In the beautiful coastal city of Durrës, Albania, the Regional Conference on the organisation of Capacity Building and Education in the fields of Geomatics, SDI and Land Administration took place on March 5, 2013. It was organized jointly by the INSPIRATION Project team and the Central Immovable Property Registration Office (IPRO) of Albania.
 
Opening speeches of the conference were given by two ministers of Albanian Government: Minister of Justice Mr. Eduard Halimi, and Minister of Innovation and ICT Mr. Genc Pollo, as well as by Mr. Fritz Kroiss, the Project Team Leader. The two ministers highlighted the achievements of the Albanian Government in utilizing information technology to empower democracy and the rule of law. Two examples of that are reducing the contacts of the citizens with public service officials in land registration to prevent the corruption opportunities, and the online public procurement that was internationally recognized for innovation.
 
Such a high level of recognition of the conference raised the appreciation among the attendees. Approximately 90 participants attended this conference, of which forty participants came from the INSPIRATION Project beneficiary representatives and the project team, and the rest were representatives of Albanian ministries and agencies, universities, international organizations and private companies. The conference announcement also attracted considerable media attention.
 
Following the opening, Christian Ansorge of Austrian Environment Agency, senior expert of the project gave the general introduction to INSPIRE Directive and to the INSPIRATION Project.
 
The first session was dedicated to education in the Sector of SDI. It highlighted the need for GIS and SDI education, and presented the situation in higher education for surveyors in some countries of the region. At its beginning Ivica Skender, Key Expert 2 of the project, presented the results of the regional study and recommendations report on SDI and LA Capacity and Education, and introduced the challenge of capacity building and education, primarily for surveyors.
 
As examples of education for Land Administration and Spatial Data Infrastructure at the university level in some of the countries of the region, Gezim Gjata of Polytechnic University of Tirana, Fisnik Loshi of Faculty of Engineering and Architecture Prishtina, and Slobodanka Kljucanin, Faculty of Civil Engineering Sarajevo, presented the current situation of education regarding SDI in Albania, Kosovo* and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
 
Second session was devoted to education in the sector of Remote Sensing, which represents a major, independent topic closely related to GIS and SDI, and faces similar issues and needs for education and capacity building. Boris Antic, professor at the Unviersity of Novi Sad, Serbia and coordinator of PF7 BalkanGEONet Project Consortium, gave a presentation on education in remote sensing. The presentation included basics of remote sensing, its applications and needs for experts, as well as issues and approaches to education in this field, considering education levels from secondary schools to PhD level and employment opportunity for various profiles of remote sensing experts.
 
Another participant in the BalkanGEONet PF7 Project Ibrahim Milushi of the Institute of GeoSciences, Energy, Water and Environment (IGJEUM), Polytechnic University of Tirana, gave the presentation titled “GEO Capacity Building and PNF”. In an exhaustive presentation Mr. Milushi presented how various Earth observation international and regional initiatives address individual and institutional capacity building and education, and what opportunities already exist for education and networking.
 
In the same session a presentation not related to the main topic was given by Ivica Skender, titled “The need for education – a private business perspective”. The presentation stressed private business entities’ need to invest in education and building competencies of the employees, as well as some of the issues in adult education such as motivation, responsibility and resistance to change.
 
The third session of the conference was focused on the topic of Education and Capacity Building Methodologies and different approaches to methodologies and issues in education, with insight in the development of teaching techniques.
For the beginning Christian Ansorge in his short presentation made a reflection on INSPIRATION project trainings completed so far. Gudrun Wallentin, Director of studies at UNIGIS MSc programme, University of Salzburg, followed with a presentation on educating GIS professionals worldwide. She introduced a few typical profiles of UNIGIS students that illustrate how Lifelong Learning and Distant Learning fit well to the needs of professionals in various fields seeking specific knowledge in geoinformation management systems and technology. The specific organization of UNIGIS studies and UNIGIS partner network were introduced, as well as curricula that target to grasp the Geoinformation Science & Technology Body of Knowledge.
Since Vlado Cetl of Joint Research Centre (JRC) of European Commission unfortunately couldn’t arrive to Durres due to the flight cancellation, his presentation on the JRC experiences in capacity building and LLL was skipped at the conference, but is downloadable at the web pages of the INSPIRATION Project, just like every other presentation.
The presentation on the role of education and communication with stakeholders in establishing efficient society supported by GIS and SDI, by Vesna Poslončec Petrić of Faculty of Geodesy in Zagreb, used some research that have been done in Croatia to illustrate the need to target school teachers and wider circle of stakeholders within the whole region with education on GIS and SDI, and to propose that such effort is better done on the regional level.
 
At the panel discussion a number of issues were addressed or re-visited that are related with education in the fields of SDI, Geomatics, Land Administration, Remote Sensing etc. The panellists were Gudrun Wallentin, UIGIS, Andreas Wytzisk, con terra, Gezim Gjata, Polytechnic  and Lidija Krstevska. They answered some intriguing questions regarding the need for education in SDI, value and price of education, needs and possibilities for government institutions to trigger education and the justification of regional approach to SDI capacity building.
 
At the end winner of the Ideas Competition was announced, and since the winning idea came from the Agency for Real Estate Cadastre (AREC) Macedonia and the Ministry of Environment and Physical Planning of Macedonia, it was presented by Ms. Sonja Dimova of AREC.
 
Presentation shown during the Conference can be found below:

^{* This designation is without prejudice to positions on status, and is in line with UNSCR 1244/99 and the ICJ Opinion on the Kosovo declaration of independence.}.