Guest Blogs

In this last blog I have decided to write about one of our key daily tasks – PSI legislation and Commission's responsibilities in connection to this. As the guardian of the EC Treaty, the Commission ensures that community law is applied correctly. Consequently, it may launch infringement procedures against those Member States who fail to comply with Community law.

In the last 2 years we have initiated 3 infringement proceedings, namely against Poland, Sweden and Italy, for incomplete and/or incorrect implementation and application of the PSI Directive. I will not go into details where we stand with these proceedings. You can always get an up-date on our PSI Website.

What I would like to do today is to pass an important message to both the law makers and the re-users in these countries. Infringement proceedings are an opportunity to prepare better legislation, building on what we know today. My message to the law makers: "Be proactive! Bring together all stakeholders and discuss together about what kind of revised legislation would best help the PSI markets in your countries to grow and add value to your economies." And a message to the re-users: "This is your opportunity to actively participate in the drafting of new legislation." The Directive provisions have of course to be transposed into national laws, but Member States can go beyond by for example setting up quick and inexpensive means of redress. Many have already done so.

Finally, I would like to thank to the ePSIplatform people for giving me the chance to participate and share my views with the users of their Website. Any comment, and even critics, to my any of my views are welcome.

We are witnessing recently a positive political engagement and willingness to make government information more widely available and reusable in Europe. These are really good news. The UK's announcement to follow the USA www.data.gov initiative[1] was a first important milestone. Engaging Tim Berners-Lee for the job was an excellent choice. The Visby and Malmö Ministerial Declarations are important messages for the further development of the EU PSI policy agenda. They both recognise the economic potential of PSI re-use and call on the MS "to make data freely accessible in open machine-readable formats, for the benefit of entrepreneurship, research and transparency"[2].

"The demand side", reusers and other citizens, are also making their views known. In the Open Declaration on Public Services 2.0, a bottom up initiative of well known supporters of PSI reuse, such as Tom Steinberg or Alberto Ortiz de Zárate, they propose that public sector organisations provide information in open, standard and reusable formats, in ways that others can easily build on them. These messages add to the work of the PSI Alliance.

All these latest developments recognise PSI re-use as an important strand of the digital agenda. The task is now to concretise these high-level declarations into concrete actions and results, in every Member State, in all public sector bodies. Let's work hard for it. Last Friday Mme Kroes was appointed Commissioner designate for the Digital Agenda. Be sure that I will feed her with many ideas for supporting our work. We have a good opportunity ahead, but we will only succeed with the joint effort of all stakeholders. I count on your support.

[1] The UK's Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, has invited Sir Tim Berners-Lee, a British engineer and computer scientist and MIT professor credited with inventing the World Wide Web, to work with the UK Government to help them make data more accessible on the Web, building on the work of the Power of Information Task Force. http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/jun/10/berners-lee-downing-street-web-open

[2] Creating impact for an eUnion 2015 – "The Visby Declaration"

PSI is a raw material which can be re-used by many at the same time. Exclusive agreements limit the re-use of PSI to one or few re-users and the opportunities this can bring to the markets. It distorts fair competition which is central to the operation of the EU markets, and limits innovation, productivity and growth, all of which bring better, cheaper and higher quality products and services to the citizens.

The PSI Directive stipulates that the re-use of PSI shall be open to all potential actors in the market. This means that public sector bodies are not allowed to grant exclusive rights for the re-use of PSI. There may be however exceptions, notably if the existence of such exclusive agreement is a must for re-use itself. In that case the exclusive agreement has to be transparent and made public, and the reasons for granting the exclusive right have to be regularly reviewed, at least every 3 years.

The UK and the Netherlands have taken actions to identify possible exclusive agreements within their public sector bodies. Both assessments have identified the existence of some exclusive agreements and their specific nature. It has been reported that currently remedy measures are being taken by the above mentioned MS to terminate these agreements. Sweden also plans to carry out a similar exercise.

Last June my Unit launched the "Exclusive Agreements Study" in the following countries: Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Poland and Spain. These MS represent, together with the UK, NL and SW, more than 80 % of the GDP and more than 75 % of the inhabitants of the EU27. In terms of the market size and its potential it could be assumed that for these countries the study would cover 80 % of the EU25 market. We will investigate the situation in other MS next year. The work already started in Austria, Belgium and Italy, while we are finishing with the administrative procedures for the others.

The main purpose of the study is to investigate the possible existence of exclusive agreements. We want to get this information from both the PSI holders and the re-users. Subsequently we will investigate the nature of these arrangements and will work with the MS to phase them out or make them fully transparent if the exceptions provisions would apply.

You can follow the progress of this activity on our PSI Website. I am also inviting you to let us know if you are aware of any exclusive agreements in your respected countries. I personally hope that the study will not result in too many exclusive agreements as this would mean that the PSI Directive works.

This year's review of the PSI Directive (Commission Communication of 7 May 2009) confirmed its positive impact in promoting the PSI re-use in the EU in the past years. It is certainly not a perfect instrument, but I am an optimist and I prefer to present the situation as a half full glass rather than a half empty one. But of course our duty is to add a drop to the glass every day.

There is still much work to be done to reach the full potential of the EU PSI market and the European Commission continues its work to persuade the Member States (MS), the PSI holders and possible re-users of the advantages a developed PSI market can bring to the economy and citizens.

Our key activities at the moment are:

• encouraging the authorities in the MS to take proactive measures that facilitate the re-use of PSI (e.g. PSI portals);
• monitoring the implementation and application of the PSI Directive in the MS; in this respect we have started infringement procedures against 3 MS, with two of them (Sweden and Poland) already working on new legislation to come;
• scrutinising possible exclusive agreements; and
• as a follow up to many studies, move forward in the area of PSI re-use metrics and economic modelling on reuse.

Today I will write about the first point. Encouraging PSI re-use across all MS: all sectors require a joint effort by all stakeholders. Member States are crucial actors, and where proactive policies have been put in place, results have flourished. We see this in the UK and more recently in Spain. These actions require motivated officials, project champions. We need many more of them.

A concrete example of proactive measures is PSI portals. I believe we all agree that being able to find reusable data and know its conditions of re-use is a first crucial step in the process of PSI re-use. On 25 September 2009 we organised a meeting on PSI portals with representatives from the MS, industry and other stakeholders. A few MS have projects underway as concerns the PSI portals. The British, Spanish, French, Belgians and the Italians of the Piemonte region have portals in place or are working towards this objective. After the Aporta project was launched, the interest in PSI re-use matters rose dramatically in Spain. We drew a parallel between the PSI portals (existing and foreseen) presented during the meeting:

• the majority of them are built on open-source tools;
• they have published the re-use legislative framework; the conditions for re-use are published in the form of the legal notices or licences; and
• the reusable data is presented in the data catalogues and asset lists, or is directly available for download.

It is important to add that the portals don't only enable access to information but also help to raise the debate on the subject, awareness, knowledge, the "unlocking" service of OPSI (Office of Public Sector Information) in the UK, etc. In the recently launched "data.gov.us" portal, a major initiative of the Obama administration, a repository of "Apps", of applications that add value to the data resources is being put in place as a shared resource for re-users.

It appears from the outcome of the meeting that technological, organisational and financial aspects of PSI portals do not represent a real issue. There is enough knowledge, technology and good practice available on which to build PSI portals. Open-source tools enable setting up a PSI portal with relatively low costs. At this point one question is inevitable. Why aren't there more PSI portals around!? Of course, this is a rhetorical question. The answer is clear: we lack political will in those countries where more could be done; we desperately need more PSI champions.

My Unit will follow the work of the MS where PSI portals are underway. Good cases persuade others to follow the example. To help them even more, we are considering taking a step forward by preparing some kind of specifications/checklist paper/guidelines for those wishing to implement portals in the future.