The National Catalog for Spatial Data (RNDT) was established with Article 59 of the Digital Administration Code, Legislative Decree 82/2005 (CAD) and was identified as a database of national interest with the article 60.

In accordance with the aforementioned Article 59 of the CAD, the technical specifications defining the content of the RNDT, the implementation and the updating have been defined by the Committee for the technical rules on the PAs spatial data and adopted by Ministerial Decree 10 November 2011 (Official Journal No. 48 of February 27, 2012 - SO No. 37) of the Minister for Public Administration and Innovation, in agreement with the Minister of the Environment and the Protection of Land and Sea.

On the basis of this regulatory framework, the RNDT is the national catalog of metadata for PAs spatial data and the services and also constitutes as public register of such data certifying its existence through the publication of the metadata.

The RNDT is based on the ISO Standards 19115, 19119 and TS 19139, defined by the Technical Commission ISO / TC211 which deals with standards for geographic information. Compliance with the RNDT technical rules ensures the simultaneous compliance, without any additional burdens, to the Regulation (EC) no. 1205/2008 implementing the INSPIRE Directive with regard to metadata.

In accordance with the art. 59 of the CAD, the Agency for Digital Italy has the responsability of the organizational and technological management of the RNDT, in the context of the public system of connectivity and cooperation.

The Agency for Digital Italy has therefore implemented the RNDT portal providing two main functionalities:

•    metadata discovery, accessible to everyone;
•    metadata management, restricted for accredited public administrations.