authority List from the Metadata Registry of the Publications Office, which is available at https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/concept-scheme/-/resource?uri=http://publications.europa.eu/resource/authority/country.

This issue results from the discussion in #34.

heidivanparys commented 8 months ago

It is currently not clear to me what the best way would be to actually do this change.

The document referred to at http://inspire.ec.europa.eu/codelist/CountryCode was changed at some point, see http://inspire.ec.europa.eu/codelist/CountryCode:1 vs http://inspire.ec.europa.eu/codelist/CountryCode:2.

The current version refers to https://inspire.ec.europa.eu/document/CountryCode, the Country Named Authority List from the Metadata Registry of the Publications Office, the old version referred to https://inspire.ec.europa.eu/document/CountrieCode, EU-28 and candidate countries'. Countries, languages and currencies: names, codes and listing order. The external reference link for the latter does not work any more. Was that an old link to the Interinstitutional style guide?

Should https://inspire.ec.europa.eu/document/CountryCode be updated? Or should https://inspire.ec.europa.eu/document/CountrieCode be updated, and at the same time http://inspire.ec.europa.eu/codelist/CountryCode be updated to point to https://inspire.ec.europa.eu/document/CountrieCode instead?

jescriu commented 2 months ago

Dear colleagues,

The current issue - #71, and the related issue #34, seem to be derived from a series of unfortunate changes that were done to the INSPIRE Registry in the past.

After analysing them for a long time today, I came up with a proposal to be discussed next Monday in the Action 2.3.1 INSPIRE-artefacts Sub-group meeting.

I started analysing the related items from the INSPIRE reference document register.

Considerations

A. https://inspire.ec.europa.eu/document/CountrieCode item - It currently has an Invalid status in the registry. It was inserted in the INSPIRE Registry on 18-08-2015 and invalidated just 6 days after, on 24-08-2015. The reason for the invalidation was probably the wrong spelling of its URI (CountrieCode), since the URI acts as unique identifier of registry items.

This item was replaced by https://inspire.ec.europa.eu/document/CountryCode (See B below).

Its 'Label' attribute is populated as 'EU-28 and candidate countries'. Countries, languages and currencies: names, codes and listing order.' - indicating that the item was intended to refer the two-letter country codes from the Interinstitutional Style Guide - which nowadays is composed by 27 countries (28 countries minus the UK, which left the European Union):

image

And as @heidivanparys stated here, its 'External reference link' does not work any more (pointing to an old EUROSTAT domain).

B. https://inspire.ec.europa.eu/document/CountryCode item - It was inserted on 24-08-2025 as successor of the previous item, and has a Valid status. However, its External reference link (with value 'http://publications.europa.eu/mdr/authority/country') is outdated and SHALL be changed.

C. There was a 1:1 relationship between https://inspire.ec.europa.eu/codelist/CountryCode:1 and https://inspire.ec.europa.eu/document/CountrieCode, as it can be deduced from the descriptor of its 'Document' attribute ('EU-28 and candidate countries'. Countries, languages and currencies: names, codes and listing order.'). Note: the URL of the 'Document' attribute is useless, since it is self-referencing the own item (pointing to 'http://inspire.ec.europa.eu/codelist/CountryCode').

Consequently / PROPOSAL

1 - The CountryCode code list (http://inspire.ec.europa.eu/codelist/CountryCode) WAS originally intended to refer to the two-letter country codes advised in the Interinstitutional Style Guide - as stated in its 'Definition' attribute ('Country code as defined in the Interinstitutional style guide published by the Publications Office of the European Union.').

As stated in the Guide, this is equivalent to:

2 - Given C above, and since 'https://inspire.ec.europa.eu/document/CountrieCode' is currently Invalid, then https://inspire.ec.europa.eu/codelist/CountryCode:1 (currently having a Valid status) SHALL be Invalidated correspondingly.

3 - https://inspire.ec.europa.eu/codelist/CountryCode:2 (currently having a Valid status) SHALL continue referring the two-letter country codes - as also stated in its 'Definition' attribute ('Country code as defined in the Interinstitutional style guide published by the Publications Office of the European Union.'), equally to its previous version. Otherwise it would be inconsistent to the original purpose of this code list.

Therefore, its 'Document' attribute MUST be modified:

4 - Before applying the proposed changes, VALIDATE this approach with the Publications Office of the European Union, especially in terms of validity of country code lists proposed and their reference links.

Additionally

5 - In case any need for referring countries using the three-letter codes is identified (e.g. from 'https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/concept-scheme/-/resource?uri=http://publications.europa.eu/resource/authority/country'), then a new separated item could be possibly added in the future in the INSPIRE Reference document register.

arantzaetxebarria commented 2 months ago

In the MIWP Action 2.3.1 MIG-T Sub-group Meeting on 06/05/2024, it was agreed to bring this proposal for endorsement in the 78 MIG-T Meeting.

arantzaetxebarria commented 1 month ago

The INSPIRE MIG-T approved the change proposal during the 78 MIG-T Meeting