The UDK Web Editor – A Collaborative Tool for Environmental Information Management

Abstract

The European Directive on Public Access to Environmental Information (2003/4/EC) [1] requires EU Member States to actively disseminate environmental information to the public. To implement Directive 2003/4/EC, the Ministry of Environment of the State of Lower Saxony (MELS) has produced an organizational and technical model to supply relevant environmental information on time and in an up-to-date status. The main strategy is to register all environmental information available in the MELS business division that complys with the mandatory core of information specified in the directive’s article 7. This information is catalogued in the State’s environmental information catalogue system and assigned an expiration date. An Editing System has been developed on the basis of the collaboration platform MERMIG, enabling the maintenance of the catalogue through the use of a standard web browser. Furthermore, the system keeps tab on the information objects and notifies the object’s author to review the information object after the expiration date has passed. In this way the State of Lower Saxony complies with the proactive tenor of the directive and ensures to have at any time control on the state of the environmental information available. On a second level, MELS works on making all environmental information available through the ministries internet portal.