1 Title: Avenues for developing the UK’s National Geospatial Metadata Service Authors:

The state of public sector geospatial data sharing and exchange in the UK, as facilitated by the gigateway service, is currently at a crossroads. Ambiguities surrounding its purpose, direction, funding and custodianship continue to persist in the face of increasing demands placed upon the service, such as legal requirements (INSPIRE, PSI) and rising user expectations. A well-defined strategy addressing the political, commercial and technological considerations involved in advancing the service is therefore needed if these uncertainties are to be countered and demands met. The current work aims to provide for the technical aspects of such a strategy by considering potential avenues for development. Accordingly, proprietary and open source approaches are examined in the context of facilitating metadata publication (production, integrity, delivery), enhancing the service infrastructure (interoperability, future-proofing) as well as addressing end-user considerations (data visualisation, data access). The resulting roadmap outlines a technical evolution of gigateway, proposing a service better equipped to face the challenges of both the present and the future.