Background In 2006, FOREST EUROPE (The Ministerial Conference on the Protection of Forests in Europe) and the Council for Pan-European Biological and Landscape Diversity Strategy (PEBLDS) jointly recognized sustainable forest management to be consistent with the Ecosystem Approach. Finland is Europe's most forested country – three quarters of its land area is under forest cover – which highlights the important role of Finland in contributing to sustainable forest management and the ecosystem approach – promoting conservation and environmentally, socially and economically sustainable forest management practices, providing benefits for both present and future generations. Objectives The LIFE-DATA project aims to identify and demonstrate new management methods and user-application systems for generating an integrated data management process. The project will develop and demonstrate a unique database system linking integrated forest databases with those of other participating (LYNET) organisations. The data collected will be used to bridge the gap between data/information producers and users, enabling simple access to this integrated information. Specifically the project will: Complete and integrate the data of the participating (LYNET) organisations and create a service map; Identify the data architecture upon which new databases will be built; Build data search systems and user-interface services. Expected results: A service map and data policy for the participating organisations, including guidelines for the demonstration project; Data sets of the organisations will be identified, with general and detailed descriptions; Variables defining the data will be identified and standardised for the databases; The architecture of data sets and their links to each other will be described so that the new databases and their interfaces and user interfaces can be built or rationalised (updated easily); The databases and user interface services that have been tested, demonstrated and recorded.