The relation of spatial data and e-Government is important, but not always
acknowledged in the development and implementation of e-Government. The
implementation of the INSPIRE directive pushed this agenda towards a growing
awareness of the role of spatial data and the need for a spatial data infrastructure
to support e-Government. With technology, policies, data and infrastructure in
place, new iterations of this relationship are needed, in order to reach a higher
level of maturity. This paper analyses and discusses the need for the
differentiated roles of spatial data as an important step towards more mature eGovernment. As part of this understanding, the paper focuses on a subset of
data, so-called ‘spatio-legal data’. Spatio-legal data are created within the
regulated legal environment of public administration, and used for rulings within a given legal area. Sometimes, the legal status of these data is the wording of the
law and the spatial data are just visualisation thereof. Under other circumstances,
the spatial data themselves represent the legal status. Compliance between
spatial data and the legal administrative framework is necessary, to obtain a
mature e-Government. A preliminary test of the hypothesis on a small scale,
using Denmark as a case study, supports the need for discussion and awareness
of the role of spatial data in e-Government with emphasis on the use of spatio-legal data.