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Dear Arvid,

for data falling under the scope of INSPIRE, you have the obligation to provide metadata, download and view services and, from 2020 (or 2023 for NO?) for Annex III data, to harmonise them.

There was a discussion on whether these tasks can be delegated or passed on to other entities, e.g. the Regional Sea Conventions, in the context of the TG Data of the MSFD. It was clarified by DG ENV that this is indeed possible, but that the MS remains legally responsible for meeting their INSPIRE obligations and hence they should have some +/- formal agreement with the 3rd party providing data or metadata on their behalf (see attached note).

On your specific questions:

• You should document the data sets with metadata, that should be available in your national discovery service.
• You should set up a download and view service for the data, e.g. an atom feed (for download) as you propose, unless the EIONET repository offers these INSPIRE network services (I don't think so). The links inside the atom feed can then of course point to the relevant files in the EIONET repository.

Angelo will get back to you on the question around data set series.

Dear Arvid,

concerning metadata,  according to ISO 19115 "a dataset series is a collection of datasets sharing the same product specification but there is no strict rule and the final decision is up to the data provider."

The most interesting aspect of writing metadata for a series, is that it makes it possible to factor metadata element values shared among the datasets:

G.2 Metadata hierarchy levels
G.2.1 Dataset series metadata (optional)
A dataset series is a collection of spatial data that shares similar characteristics of theme, source date, resolution, and methodology. The exact definition of what constitutes a series entry will be determined by the data provider. 
...
The creation of a “dataset series” metadata level is an optional feature that allows users to consult higher-level characteristics for data search. The definition of this type of metadata may be adequate for the initial characterization of available spatial data, but may not be adequate for detailed assessment of data quality of specific datasets.

Unfortunately, the concept of series has never been fully developed in INSPIRE, so dataset and series metadata really look the same except for the label.

Support for linking a series with its datasets and explicit guidance on using this inheritance mechanism. have never been detailed in the Technical Guidelines.

So, I think that the current drivers for the choice are:

• whether the Lineage, Spatial Resolution and the other relevant metadata elements values have changed throughout the years.
  If the metadata describing is the same except for the Temporal Reference, you could certainly write a single metadata document for the series and add multiple Temportal Reference elements.
• whether you need or wish to assign a different INSPIRE Unique Resource Identifier for the data of each year.

In either case, you will be forced to a write more than one metadata document.

Concerning the Download Service implementation, an Atom based implementation looks like the appropriate choice.

If you go for one series metadata, there will need to be only one entry in the service feed.
In the data subfeed you will need one <entry> for each CRS and encoding combination.
I understand you currently have only the shapefile encoding.
Inside each <entry> you will have multiple link elements with rel="section" where you can use the time attribute to specify the year.

Best regards,

Angelo