Many national and regional governments have in the past few decades created GeoPortals to meet their
obligations to provide citizen access to their spatial data. This spatial data is collected, in many cases, at
tax payer expense. Indeed the EU (2024) says:

The publication of data is driven by the belief that it brings enormous benefits to citizens, businesses,
and public administrations, while at the same time enabling stronger co-operation across Europe. Open data
can bring benefits in various fields, such as health, food security, education, climate, intelligent
transport systems, and smart cities - and is considered "an essential resource for economic growth, job
creation and societal progress".

But even now nearly a quarter century after the introduction of the first Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)
standards for interoperability there seems to be a wide spread failure to make use of OGC standards to provide
access to the underlying data that is needed by citizens create economic growth.

This paper will detail the author's experiences with attempting to acquire spatial data and their observations
of relatively inexperienced students trying to navigate some examples of geoportals. The paper will then make
some suggestions to help data providers serve data with the modern methods and formats that users actually
want, using open source tools such as GeoServer.