Starting with the current state of the art in the production of digital geographic information at the different scales of detail (national, regional and urban), the paper illustrates the increasing opportunities related to the adoption of interoperable Geographic Information Systems (GIS) policies both within the public sector (including the public institutions and the administrative organizations) and, with a particular focus, the economic sector. The creation of knowledge-oriented networks of agents and institutions (involving public and private operators) seems to be the most promising approach (and possibly the unique) to gain from the availability of gis-based data both for governments, organizations (profit or nonprofit), services providers, policy makers, operations management at firms level.
