David Lee is a statistician in Defra, working in the Environment Statistics team where he has responsibility for water statistics, publications, is the UK National Focal Point for the European Environment Agency, and works in Defras INSPIRE project team. Prior to his current role he has worked on administrative and sample surveys in the fields of agriculture, household food consumption and fisheries. He has been a part of the INSPIRE team for the past 3 and a half years helping steer INSPIRE from proposal through to adoption and now looking towards transposition and implementation. In that time he has seen the increasing power of geographic information as a mainstream resource to underpin the evidence base, inform effective decision making, engage the public and help bring data alive in new and exciting ways.