Guest Blogs

The inception & subsequent transposition of the European Directive on the Re-Use of Public Sector Information was (and remains) a keystone in promoting an open information resource where both public and private sector players within European economies can release and promote the often unrealised commercial value of Public Sector information.

European Commission studies have long estimated that the public sector is the largest creator & producer of information within the wider European economy and that there is great opportunity for effective exploitation of content within the vibrant information markets that have been created on the growth of the internet & related e-commerce platforms – a trend which continues to evolve.

There is much in the way of research that has long predicted that an often inert body of Public Sector Information that had realised its primary or public task could in fact be re-energised in its utilization by private sector players to develop value added products and services & act as a stimulus to the promotion & creation of further ‘downstream’ economic activity. There is clear evidence illustrating the fact that usage of the PSI resource will rise rapidly as a result of innovation within the market where barriers to the information resource are reduced and particularly, where charging practices associated with access are based on marginal cost pricing. (Flow-modelling of the increased economic activities (from studies deriving from the North American markets) provide a clear and unambiguous indication as to the eventual feed through of wider societal benefits).

Within the UK specifically, there are strong links with other legislative enactments and the active promotion of information itself as a realizable asset. The Office of Public Sector Information (OPSI) who have been tasked with promoting cohesive information policy standards throughout the wider Public Sector have enjoyed a great deal of success particularly with regards to information re-use policies within Central Government.

What is in effect a ‘culture of change’ in promoting the potential of effective information re-use within the UK Central Government sector has been achieved largely as result of the drive, enthusiasm & strong leadership shown by OPSI. The value of similar Governmental agencies within other European economies could well act as a catalyst in changing the ‘culture’ of information management and focusing motivation & leadership in managing the imposition and promotion of proactive information polices.

However, the success of information re-use policies both within the UK and across the wider European marketplace is dependent upon clear unambiguous direction & political drivers and whilst the recent history of the promotion of re-use within the UK has shown itself to be well advanced – there remain large areas within the greater Public Sector where effective re-use has yet to be fully realised and where there remains a low awareness of the effective value of intellectual property assets within an open information resource.

Whilst the emphasis on promotion and training within the information markets is quite naturally inclined towards effective management of re-use policies and is directed at the ‘holders’ of the information resource – the public bodies themselves, perhaps we should also be seeking to educate and train the potential ‘seekers’ of information within the Private Sectors of the economy both within the UK and also in the wider Pan European marketplace, as to how to interact positively with the information resource.

Training initiatives could and should seek to educate those requesting the re-use of information as to the ‘sectoral culture’ with which they are seeking to engage and of the views, fears and concerns of those who act as ‘gatekeepers’ to the information resource.

The true potential ‘value’ of public sector information should be exemplified in order that all participants within the information matrix are aware of the potential downstream benefits of an effective information exchange mechanism. The very fact that there may be a cost associated with the generation of entrepreneurial activities should not necessarily be seen as a disincentive providing that charging policies are fair, transparent and accountable.

The burden of failing to realise the potential opportunity cost inherent of under estimating the true value of the information resource will ultimately fall on both Public and Private sectors and will be evidenced to the detriment on Pan European economies as a whole, if we fail to achieve this aim.

This is an underpinning and frequently avoided question throughout all the commercial sectors that rely upon the re-use of Public Sector Information (PSI) to create value-added products for end users. But it should not be so¹.

Public Sector Information, is just that. It is information (of whatever kind) generated by enterprises that are government owned, run or commissioned at public cost (i.e. paid for out of revenues raised through taxation). One might therefore suppose that, fundamentally, such data “belongs” to the “public”; that is it belongs to those who have ultimately funded its generation, its management, handling and storage. But is this how ownership of these data are seen by those who, on behalf of the “public”, undertake the generation, management handling and storage of them?

Sadly, no. In fact, those government organisations responsible for these tasks on behalf of the public all too often regard the data as “theirs”, that is they see it as “owned” by them and to be provided to others only as a concession in return for some consideration such as a license fee or re-use fee, and not at all if, in their judgement, to do so might somehow make life too much harder for them. This is particularly (but not exclusively) so when those “others” lie within the commercial sector of the economy and intend to re-use the data to provide value-added products and services to the overall benefit of the economy in terms of employment and the generation of relative wealth.

A clear example of this thinking is to be found in the field of meteorology. Here the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), the international Agency of the United Nations that co-ordinates meteorology world wide, has passed a Resolution of its Executive Council (WMO RESOLUTION 40 CG XII (1995)) that effectively allows all National Meteorological and Hydrological Services (NMHS) to withhold the free provision of meteorological data that they have generated or hold (other than a strictly limited sub-set that in practice is too difficult to protect) to any organisation other than another NMHS. This deeply protectionist measure is rooted in the concept that the data “belongs” to the NMHS and not to the “public” who paid for it. In publicly available documents that can be found (with some searching) on the WMO web site, one can find statements such as:

“However, in some cases, the competition with private service providers has led to conflicts. Among the key issues that cause concern are access to NMHSs data and information (my italics) and the possible reduction in services provided by NMHSs.”

This mindset, is surely not one that a UN Agency charged with representing the interests of the entire meteorological sector world wide and not just those of the NMHSs, should support or encourage? The data are not “theirs” they are “ours”. They belong to the public and, subject to a reasonable charge for the additional work of retrieval and re-transmission; they should be freely available to us all.

[1]A detailed exploration of the nature and status of meteorological data can be found in:
Ton W. Donker; Access to and re-use of public-sector environmental data
And information. Policy developments with a focus on the european hydro-meteorological scene. Polish Academy of Sciences, Geographia Polonica, Vol. 80 No.2 (Autumn 2007).

Scientists at Imperial College, London have reported in the journal Science[1] that shorter, milder winters experienced since 1985 on St Kilda Island in the Hebrides, have resulted in smaller Soay sheep. This seems to be one of many impacts that are arising from changes in climate. Others, such as short term flooding, increasing storminess, longer and more frequent hot and cold spells, will give rise to significant social and economic consequences and the meteorological industry could potentially make a significant contribution to their management. But the charges levied by the National Meteorological Services (NMS), the custodians of climate data, for access to those data, are preventing this in many cases by making the resulting value-added contributions uneconomic.

“Climate” is actually the historical, integrated effect of “weather” and establishing what the past climate was and the current climate is requires the analysis of what are, on a day to day basis, mainly normal weather observations. Some observations are made specifically to allow the climate to be more fully defined than would be possible using only routine weather observations but often these “climate” observations are available to and used by the NMS for routine weather work as well. Which makes it all the more strange that some of these same NMS do not make such observations available to the Private Sector in real time. Moreover, when they are eventually made available as “climate data”, the NMS often charge huge sums of money for access to them.

It is true that data on which climate records are eventually based require additional quality control and computation beyond that which is normal for purely “weather” observations. A “daily” average temperature, for example, may be compiled from several hourly temperature measurements but in the age of automatic observing, processing and communication, this hardly justifies either preventing real time access to the original observational data or, when access to the climate data is available, the massive costs that are often charged for them. To obtain the full set of daily average temperatures (that is one number per day!) from a single station in Latvia for ten years (not at all an unusual requirement for the simplest climatological task) costs about 27,010 Euro! And this is for PSI for which the industry and the citizens, through their taxes, have already paid!

Is it any wonder that the information economy in weather and climate is growing at less than 2% per annum in Europe and is less than half the size of that of the USA?

[1] Ozgul A, et. Al. The dynamics of phenotypic change and the shrinking sheep of St Kilda. Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1173668