Facilitating e-government services through SDIs, an application for water abstractions authorizations

Abstract

In the last years, there has been a huge increment in the number of e-government services offered to the citizens and companies. However, environment-related permits are among the least developed kind of e-government services in Europe. Environmental management and government requires the use of geographic information and spatial data infrastructures (SDIs) are being providing the framework for optimizing its management, and they are becoming a legal obligation for some countries and institutions. In order to make profit of geographic information technologies and of the obligation of building SDIs to contribute to the development of e-government services, this paper analyzes an e-government opportunity in the environmental management linked to the use of SDIs and presents how to use them in a real tool: the application for a water abstraction authorization. SDI services are used for the capture, management, and assess of geographical information in a full transactional level e-government service. © 2010 Springer-Verlag.