Guest Blogs

Swedish government agencies keep registers and other information resources of high quality in electronic form. These information resources are being re-used. There is an information industry in Sweden, built on re-use of public sector information. However, re-use is almost exclusively limited to information from national agencies, despite the fact that there is an enormous potential in re-use of municipal (local and regional) information.

Local and regional municipalities collect information in their own areas of responsibility, e.g. zoning, education, child care, health care, public transportation, and municipal road administration. They also collect statistical information about citizens and businesses. During our work with the implementation of the PSI-Directive in Sweden, we tried to find good examples of re-use of municipal information. This was even more important since a survey made by the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce indicated that knowledge of the PSI-Directive was very low among municipalities. We also assumed that re-users would be interested in the potential for re-use of municipal information.

To our surprise, we found very few such examples. With the help of the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions we managed to find some examples of re-use of geographical information. During the formal consultation procedure of the draft PSI-law, some more examples emerged. All of these examples of re-use were in the area of geographical information. As for re-use of other information, we found no examples at all of re-use. Neither did we receive any examples of potential re-use.

It may not be surprising that the municipalities themselves had difficulties seeing the potential for re-use. Even more surprising was the weak interest from the re-user community. Commercial re-users are addressing to a nation wide clientele. Local information is of lesser interest, since the potential clients are fewer. This seems like a rational argument. In other member states, however, municipal and regional information is being re-used commercially and non-commercially, for instance in the UK and Italy. I suspect that the lack of interest on the part of the established, industrial size, re-users at least in part is a consequence of lack of creativity.

Municipal information may therefore provide an opportunity for smaller companies and new entrepreneurs to enter the market for PSI. New entrepreneurs may not be able to compete with established market actors in the market for mass information such as business information. But they can certainly compete with the “old dragons” when it comes to creativity and exploitation of new opportunities. I would be surprised if in a few years, Sweden does not have a number of new services, provided by small companies or single entrepreneurs and based on municipal information.

A few weeks ago, I delivered a presentation entitled From Transparency to Re-Use at the annual meeting of the PSI-Alliance. I, along with many others, have always assumed that transparency and re-use of PSI facilitate each others. In a discussion with one of the conference participants, I came to realise that our tradition of transparency may in fact be an obstacle to re-use, rather than an enabler. I have come to realise that, although you cannot really have re-use without transparency, a tradition of transparency does not necessarily promote re-use of information. In the case Sweden, it could even be argued that a 200 year tradition of transparency constitute a major challenge to the improvement of conditions for commercial re-use.

The primary purpose of the PSI-Directive is to promote and facilitate commercial re-use of public sector information (PSI). For that purpose, public sector bodies are expected, and possibly obligated by law, to make information available to those wishing to access it. The primary purpose of transparency and freedom of information (FOI) is to ensure that citizens can hold officials and elected politicians accountable. For that purpose, public sector bodies are expected, and obligated by law, to make information available to those wishing to access it. The connection between the two seems obvious.

Sweden has a long tradition of transparency. Since 1766 public documents have been available to the public. Public sector information is accessible by law. The importance of transparency is universally accepted among Swedish officials, and there is a culture of openness. Officials, in most cases, do not feel that they “own” information, and they do not feel uncomfortable about information being distributed to others. Since 1766 citizens have been granted the right to reproduce public documents. The government does (with few exceptions) not claim copyright, and in most cases public sector information can be re-used without limitations. In that sense the tradition of transparency does indeed pave the way for commercial re-use.

However, the tradition of transparency may also prove a pedagogical challenge to re-use in the sense of the PSI-directive. The arguments for transparency are easy to sell. No-one is against democracy, or against tracking down corruption. The importance of re-use, let alone commercial re-use, is not as easy to sell to public servants. It is easier to convince public sector bodies to make information available to serve democracy, than to convince them to make information available to companies that want to make money.

Freedom of information does work in Sweden. Information is accessible even in practice and is being used by journalists and others. We cannot play the transparency/democracy card to convince agencies to make more information available, and to make it available in new forms. Public sector bodies have to be convinced of the importance of improving conditions for re-users, which is a lot more difficult.

In fact, facilitating re-use may even be perceived as a threat to transparency, even though there is no such conflict. The regulation concerning transparency is so well established in Sweden, that any changes may be perceived as threatening the very foundations of freedom of information. Such scepticism is understandable. It does, after all, stem from a genuine concern for democracy and the rule of law. On the less positive side, such scepticism may be a major pedagogical obstacle that has to be overcome by those promoting re-use.

To summarise, transparency and re-use do indeed facilitate each other, and re-use without transparency is unthinkable. Nevertheless, a country with a weaker tradition of transparency may actually have an advantage over those with a long established transparency system, at least from a pedagogical point of view.

July 1^st 2010 the new Swedish PSI (Public Sector Information) Act entered into force, and Sweden has now fulfilled its obligations according to the PSI Directive. One of the drivers behind the recent changes in Sweden has been the infringement process, which the Commission has launched against Sweden.

In his blog post of 4 December 2009 Javier Hernández-Ros of the European Commission claimed that infringement proceedings are an opportunity for the member states. Although no member state could possibly aspire to be the object of an infringement proceeding, I tend to agree with Mr Hernández-Ros. I would like to devote my first blog post to a few comments on this subject from a Swedish point of view.

The Commission has launched infringement processes against a small number of member states. One of them is Sweden, which came as a surprise to many. Sweden has a long history of transparency and access to documents as well as a long history of commercial re-use of public information. There is a market for public information, and there is a prosperous information industry.

Since everything worked fairly well in Sweden, the general feeling was that there was no need for a thorough analysis of the implications of the PSI Directive. Accordingly, the issue did not get much attention in the administration. The primary result of the infringement proceeding was to draw attention to the question of PSI.

The infringement proceedings brought PSI to the attention of politicians and ministries. A cross agency task force was set up with the mandate to draft new legislation to ensure full compliance with the directive. The result of the task force was a draft law, which, after a formal consultation process and re-drafting was passed by the Parliament, and entered into force 1 July 2010.

The attention caused by the infringement proceedings also prompted activities by agencies. At first, agencies were sceptical and worried. Some claimed that the PSI rules did not apply to them. Some claimed that it would be very difficult to comply with the directive and the new law. As agencies have started using their capacity and their creativity to find new ways of organising their activities, scepticism has turned to interest, maybe even enthusiasm. Few drastic re-arrangements have taken place, and agencies are less worried. We are on the path to a better understanding of the needs of re-users and how to better accommodate those needs.

The infringement proceedings also prompted activities that resulted in new knowledge. The task force made a survey of revenues from fees for re-use of information, and of legislation regarding such fees. The survey confirmed that the fees applied are in compliance with the directive. In addition to this, the survey has given the government an overview of these revenues that it did not have before.

Although no country could wish to be the object of infringement proceedings, the process against Sweden has indeed brought attention to PSI re-use. It has also prompted activities which would otherwise not have taken place. All in all, as suggested by Mr Hernández-Ros, the infringement proceedings provided “an opportunity to prepare better legislation, building on what we know today”.

Several years ago, I attended a conference at the Berlin Max Planck Institute. This was the time Larry Lessig was in residence in Berlin, so it must have been more or less June 2004. On the occasion, as you may expect, we discussed Creative Commons licenses. There we debated what I since always describe as the input/output issue.

Here are more or less the terms of the question. Suppose we have an artist who wants to release music under an open license, e.g. Creative Commons attribution. Maybe the artist is the writer and composer of the lyrics and of the music; maybe is also the performer; and may be also is doing the digital recording. In this case the artist probably is in total control of all the creative items which he or she sets out to license under CC. However, it may also well be that some of the inputs, be they the lyrics, the music, the performance, the sound recording, come from another person and entity. If this is the case, then the licensor might wish to make sure that she or he is in fact is authorized to license also these items by their respective right holders; and, more to the point, may wish to make sure that the authorization is specifically referred to a release under CC.

In Berlin, we also started to think in terms of making available to the general public information held by public institutions. Indeed, our host was the Max Planck Institute responsible for the History of Science; and it is well known that this is an institution which greatly cares for dissemination of information, data and knowledge among the public. This was probably the first time I started to consider PSI issues.

A lot of the material which was candidate to dissemination was (and is) in the public domain. However, the input/output issue cropped up also in that connection. It was considered that the process itself of digitization may lead to creation of IP protected works or materials. Consider the metadata: the blueprint (or format) for arranging them probably is creative most of the times. Even short descriptions of an item may attract copyright protection. No doubt, once these metadata are systematically arranged and individually retrievable, a data base is obtained; which means that possibly the sui generis right is triggered. So, to make available under an open license a final product incorporating material in the public domain plus metadata, one should wonder whether authority to make available metadata under open terms is available to begin with.

Another time I had to consider this constellation of facts was a major Italian digitization project, undertaken by an Italian public body and intended to be coordinated at the EU level with other Member State projects. Here again the input/output issue cropped up; and was complicated by the fact that the public body was cooperating with other local bodies and nationwide quasi-public institutions.

These situations do have a number of common features. How are the individual items created which go into the final, complex product, consisting of the original works plus any IP protected data which may be generated in the process of digitization? One possibility is that the job is done by employees of the digitizing institution. Also outside consultants may be employed for this purpose. It is also possible that the job is outsourced, that this that an outside contractor digitizes, creates the metadata, writes the program to make the content and the ancillary information available and so forth. Now, if this is the case, the digitizing institution should make sure that it has been granted an authorization for each and all the inputs which go into the final product by each of the persons or entities which created the individual inputs; and more specifically it should make sure that this authorization extends to the making available of the individual item under a free license.

This is not always a foregone conclusion. Indeed, we should consider that dealings in copyright protected works are based on a doctrine which continental Europeans describe as Zweckübertragung and common law lawyers describe as “divisibility”. This doctrine implies that copyright is made out of a bundle of exclusive rights; that each of these rights is independent of the others; and that the transfer, be it by assignment or license, of one right does not imply that also other rights are transferred. A transfer in gross of all the sticks of the bundle would not have effect; the parties must specify which rights they intend to transfer. If there is not enough by way of specificity, this means that the parties intended to transfer only the rights which were indispensible for the purpose the parties envisaged at the time of the contract.

This principle applies to copyright; but we know that also software is protected by copyright and moreover we may expect that several of the rules to be adopted in connection with data base rights are likely to be developed by case law on the basis of an analogy with copyright principles.

Now, application of this doctrine in the pre-digital environment makes a lot of sense. After all, most of the time, the creator is the weaker party; and it does make sense that he or she should not part with rights unless he or she has specifically accepted to transfer them (and has obtained consideration for this).

However, application of the doctrine may create uncertainty if applied to digitization projects and more generally to PSI. What happens if the employee of the digitizing institution has not signed away his or her rights (on the inputs) providing that he or she authorizes that these are incorporated into a larger product and that this product is disseminated via an open license? What happens if the outside contractor has not signed away its rights with sufficient specificity to comply with the doctrine of Zweckübertragung? Of course it may be argued that the scope of the authorization for the inputs may be inferred from the fact that the creator of the input did know what the contribution was intended for.

This is a solution to the input/output problem which may make sense in many, if not all cases. However, it is also possible to see the issue as one in which ideally a default rule might be created by legislation. It would be sufficient that legislatures spelled out that, any time a employee or an outside contractor works for a public body and the purpose of this public body directly or indirectly includes the dissemination of knowledge, data or information, then any transfer or license from the employee or outside contractor to the public body is presumed to include authorization to make available the input downstream, individually or in combination with other works or materials, under an open license. This is an area which is within the jurisdiction of each Member State, as it usually is the case in connection with rules on ownership. So this is the level in which a solution may be proposed.

This proposal was presented to the Italian government several years ago (in 2006); but it never was taken up. Maybe the time has come to think about it again. In the meantime, it may make sense to look at the contracts with all the parties involved in digitization projects or the creation of PSI data sets, to make sure that the output may be released openly to the outside world without the nasty surprise that some of the inputs which go into it are not clearly available on open terms.

In my first post, I promised to give some thought on the issue of the different options available to a public administration which intends to enable access to public sector information. Let us take a specific example; and one which links to the idea that we should give priority to exploring what happens at the local, rather than national level. Everybody knows what treasuries of art and culture may be found in most Italian towns. It may happen that a Region or municipality may provide funding to digitize images and texts it holds in some of its museum archives and libraries. Here I think about Sicily, which, I am told, unveiled late in April an initiative exactly in this field. Now, we are talking here only of works which are out of copyright. So, if for a moment we leave out intellectual property right which may be generated during the digitization process, to which I will come in the next blog, we are dealing with content which basically is free.

The question may arise: what is the optimal license which the local administration may choose to release this content?

In this regard, we might start to consider that a wise local administrator may have in mind an approach which intuitively leads her o him to discard the possibility of authorizing commercial re-use of this kind of content. The idea behind this initial reaction might be as follows. Public money has been spent on digitization of content; now, all is fine and well if digitized content is disseminated as widely as possible to enable study, research, entertainment and the like. But enabling these goals is clearly possible even if the authorization to access and re-use is limited to non commercial uses. Conversely, it might be argued, it does not make sense that content digitized with taxpayers’ money is appropriated by profit making entities to build on it a proprietary product and service and sell on the market goods and services based on it.

This line of argument is plausible at first glance, but probably misguided if we stop to think a bit further and this on at least two accounts.

First, we should consider the concept of chain of authorizations. Non profit institutions, like Wikipedia and other aggregators of information and cultural content, undoubtedly contribute a great deal to the dissemination of knowledge, information, culture. However, they do so because the content they make available is accessible downstream without restrictions; the reason of the great success of Wikipedia and the like organizations is that they make anything they put together available to anybody without strings attached. To do so, however, Wikipedia has to make sure the content it incorporates is totally free to begin with; the flipside of the coin is that Wikipedia cannot incorporate content which would otherwise be splendid in complementing or illustrating its store of knowledge because it comes with restrictions. Now, if the Sicilian digital content was made available only for non-commercial re-uses, Wikipedia could not incorporate it, because the content would carry strings attached which are incompatible with Wikipedia’s modus operandi.

Second, we should consider that, once digitization costs are incurred, it does not make any difference whether the re-user makes a profit from re-use. No marginal cost is incurred because there is an additional re-user. If he or she is smart enough to create a business model which enables her or him to combine this input with other inputs and make money out this, nice for him. Nothing is taken away from the public.

Of course, there would be a disadvantage to the public if the re-user is able to obtain monopoly or even market power through the use of digitized content created by public funds. This may indeed happen in a number of ways. This unwanted outcome would result if content digitized by public money were made available on terms of exclusivity. But this is a good reason to avoid exclusivity, not commercial use. It is also possible that the re-user combines publicly funded digitized content with proprietary content; and secures a dominant position on the strength of the combination of the two complementary items. Economists would suggest that, if this is the case, there would be an incentive for new entrants to create and offer competitive complementary content; that is, if the publicly funded content is made available to all comers, without exclusivity. Of course, it may also happen that the “powerful” re-user controls so many important complementary assets, that the chances of a competitive challenge are slim. This is a possibility; but it is arguable that this occurrence is an externality which should be taken care by regulation, e.g. by means of antitrust enforcement or by application of the so called doctrine of essential facilities. Indeed, if publicly digitized material were made available only on the condition that it is used non commercially, it might happen that this restriction is more detrimental to firms intending to enter the market that to an entrenched business leader.

Admittedly, this is a very tentative line of reasoning. However, we are in a situation where a large enough number of licenses for public sector information have been adopted and used. So the time has come to do some empirical research on what is done; and some theoretical hypothesis on what may constitute best practice. At this stage, we should start to ask whether licenses restricting re-use to non commercial uses are superior. Maybe the line of reasoning I tried to sketch out can be a starting point.

As a rule, when we think about the benefits which may derive from opening up access and reuse of Public Sector Information, we mainly have in mind the national and global dimension. Maps, geo-data, environmental data, laws, regulations and case law and the like usually come in blocks tailored at the national level. Moreover, it can be easily imagined the extent to which the value of the same data could be enhanced if they could be seamlessly stitched together to form data sets encompassing all the twenty seven member States of the EU. Much work and effort is indeed being put into making these developments possible.

It would however seem that there is another side of the coin. It may well be argued that, when it comes to access and reuse of PSI, also the regional dimension matters. And this not only because the sub-national dimension is often the smallest unit of national and international sets of data; but also because the local dimension shows the uniqueness of each region composing the national and international framework. This approach as to be considered as a strength in countries like Italy or Germany, but also in countries where government institutions tend to be very centralized such as France or England. In particular, the case for the relevance of the regional dimension may be made at several levels.

First, also regional and sub-regional entities and public administrations of provinces and townships are repositories of massive amounts of data. These may be in many regards different from the ones held at the national level; but they may be as important. In fact, data about resources for travel and tourism (accommodations, local fairs, local events and the like) are typically to be found at municipality and regional level.

This is true not only for data which may serve for economic and business purposes. Indeed, access to PSI may also be appropriately understood as a tool for democratic participation. Some issues may have a high priority in the national debate; but often the data necessary to frame the discussion are likely to be held at the local level. One example relevant for Italy is the contentious matter of the teaching of religion in primary and secondary schools. While the teaching of Catholic religion is the default option for all students, they may also opt out; a special funding is provided by the Ministry of Finances to pay the salaries of teachers giving classes in subjects other than Catholic religion for students who have opted out. To find out whether this option is in fact available, information should be accessible as to the number of requests for funding made by schools, as to the requests accepted and as to the amount of funding actually disbursed. Typically this data is not available at the central level, because the Ministry of Finances only knows the aggregate amount of funding it has allocated for this specific purpose and the sums disbursed by it to the each Region. More analytical data about each municipality and each school are available only at the Regional Schools Department (Ufficio Scolastico Regionale). Access to this pool of non-aggregated data, while essential to see what is actually happening on the ground, may be very difficult to obtain in the absence of regional policies as to access and reuse of the data held by the regional administrations.

Second, the data available in the vaults of municipalities, provinces, regions and the administrations and entities linked to them or located in a given area may have characteristics which have distinctive advantages over the corresponding national and supra-national data sets. Speleology is a discipline concerned with caves, cave systems and pathways across them; it also is an exploration activity which attracts a remarkably large number of people interested in the experience of negotiating extraordinary pathways. While a catalogue of sites of speleological interest may well be set up at the national level, updated information on the current conditions of each pathway is more likely to be available at the local level, particularly if the institutional design gives responsibility to local institutions. An appropriate access and reuse of this information is likely to have an impact on the development of tourism, since it encourages specific sport activities in particular areas and related security measures. The impact is likely to extend to collateral touristic activity, as underground areas often are part of the environmental cultural heritage. Additionally investment in this sector has an impact on the development of the scientific research, in particular, ground and water geology, physics, but also biology and archeobiology.

Third, the incentives for collecting the data and making them accessible and reusable may under given circumstances and in some regards be greater at the local level than at national or super-national levels. This is so because at the lower level two very relevant forces may come into play: the notion of comparative attractiveness of a given territory or geographical area vis-à-vis other areas and the operation of the mechanism of regulatory competition.

Let us look at them in turn. European citizens are not known to be as mobile as their American counterparts. However, more and more people, particularly on completion of their study careers, make a decision on the place where to start their work life; this decision may in turn be confirmed or altered over the subsequent period of time. For their part, businesses and capital always look for the most attractive location from which to operate; and this has become an ever more important factor as the European business environment becomes increasingly more dynamic and open. The theory of local finance has taught us that institutions are in the business of supplying not only infrastructure but also that peculiar public good which are the specific rules which govern the communities around them. A local institution may attract people and businesses in many ways: not only by lowering tax rates, which may be a matter outside its jurisdictional mandate, but also by providing goods and services which may either enhance business opportunities or increase the quality of life, or both. Access and reuse of public sector information may be one important factor both in terms of business opportunities and of quality of life which, over the years, may make a given territory more attractive. Here we are not only talking about more aficionados of speleology flocking to an area which provides extensive information on cave system pathways and their safety as opposed to a neighboring area where the corresponding information is not available or scanty; we are also talking about the feeling individuals may have (or not have) of being giving a chance in being engaged in an informed way in connection with policy choices made at the local level, e.g. on the issue of availability of funding for the teaching of subjects other than the prevailing Catholic religion.

Regulatory competition is the next step. If I may provide an example drawn from my own experience, then I may mention the story of a help desk set up with the funding of the Piedmont Region (SeLiLi) to provide young artists and SMEs with basic information about the operation of free licenses, such as Creative Commons, to disseminate their works. This help desk has been operating for several years now; has proved to be helpful to many of the persons and entities making inquiries. Of course we do not have a yardstick to measure whether and to which extent the service has proved effective in making the Piedmont region more attractive to artists and SMEs than other locations. For sure the initiative has attracted the attention of other Regions. Sardinia has moved in the same direction (with help from the Piedmontese originators) and there is talk about neighboring Regions joining. Now, for sure this help desk is not strictly about Public Sector Information; but still the episode may give an idea about a mechanism whereby what is perceived as a valuable contribution by the institutions in a given territory to the welfare of the citizens residing there tends to be imitated elsewhere, particularly if the balance of benefits and costs is positive. After all, public administrators stand to be reelected.

I spent some time to explore the relevance of the regional dimension because the intuition that, as far as access and reuse of PSI is concerned, the regional dimension matters is at the basis of the EVPSI project which I coordinate. The project, which started November 2009, is financed by the Piedmont Region; its partners are the Department of Legal Studies of Torino Law School, the Nexa Center for Internet & Society of the Politecnico di Torino, the Fondazione Rosselli, and the Eastern Piedmont University.

In short, the project is about fleshing out the intuition I tried to sketch out; and to do so from a legal, technological and economic perspective. Of course, the project spans over a vast number of areas. Being a lawyer myself, and one which has been mainly dealing with Intellectual Property for the last, well, thirty six years, I cannot say that I have a detailed knowledge and understanding of all the nooks and crannies my much younger and ever so bright colleagues are exploring at the time, even though for sure I am trying to catch up on them. In any event, we are encouraged by the statement in the Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions A Digital Agenda for Europe, Brussels, 19.05.2010 Com (2010) 245, at 7, that the success of the Digital Agenda will require a sustained level of commitment also at the regional level.

There are a few issues on which we have been debating extensively and which might be worth looking at even at this early stage. For the moment I will just mention them. The first one has to do with the choice between the different options available to a public administration wishing to license data sets to which it has allowed and enabled access; here we are particularly concerned whether the terms of the license should include a restriction to non commercial uses and on the policy implications of this particular aspect of the license. Of course, we may expect the Piedmont Region to be especially interested in this set of questions, as they adopted guidelines on access and reuse last year and are currently reviewing them. The second issue nicely fits my background and deals with one aspect of the intersection of access and reuse of PSI with Intellectual property. The licenses which I was mentioning concern the output: under which terms data sets in possession of a given public body are made accessible and reusable. There is however also an input side of the coin: not always the information is totally generated within the public body itself, so that there are chain-of-authorizations questions. Even if the data sets are generated within the public body, clearances may still be needed, e.g. when there are contributions by third parties commissioned by the public body. Even employees may retain rights, given the default rules governing transfer of copyright and neighboring rights. What should then be done on the input side to make sure that the public administration has full title to the data sets it disseminates? A third issue has to do with Public Private Partnerships, or PPP, such as are usually involved in digitization of libraries, museums and archives. I will come back to each of these in the next posts.

In my previous posting I promised to go into more detail on elements I think are useful when writing a business case for opening up PSI.

Writing such a case is useful for two things. First to help make decisions about the allocation of resources in your government institution, and second to clarify for yourself what should be the things that get most of your attention.

This because a generic business case for open PSI cannot be made in a way that is relevant for your government institution. The only somewhat generic case to be made for open PSI is the current cost of 'adding openness' at the end of your process, because of the FOIA requests you are receiving, in comparison to the cost of designing your processes in a way that creates open PSI by default. In all other instances it needs to be more tangible than that to be able to both convince colleagues, and help you plan the actions to get it done.

Always start any business case with the statement that opening up PSI is the law. It's not a question of whether you should do it, you already MUST do it. So a business case is needed not to provide the rationale for doing it, but to provide the rationale for how to do it, why it is useful to your institution beyond the law, and when to do it. A business case should address why your institution WANTS to open up PSI and do so according to the open government data principles, and what is needed so you CAN do it. To make clear what you mean with open PSI and open government data, make sure to include the open government data principles.

If you look at the list of underlying assumptions hidden in generic 'business case' requests, you can now juxtapose each of them with a more constructive approach. I would make these juxtapositions explicit in your business case. I hope the following paragraphs help you in building your case this way.

1 Connect your open PSI business case to your institution's policy goals (in place of generic case)

What policy goals do you have that match different possible areas where open PSI is an opportunity? What can open PSI mean to delivering on those policy goals?

What tasks are you already performing for stakeholders connected to those areas of opportunity where open PSI might help to improve delivery of those tasks? How are you currently addressing your stakeholders existing information needs? E.g. the Dutch Ministry of Education finds that by providing standard information products as open PSI, the demand for specific information products declines, while the remaining specific questions are easier to answer with the standard information products as starting point and building blocks. Thinking in terms of your organization's goals also helps you focus on the PSI you actually need to open. This focus on both goals and the PSI needed for it makes it possible to create a tangible case.

2 Describe the results you're after in terms of those policy goals (in place of trying to know and calculate all returns)

If your policy goal is about increasing participation, what is the impact of your open PSI plan on participation? And which PSI needs to be open to create that impact? Or if it is about internal efficiency, where will it help save costs (like reducing the amount of work spent on responding to FOIA requests, by making PSI public in reusable format from the start)? Describing your results in terms of your policy goals, avoids the pitfall of trying to describe your results in terms of money only. Also try to word results as the minimum result likely to be realized, in place of trying to quantify the results absolutely which is largely impossible in most situations.

3 Make visible that there will be other results as well (in place of trying to know all returns)

Any opening up of PSI will create effects in multiple places. What those results will be may or may not be easily visible at the start. But it is very well possible to use illustrations of effects of opening up PSI elsewhere to get an indication of what is likely to happen. Including the non-obvious or surprising things. Find examples of effects elsewhere, and compare them to your own context to see how likely it is you will see similar results. The connection to your organisation's policy goals in the point above should be leading though. This is more of a bonus which can help tip the scales. Some good starting points to find examples are this EPSI platform, the US Sunlight Foundation, Open Knowledge Foundation discussion list on open government data, Our Data, and the data.gov.uk or Spanish government data catalogues. It may also be useful to ask your relevant stakeholders what they think they could and would do with the specific open PSI you're aiming at.

4 Make your plan a journey, not an event (in place of a one-off decision, and in place of trying to 'prove' causality between investment and result up front)

As opening up your organization's PSI in reusable ways is a question of when and how, not if (as you must do it anyway), it makes sense to start where that makes most sense, for instance with easily available, non-controversial data sets. Which of those 'easy' datasets do you have whose release you can connect to your organization's goals? Also if those first steps are relatively light-weight, there may not be a big need to justify the effort in the first place. You can perhaps 'just do it'. This makes for great experiments that are not disastrous if anything goes wrong.

Use those first steps to gain experience in dealing with organizational and technological issues involved (things like learning to work with the relevant open standards inside your organization, or how to deal with feedback received on published material). Use those first steps to also measure results both in terms of actual results (downloads, forms of reuse, feedback you got), as well as in terms of what did not happen (no 'mis-use' of data, no negative feedback in the press etc.), and use those measurements to justify the when and how of your next steps.

5 Count costs only if they can be realistically allocated to you (in place of trying to separate all costs involved)

There are a lot of costs that you could count towards your open PSI project, but can just as easily be argued to not be part of your project. The link to your organizational goals is the linking pin here. If your goal is higher participation for instance there will already be people allocated to activities in this field. An open PSI project can be part of their portfolio, without having to count all employee costs towards your project. Also there will be costs that become apparent because of an open PSI project, but are not realistically part of the costs of the project. Think for instance of switching to using open standards for all the PSI in your organization. That is required by law in the Netherlands since 2008, regardless of the fact whether you are going to release that PSI publicly or not. If your organization hasn't switched to open standards yet, and needs to do so to release open PSI, those costs really should not be allocated to your project. Also it may be very well possible to add certain steps of your project to existing efforts, without causing those existing efforts to run up more costs. Where there is less costs, making your case is easier as well as less necessary to convince others (but still very useful to gain insight yourself).

6 Compare costs against previous and other projects (in place of having the investment completely create its own return, outside of any other context)

When you have connected your open PSI project to your organization's policy goals, you can make a comparison of how your projected results and costs, compare to those of other programs and projects aimed at the same organizational goals. It may create a completely different perspective on the relation between investment and result, by showing your case in the context of other work of your organization.

7 Use experience from elsewhere to show which risks are and aren't realistic (in place of trying to list all risks), involve your stakeholders in this (in place of preferring to pass up opportunity)

A number of fears surface every time around open PSI, and with the experience gained by already open PSI there are already good examples out there to help you visualize realistic and unrealistic fears. List those fears and show with examples how they play out, and how they can be dealt with. Such as the notion 'we can't publish this data, because there are errors in it'. In practice (the UK e.g.) we see that the quality of datasets that are published actually increases, both due to feedback as well as because of more attention being given to generating the data in the first place. Such as the notion that 'non-experts will interpret the data wrong', where in practice we see that all kinds of wrong interpretations are out there already, and having the data widely available means more people can point that out, as well as verify for themselves what's right and not. Reduce fears about e.g. privacy violations by choosing your datasets, as well as the aggregation levels involved wisely.

It is I think also important to involve all relevant stakeholders in conversation around this. Some perceived risks are based on assumptions being made about certain stakeholders, without ever having been verified by asking those stakeholders.

When you can't really meet the list of points mentioned, it still doesn't make sense to say 'no', as opening up PSI is still required by law. It means you probably need to look to different organizational goals and different parts of the PSI your organization holds to get started and to make your case. That will help you start in a place that actually will yield results as well as momentum to do more.

Opening up PSI is not merely a technology question, despite it being the law and even if everybody would be prepared to act accordingly already.

There's a range of questions involved, and each of them can be a reason for people to not act. They may be less relevant, or less problematic if you choose your goals and PSI to start with wisely. But keep in mind that all of the following issues will surface at some point in the process, around technology, organizational issues, markets and legal aspects:

Technology: level of knowledge about open standards, what 'reusable' and 'machine-readable' formats actually are and how they are connected to open standards, meta data, consistent ways of publishing PSI.

Organization: where to design publishing of open PSI in your processes, how are you going to handle feedback from outside, how will you monitor reuse so you can learn from those examples, how to stay in dialog with all relevant stakeholders, how to measure the results and impact of your open PSI for your own organization

Markets: ensuring equal access and a level playing field for everyone, licensing (specifying how you deal with government copyright), fees for providing information (soon to be restricted to incremental costs of distribution in the Netherlands) and its impact on a level playing field, defining where you just publish PSI 'as is' and where you want to enrich the info based on one of your own tasks as government institution, monitoring new economic activity generated by your open PSI.

Legal: knowing who is making the decisions about licenses/copyright and withholding PSI from publication based on national interests (security, economy), and communicating those decisions, as well as making sure the reasoning behind those decisions is verifiable.

I hope some of my notions described here help you move forward open PSI and open government data in your government organization!

In my post Being Aware of all Open PSI Stakeholders, I promised to go into the 'business case' for open government data and PSI. And I will. But not before formulating some general caveats when it comes to asking for a business case. We need to know what to ask for first.

The question for the business case for open PSI is sure to arise. My intuition is it will arise primarily as a way to slow the opening up of government down. Especially where there is no political driving force behind open PSI, no leadership on the issue. This is the case in the Netherlands for instance, as well as Denmark, and unlike the UK where the prime minister went on record to say 'let's do it'.

Business cases as means of obstruction

The management instrument business case has a long history of being abused to stop change. Because nobody can really object to the reasonable question to show how necessary investment will bring benefits, it is easily deployed as a means of obstruction in those situations where you know there is probably no clear cut answer to be given up front. At least not phrased in a way that satisfies those asking for a business case.

This because of the assumptions often silently underlying such a request for a business case:

• There is a generic ROI regardless of context;
• The investment is a one-off decision, never a journey of exploration. In other words, it has to be all or nothing.
• It is possible to know all possible returns in advance;
• It is possible to realistically separate costs of investment from your other costs;
• It is possible to reliably calculate the size of each of the possible returns;
• It is possible to reliably list all relevant risks and quantify them;
• We know the exact causal paths from investment to returns;
• The investment needs to create its own return entirely, i.e. it is its own goal and a stand alone thing;
• If anyone of the above items cannot be met, it makes sense to say 'no';
• It is more preferable to pass up on opportunity and do nothing than run the risk of failure. When you don't invest, there's no risk of having to explain disappointing returns or the absence of returns.

Detecting obstruction

It's not that I think business cases are useless per se. If there's a clear cut investment in a specific context and in a specific process, with clear connections to your organizational goals, trying to achieve a well defined (and contained) result, a business case makes a lot of sense. To see how specifically you think a certain action will contribute to your goals, and what the likely factors are that come into play to make sure it will. Business cases make sense when you can ask a pertinent and detailed question. 'Show me the business case for open PSI' is not a pertinent and detailed question like that.

This is why asking 'show me the business case' in such a non-specific way for me is a red flag of obstruction. It is also a temporary thing, I'm sure. In the mid-nineties I was asked for 'the business case for email'. I never saw the answer, but the question soon never came up anymore either. In the past eight years I've been asked a lot for the business case for blogging, social media or web2.0. Those questions are now quickly disappearing as well. I am also sure the generic question for a business case for open PSI will simply disappear when someone in the Dutch government will take leadership on the issue. Because then obstruction means a cost to the person asking for the generic business case, and taking a risk in line with the leadership's view means you're covered as management.

Towards a useful open PSI business case

So can we make a useful business case for open PSI at all? Yes, we can. Should we make a business case for open PSI? Yes, we should, because it will help us as well to choose our actions more effectively.

We just have to realize we need to make the question for the business case more detailed and relevant for any particular government institution. While the PIRA study calculating an EU wide potential value of PSI of tens of billions of Euro's is interesting when seen on an EU scale, it means nothing to any particular government institution facing the decision to invest money to make it happen.

We also need to realize that real innovation, and complex environments such as our societies, bring with them different rules of engagement when it comes to management.

We need to see as well that the decision that we MUST open up our PSI has already been taken by the Dutch government, based on the EU PSI directive, and has been transposed into law. This means any business case needs to address what it is we WANT to do and how, and what is needed so we CAN do it.

In my next posting I will try and outline a template and/or checklist to help you build a business case for open PSI around 'want' and 'can', as related to both the list of assumptions above, as well as the list of possible benefits of PSI and stakeholders involved from the previous posting.

As described in the previous posting Open Government Data in the Netherlands is recognized as important by a growing group of people, and awareness is rising. There is no general policy however to make sure that the law is executed in a pro-active fashion. There is also no political pressure at all to move towards more pro-actively publishing PSI, and certainly not in ways that make PSI machine readable and reusable.

This leads to a fragmented situation, with some institutions doing lots of things to open up PSI, others doing nothing unless forced to. In absence of a driving force in government, it seems important to connect the people who work on open PSI so they may build momentum together. This means not only connecting civil servants who are change agents in their respective branches of government, but also making sure people are involved from all areas that are likely to benefit from more open PSI.

From my experience in different settings and discussions on open PSI, it is very easy to forget to take some groups of stakeholders into account. I've been in several discussions on the potential economic value to be derived from open PSI, where the focus was only on existing market players, and the notion that new people could create new economic activity altogether never came up. So it's easy to have some blind spots, and it's why I try to keep track of the list of things open PSI might be beneficial for. That way it becomes easier to keep track of the type of stakeholders we must try and involve in the discussion.

Some of those areas are:

• Transparency (of government processes and our democracy), connected to civil servants, activists, ngo's, MPs and journalists)
• Impact measurement of policies, connected to civil servants, journalists, businesses, local governments, citizens involved in these policies etc.
• Participation (by doing/creating apps, not just by talking), connected citizens, activists, organizations.
• Empowerment, connected citizens (by using information to make better choices)
• New knowledge and insights (by connecting data as more data is different), connected to data specialists, semantic web, academic community
• New economic activity, connected to existing companies and entrepreneurs, as well as new entrepreneurs and individual coders/programmers
• Real innovation (things we can't foresee), connected to groups of 'tinkerers' and coders, as well as individual citizens
• Internal efficiency (exchange of PSI between parts of government, speeding up internal processes, better information sharing), connected to civil servants and the government institutes they work in.
• Internal effectively (gaining more insight into the workings of government as a whole, in stead of just for your part of it), connected to civil servants and the government institutes they work in.
• Better public service, and new public services, connected to citizens.

I am sure there are more items to add to this list, as well as groups of people I have not mentioned. The main point for me, however, is to think of open PSI as a general resource, as a type of data-infrastructure even. That way we can check ourselves every time we find ourselves talking about just one specific use case or one specific stakeholder. It is important to keep an open eye to all the different use cases and stakeholders involved to be able to realize the full potential of open PSI. In a next posting the 'business case' for open PSI will be discussed in more detail.

Last year a session took place in Amsterdam where coders and civil servants met up for a day of discussion and building open government data based applications. It was during one of the first presentations that something happened that to me sums up the entire current situation around Open Government Data in the Netherlands quite well.

Someone from the Ministry of Education started his talk explaining that 'in our Ministry we act from the principle that everything is to be made public unless there are reasons not to.' This earned him cheers and applause from the audience. At the same time, via Twitter, came another response: 'How nice he promises to actually do what the law says he must.'

Between these two responses, the applause and the remark 'but that's the law', lies I think the entire story of Open Government Data in the Netherlands.

Yes, the legal picture is pretty clear at first glance. The EU PSI Directive of 2003 has been translated into law (WOB) which describes both a pro-active way of making PSI public as well as a way for people to do 'freedom of information' requests. Exclusive contracts for access to PSI have been done away with. A 2009 court decision made sure we all understand that government cannot claim rights under the database rights law and base conditions of re-use on them. The use of open standards is mandatory since April 2008.

At the same time this is also where government institutions end up in a grey area. This because they make different decisions on whether or not to publish PSI pro-actively or not, and act differently in how they deal with copyright and privacy aspects as well as their assessment of how the release of PSI will or will not have impact on existing market parties. Each government institution, in absence of a national guideline, decides on their own if and how to publish PSI. This opens the door for fear based and risk averse reflexes with civil servants. Because of the differences in the resulting decisions taken, it also creates a very confusing picture for citizens regarding the availability and re-use of PSI.

A couple of examples to illustrate this. The national trade register is kept by the Chamber of Commerce. By law this is a public database. Yet, when Google plots this database onto their maps, revealing the home addresses of Dutch celebrities who have their business registered on their private address, MPs ask questions about this 'breach of privacy'. Yet, when someone builds a way to search and display the trade register in a faster and more useful way, the Chamber of Commerce first sends a cease and desist letter claiming database rights on this public register.

The ministry for agriculture provides information on all EU farm subsidies in the Netherlands on their website. Yet, when UK based Farmsubsidy.org starts scraping that information, their traffic gets blocked (during office hours). All technical information on cars is made public and searchable by license plate, yet when you build a mobile application that automatically queries that information, your requests get blocked.

The ministry of transport publishes a lot of traffic-related data but to be able to download you must register first. Other offices provide data with different licenses attached to different parts without that being indicated clearly in the dataset, or provide access only to representations and interpretations of the data and not the raw data itself. Or instances where data gets provided in several standards, just none of them open standards as mandated since April 2008. Or where a list of all public buildings is available but it's only half complete, and internally the relevant government organization is not able to determine who made that list in the first place, nor who is maintaining it.

So while there are a lot of promising efforts to pro-actively publish information there are marked differences and inconsistencies in the way government institutions do this. Which is why a civil servant, such as the one at the start, gets a round of applause when he promises to do it 'right', and why others at the same time point to the fact that that should be the norm really.

I am optimistic however and think this period of confusion is temporary. Lots of change agents within all parts of government are making headway to more pro-actively publishing PSI in a reusable way. Both by pushing for more PSI being made available, and by taking technological steps to make that easier.

Also a new law is in preparation that will end a large part of the confusion, as it will say two important things: First, that anything the government publishes will have no copyright conditions attached to it. A first notion of what this means is already apparent at the new Rijksoverheid.nl website, aimed to be the national single access point for PSI, which carries a so-called CC0 license. Second, that any PSI provided against a cost, can only carry with it the incremental cost of distribution. For digital distribution this basically means at no cost. This second item by the way is a return to what was already in place and removed when the EU PSI directive was translated into law.

Finally I would like to see that in practice publication of PSI gets designed into the processes of all government bodies right from the start. It is a lot of work to make PSI publishable at the end of a process, or when a citizen puts in a freedom of information request. Currently government subsidies are used to help people file those requests, and that's an irony government can easily address.

Public Administrations and public sector bodies generate, collect and process a large amount of information that can be re-used for commercial or non commercial purposes.

The private sector can make use of this opportunity to generate benefits by creating new value-added services and products based on public sector information. In this same way, citizens and not-for-profit organizations can re-use public sector information and design new services and applications for their specific needs and interests.

In addition, the re-use of public sector information offers the citizenship the chance to improve their level of information and knowledge on public institutions’ activities, turning them into more transparent and accessible institutions.

In this context, in recent years a new culture of re-use is growing increasingly stronger and has led to the birth and consolidation of civil society platforms that are tapping the social value potential of public sector information.

As good examples of these civil society platforms, we may mention, inter alia, projects like "MySociety.org” in the United Kingdom, the German association "OpenData Network", France's "Libertic" or, in Spain, the Association for the Promotion and Dissemination of Public Resources "Pro Bono Publico", whose main objective is the promotion of PSI re-use benefits.

Pro Bono Publico is taking different innovative actions and, in a very short time, has contributed to an increased interest on PSI re-use in social networks like Twitter. Among these activities the parlio.org initiative is worth a special mention – it consists in a free software tool that develops applications based on information from the Basque Parliament. Another Pro Bono initiative is the competition "AbreDatos Challenge 2010", in which participants compete to design the best citizen service based on PSI in a maximum time of 48 hours. During the 17th and 18th April, contest participants, grouped into teams of up to four people, will need all their inventiveness to develop an application based on PSI reuse.

In short: citizens' initiatives such as Pro Bono, whose aim is to promote the culture of openness and re-use of public sector information, play an essential role in raising the awareness of citizens, private sector and public administrations regarding the benefits of PSI reuse in Spain.

The Spanish Presidency of the European Union, in collaboration with the European Commission and ECLAC (Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean), organized in La Granja de San Ildefonso (Segovia, Spain) during the 15^th and 16^th March the V European Union (EU) - Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) Ministerial Forum on the Information Society, entitled "Digital Content for a Digital Society".

As its main objective, the forum served to facilitate the exchange of experiences, perspectives and objectives of Information Society public policies on both sides of the Atlantic.

Nowadays, Information Society policies are in a crucial moment, since both, the EU and Latin America and the Caribbean, are designing new plans in this area, namely the European “Granada Strategy” and the Latin “eLAC2010”. In this context, the participants of the forum looked through the recent public policies in this field and discussed the needs and priorities for future digital programmes, in order to, take into account of the specificities of each region, reduce the digital divide and foster economic growth.

The conclusions of the meeting were adopted by the Ministers and heads of delegations as the “Declaration of La Granja”. This Declaration emphasizes the role of information and communication technologies (ICT) in driving productivity and economic growth, the management of scarce resources and the creation of stable employment and recognizes the urgent need to reduce the digital divide and to help developing countries to fully benefit from ICTs.

All participating countries agreed to highlight the value of ICT as a crucial element in guaranteeing welfare and quality of life in different areas such as education, culture, healthcare, e-government, work, energy and environmental issues. In this context, during the Forum it was pointed out that the public authorities are required to respond in a dynamic way to the new demands, to promote investment and innovation, to guarantee citizens’ rights to enjoying the benefits of the digital age, to ensure the security and privacy on the network and to protect digital content creators’ rights.

In this sense, the Declaration of La Granja establishes the need to move towards universal broadband access and a dynamic regulation that encourages investment and innovation as some of the most significant policy objectives. It also notes the shared responsibility of governments, private sector and civil society in promoting actions to foster online safety and protect privacy. In addition, the text highlights the growing value of digital content and the opportunities the Internet provides to its users to create and distribute digital content and new services.

Moreover, the text calls upon public authorities to increase their use of ICTs so as to provide a better service to citizens and to enhance openness and transparency, thus promoting the participation of citizens in public life. In particular, the text of the Declaration emphasizes the benefits of the Internet and the web 2.0 for Administrations, users and the private sector.

The Declaration also mentions the need for governments and governmental entities to stimulate openness and access to public data, in order to promote its re-use and to enable the creation of new services for citizens and businesses. The text also encourages public authorities to make reusable information available to citizens and businesses in an easily accessible form.

Consequently, the Declaration of La Granja establishes the promotion of public sector information re-use and, more specifically, the need to improve the availability of public information by electronic means and accessible formats, as a shared political objective of the EU, Latin America and the Caribbean, hence, endorsing a priority promoted, among others, by the Aporta Project since its inception.

Over the past year, public sector information (PSI) re-use has been gaining momentum. Information and Communication Technologies, headed by the Internet, have changed access to public sector information and data and have opened new ways for its re-use, providing more opportunities for small-sized companies which develop new products and services.

Fully engaging the public sector on this issue remains a challenge. It is highly convenient to continue to work on policies that make the process of re-use as simple as possible and it is also important that the legal framework promotes re-use of PSI. In order to develop the market of re-use, several important issues such as the type of information that can be re-used, the process of how this information is delivered to the public, the conditions under which this information is provided or the prices this data is subject to should be addressed.

Spain, following the EC Directive, with the idea of creating a framework that encourages re-use, has established a minimum set of rules for a fair, proportional and non-discriminatory framework for re-use.

The 37/2007 Law (http://www.aporta.es/c/document_library/get_file?uuid=28c02272-f4a6-4090-b375-d10b87299e92&groupId=10128) (PSI Law) on re-use of PSI allows each public organization to decide whether it authorizes or denies the re-use of its information, whilst, at the same time, it underlines the social and economic value of PSI. The PSI law implements the Directive in all the territory providing a minimum of standards across Spain, which may be developed at the different governmental layers.

The Law establishes an ample definition of public sector information which covers not only traditional documents but also data sets. It defines the types of conditions under which re-use can be authorized and it sets the rules applicable to charging. Both process and conditions for re-use have to be established in a transparent and open manner. For example, the Law foresees, inter alia, the possibility of making PSI freely available under no restrictions. Moreover, the Law establishes that public administrations should make re-use easier by creating lists and indexes accessible online, with the aim to facilitate the identification of public information resources.

The Law specially pretends to encourage the re-use of public digital contents promoting the use of electronic means, inter alia, for the processing of requests for re-use. As a complementary action, Spain has developed the Aporta Project. During the last year Aporta has developed intensive communication and awareness-raising actions about the legal framework of the re-use process focused on public employees as well as private entrepreneurs. The Aporta Guidebook (http://www.aporta.es/web/guest/guia_reutilizacion) provides further guidance on the legal framework and the options available to public bodies when opening their information to re-use.

In Spain, other laws are also important in promoting the re-use of public digital contents. The 56/2007 Law for the Promotion of the Information Society (http://www.aporta.es/c/document_library/get_file?uuid=6eeebf8e-4f2c-4090-aa7e-814e2b29066c&groupId=10128) encourages public sector bodies to make all its digital content available to the citizens with no technological restrictions. For its part, the 11/2007 Law for e-Citizen Electronic Access (http://www.aporta.es/c/document_library/get_file?uuid=19d517c2-3ebc-4d3a-a3ed-40a3c5b47e44&groupId=10128) establishes that citizens have the right to electronically access public services, which implies that public administrations have to implement new electronic interaction tools to guarantee this right.

In the framework set out by these laws, some best practices have been developed by a number of Spanish public bodies, such as the National Cadastre (http://www.catastro.meh.es/) or the National Geographic Institute (http://www.ign.es).

The Aporta Project (www.aporta.es) has reached its first year and a half of life. Throughout this time, it has called the attention of Public Administrations, businesses and citizens to the benefits of the reuse of PSI and has raised awareness of its advantages for society.

The Aporta initiative, supported by the Spanish Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Trade and the Ministry of the Presidency, was born in October 2008 in the framework of the Avanza Plan (http://www.planavanza.es/Paginas/Inicio.aspx).

Avanza Plan is the current initiative of the Spanish Government for developing the Information Society, within the Government Strategy that follows the European Lisbon Agenda. Its main aim is to improve Spain’s position within the Information and Knowledge Society, its economic productivity and the general welfare of all Spanish citizens.

Inspired by the European Directive 2003/92/CE and the Spanish Law 37/2007 on Re-use of PSI, the purpose of the Aporta Project is to foster a culture of re-use in Spain, to improve the access to public information and to boost PSI re-use.

Therefore, we have been working on different activities, including:

• The Aporta website (www.aporta.es): The website, with more than 20.000 visits in the last year, is conceived as a meeting point for public sector, businesses and citizens interested in re-use that offers information and news on PSI and that provides different communication and participation channels for all the members of the Spanish PSI community. All the materials posted on the website are reusable and in different formats, including open source files in order to enable its reuse.
• The Aporta Guidebook (http://www.aporta.es/web/guest/guia_reutilizacion): The Aporta Guidebook on Re-use of Public Sector Information is a handbook that explains the legal framework and all the issues of particular relevance for Public Administrations and re-users.
• The Aporta events (http://www.aporta.es/web/guest/eventos_aporta): In Aporta we think that the first step in promoting re-use is raising awareness of the potential of PSI re-use. At the moment, Aporta Project is closely cooperating with EPSI Platform on a meeting to be held in Madrid next June, whose aim is to unveil the economic value of public sector information.
• Training workshops (http://www.aporta.es/web/guest/formacion_aporta): Encouraging PSI re-use means also to explain the reuse process to the different actors involved. Therefore, Aporta has organized different training lectures during 2009 and has made available though its website all the training materials.
• Catalogue of Public Information (http://www.aporta.es/web/guest/catalogo-de-informacion-publica): A catalogue of freely accessible online public information, belonging to the Spanish General Administration, has been launched last Monday. It provides a single access point to the various government websites that offer public information resources.

The Locus Association recently submitted its response to the UK’s Department for Communities and Local Government (CLG) consultation on Ordnance Survey, and thought readers of this blog might be interested to see a synopsis of our submission. The Consultation closes on 17 March, so there’s still a bit of time to get your own views in, if you haven’t already done so.

First, Locus is very pleased to see this Consultation taking place, since we have been concerned for some time that the plan for Ordnance Survey introduced in October 2008 was not appropriate for a number of reasons, which we detail in our full submission document. However, we do still have concerns about the way in which this process has been conducted, and about some of the comments and assumptions in the Consultation Document.

As those familiar with the OS consultation will know, the document that details the UK government’s proposals for OS’s future offers three suggested policy Options for the way ahead (please see http://www.communities.gov.uk/publications/corporate/ordnancesurveyconsultation) for a copy of the consultation document). In general, most Locus members believe that the proposals offered in the Consultation Document have been designed to perpetuate Ordnance Survey’s dominance of the UK GI market, rather than to create a more open and fair environment for all players.

Several statements/assumptions in the report are of significant concern, including:

• Ordnance Survey does not understand or seek to account for its true costs on a product basis;
• There is confusion around the concepts of product and service/delivery mechanism;
• The need for some form of regulation is underestimated and dismissed;
• There is a lack of appreciation of the conflicts of interest that exist when OS is both a competitor and a supplier of base data; and
• There is an assumption that OS data is better and more current than data that could be provided by the private sector if there were a level playing field.

Locus does not consider any one of the three Options offered in the Consultation Document to be ideal; our preferred way forward for OS would include the following actions/points:

• First define Ordnance Survey’s Public Task.
• Provide free access to all unrefined data that government requires; this would likely include Addressing and Boundary data. These datasets should be definitive and authoritative if at all possible.
• Where mapping and refined products/services are chargeable the market should be fair and competitive.
• There must be full structural and accounting separation between an OS DataCo and ProductCo or unrefined/refined business.
• Locus is supportive of recent discussions to change the OS licensing model, as outlined in the Consultation document and in previous OPSI communications, and believes that work on these changes should continue whichever model is chosen:

- rationalisation of specific use contracts;

- simplified and shortened licences;

- some price reductions; and

- less restrictive licences (especially in relation to derived data).

• OS should not continue to have a price advantage over its channel when dealing with government as customers. Government should ensure that tendering for supply contracts is fair and does not advantage OS.

The specific views of the majority of Locus members on the Consultation and its proposals are as follows:

• Locus supports several of the policy drivers behind this Consultation: We agree that location is increasingly important and that it should be easier to get hold of government-held Core Reference Data (CRD), meaning data that has to be created as part of OS’s (and other government entities’) Public Task. Examples of CRD are Boundaries, Street Names, Road Traffic Layouts, Planning Consents. We also agree that government should work to coordinate its information requirements and not duplicate work.
• Government must also be able to transfer the data it needs between central/local government without hindrance.
• Locus believes Natural Government monopoly data should be made available as PSI. However, Locus’s majority view is that any data that will be made available free of charge must pass a “genuine government monopoly” test first. Without this test, government runs the risk of making the taxpayer fund the creation of data or products which would otherwise be created by the private sector in a normal competitive market.
• Locus strongly supports the proposal for the creation of not only a single National Address Register, but also a single National Postcode Register, both of which would be provided as free PSI. We recognise that the creation of these registers would require collaboration between a number of organisations and departments (particularly Royal Mail, Ordnance Survey, Local Authorities), but consider it essential that government find a way through the current licensing barriers and ownership issues.
• Refined products and services should not be provided free of charge/should not be subsidised by Government. Locus has grave concerns about the inclusion of any type of “service”, such as access delivery, or a mapping API, as part of any OS Free option, because:

- It would undermine the existing OS Partner channel;

- It would create additional costs for OS and government;

- Such services go well beyond anything that should be considered part of OS’s public task.

• Whatever data is released for free, if any, government must satisfy itself that Ordnance Survey is creating data and products cost effectively; any new products or product adaptations should be competed to ensure government receives value for money. This should be considered as part of each review of the OS Public Task.
• We do not believe that Government should commit any funding for products that are not explicitly part of the Ordnance Survey Public Task (which must first be defined). Any funding would inevitably provide Ordnance Survey with a competitive advantage over alternative suppliers, and also prevents new players from entering and investing in the market.
• If OS is to charge for the use of any data or compete with commercial entities in any way, then fully separate accounting and structural separation for OS divisions is essential. This is consistent with the PSI regulations, which say that PSIHs should separate clearly and fairly commercial activities from data collection activities. The lack of structural separation leaves the door open to cross-subsidization and anti-competitive trading by PSIHs.
• Locus is concerned that there is only one mention of Derived Data in the Consultation. In our view, one of the most important reforms that should come out of this Consultation is the removal of the Derived/Associated Data restrictions that currently exist (and this must also apply retrospectively for derived data created in the past). This is a key issue for our members and many other users of OS data and products. Our view is that while no one should be able to re-engineer OS maps from Derived Data, users should be able to retain and continue to use their own data derived from OS maps without paying OS additional license fees.
• There is a definitely a need for a regulatory body with teeth to ensure that there is fair competition. Although the Consultation appears to reject any form of regulation of OS beyond the IFTS rules, Locus believes this is not sufficient. There are a number of ways in which stronger regulation can and should be introduced without incurring high costs.
• We strongly agree with the Consultation document that markets must be free and fair. However, many parties in this PSI sector believe that it is impossible to have fair competition between the private sector and government entities, because the government entity will always have an unfair advantage.
• Further, we do not agree that government should be pushing to put OS at the heart of the value chain, or at the heart of growth in the GI sector. We are supportive of a policy that places government-created or public sector GI data (and wide, straightforward availability of that data) at the heart of growth in the UK GI sector. We do not believe government should attempt to distort the market by favouring one provider over others.
• Whatever the outcome of the Consultation, there must be flexibility in the way policy evolves so there is not upheaval every few years over discussions on OS’s future; we all need certainty so we can plan for the future.

Again, if you have views on Ordnance Survey, please do ensure that you put in your own submission before the deadline of 17 March. Locus will contribute another blog here once the government publishes its plans for OS, which should be prior to the upcoming election in May.

Determining the economic indicators that could be used to measure the economic activity from the re-use of public sector information is but one part of the process of preparing to undertake regular economic measurements. To undertake a measurement one needs to identify the value chain that is the subject of the intended measurement. The economic studies undertaken over the past decade have adopted the cascade approach as a way of establishing the value chain that may exist. An alternative approach is that which the European Commission intends to adopt when the Commission initiates regular economic measurements at three monthly intervals commencing in the September to October 2010 timeframe.

The approach the European Commission has adopted is to use a sampling technique whereby a subset of any particular value-chain is pre-established prior to commissioning an organisation (via an open competitive competition) to undertake regular periodic economic measurements. The European Commission led PSI Group has formed a number of economic indicator subgroups. One of the tasks these subgroups have been set is to determine the sample value-chain that relates specifically to an information sector. That is to identify the various bodies on both the supply (public sector) and the demand (the re-users) sides of the value-chain. Once the bodies in the value-chain have been identified the next task is to seek approval from each body in the chain that they are willing to participate in the periodic measurements. That is the organisation will provide information when the economic measurement is undertaken. The information to be provided will be for a small number of indicators chosen by the Commission but based on recommendations from the PSI Group.

Determining the entire length of the value chain requires an appreciation of the type of information involved and the information flows between organisations within the value chain. For example Business Registers (Company Registration information). It is for this reason that the Commission has established five subgroups each of which is handling one thematic category of public sector information. As a result the membership of each subgroup comprises of stakeholders that have knowledge pertaining to the particular information sector that the subgroup is responsible for.

One’s first thoughts when constructing the value-chain maybe that the main difficulty is determining the demand side of the value chain. In particular the organisations adding value after the first organisation down stream of the public sector information holder that added value. This is based on the premise that the value chain starts from one public sector body. This is the simplest approach to developing the value chain but in reality the value chain even on the supply side maybe far more complex. On the demand side the value chain also includes service providers that provide services to the bodies that are adding value to the information as the information passes along the value-chain. For example legal services, language translation services.

The number of public sector information holders is numerically large and these public sector bodies are distributed across different levels of government from the local level right though to the Member State level. In some European Member States the public sector information may flow across four or more levels of government. One consequence of this is that depending on the category of information there maybe within the public sector a value-chain that exists as each public sector body undertakes its assigned public task. In the process each public body in the value-chain adds value by adding further data to that passed to it by an upstream public sector body. From the public sector information re-use perspective the data can be obtained from each of the public bodies within the value-chain on the public sector (supply) side of the overall value chain. A further complexity is that each European Member State has a different organisational structure. As a consequence this will also likely to impact the value-chain. This then raises the question as to how many value-chains to measure in order to take into account these Member State differences.

One of the value-chains to be constructed by the PSI Group subgroups is that related to Address Information. In this context the work of the European Union eContentplus funded project European Address Infrastructure (EURADIN) is of interest. The EURADIN report titled: Business Model: Social and Economic Benefits, considers 5 value-chains related to address information:

1. The Navigation and Location Based Services value-chain (Section 7.4.1, page 34)
2. The E-Commerce value-chain (Section 7.5.1, page 46)
3. The Geomarketing value-chain (Section 7.6.1, page 49)
4. The Delivery Logistic value-chain (Section 7.7.1, page 51)
5. The Telecommunications value-chain (Section 7.8.1, page 53)

The report indicates that even within an information sector various value-chains are likely to exist.

In considering the value-chain related to the re-use of public sector information it becomes apparent that this is a complex area to understand and measure. It is not surprising that the techniques for measuring economic activity with respect to the re-use of public sector information are still evolving.

Views on the above and other questions and concerns related to measurement of PSI re-use economic activity would be very welcome.

If your organisation would like to participate in the regular measurement then please contact the European Commission's facilitator for this activity by email. The resources expended by participating once every three months are considered to be minimal.

Over the past decade a number of economic studies related to public sector information have been undertaken. Some studies have adopted a top down approach, others a bottom up approach and yet others a thematic approach. A number of the studies have also included comparisons with Countries outside of Europe. The European Union (EU) by its nature embraces 27 Member States and such comparisons are inherent when assessing the economic activity at the pan European level from the re-use of public sector information.

The information published by Eurostat demonstrates that the economies of the Member States within the Union vary. Other variations exist across Member States such as for example:

• The structure of the public sector;
• The public task of public sector information holders;
• Whether the information is held centrally by one public sector body or is held across a range of public sector bodies;
• The degree to which the public sector information is held electronically.

The question then arises as to whether these variations have an impact on the value added chain related to the re-use of public sector information? If the answer to this question is YES then is there a need to take this into consideration when establishing economic measurement indicators?

An interesting example of comparing value chains has been published in the International Journal of Spatial Data Infrastructure Research under the heading Value of Geographic Information in November 2009. Assessing Geographic Information Enhancement, by Bastiaan van Loenen and Jaap Zevenbergen of Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. The paper develops a methodology for considering value adding within a value chain. The objective is to improve the understanding of the conclusions reached from economic studies undertaken on the re-use of public sector information especially when the studies have made comparisons across different jurisdictions. The methodology developed is then applied through a number of case studies that compare the value chain in three EU Member States with that in the USA.

One of the cases studies considered in the paper was that of the value chain related to Cadastral parcels the results of which are shown diagrammatically in Figures 7, 8 and 9 in the paper. The case studies show the difference between European Member States value chains with those of the value chains in the USA. In Europe the public sector Cadastral Institutes have undertaken many of the value added processes before the data becomes available for re-use where as in the USA these value added processes are provided by the private sector. In other words the data becomes available for re-use far earlier than it does in Europe. As a result one would then expect to see higher value adding processors in the value chain in Europe as the lower value adding processes have been undertaken by the public sector itself. The paper also refers to European Union activities such as the European Union Land Information Service (EULIS), which potentially enables a value chain comparison to be made between the Federal level of the USA with the European Union level.

The results of the Delft University research paper would indicate that there is a difference in the public task of each of the public sector bodies included in the case study. As a consequence this has an impact on the analysis of the results of economic measurements especially when making comparisons across different jurisdictions. The study would suggest that there maybe a need when determining the economic measurement indicators to take such variations into account. The variations may have different impacts for each thematic category of public sector information.

Views on the above and other questions and concerns related to measurement of PSI re-use economic activity would be very welcome.

If you would like to participate in round table public discussions on the PSI re-use value chains at the public meeting that will be held on the 8^th June 2010 in Madrid then please contact the meeting co-ordinators (Ministerio de Industria, Turismo y Comercio, Spain (MITC) or ePSIplatform).

The PIRA report published almost ten years ago (October 2000) explained a number of the issues faced when undertaking the economic study that involved measuring the economic activity from the re-use of public sector information. The report then went onto explain that in the absence of hard financial information economic studies fall back to estimation techniques and that this was not unusual and cited the national statistical agencies as an example.

One of the measures that the PIRA report used was that of the transaction cost related to obtaining the public sector information. The elements of the transaction cost may include amongst others:

• The time spent finding the information;
• The time spent on the Internet;
• The time spent determining whether the information met the re-users needs;
• If the information was that sought then the time establishing the conditions under which the information maybe re-used; and
• If the information was not free of financial charge then what was the price of the information?

The European Directive that came into effect in all Member States of the Union on the 1^st July 2005 was structured to address many of these issues such that the time would be minimised. The MEPSIR economic study tested in part the compliance with the PSI re-use framework using a similar sample of public sector bodies in each Member State at the time the Directive came into force in Member States back in 2005.

If the PSI re-use framework has been implemented as intended and this is coupled with the increasing amount of public sector information held electronically together with the advances made in technology and its deployment then one would expect to observe an increase in economic activity three years later! Regrettably the MICUS economic study undertaken in 2008 did not show that there had been as yet any significant change.

An interesting example of measuring the transaction costs in 2009 has been published in the International Journal of Spatial Data Infrastructure Research under the heading Value of Geographic Information in December 2009. Reference research paper titled: Methodology for Measuring the Demand Geoinformation transaction Costs: based on experiment in Berlin, Vienna and Zurich by Alenka Krek of the University of Hamburg. The paper details how the transaction cost is measured and undertakes three similar transactions in Berlin, Vienna and Zurich. The paper has published the three transaction costs together with a breakdown of the components of the cost. The total transactions costs have been reported as:

• Berlin costs €1,195.52
• Vienna costs €657.97
• Zurich costs €29,831.31

Although the research paper makes no reference to the EU PSI re-use framework as set down by Directive 2003/98/EC one would have expected that compliance with the Directive would have in part reduced these costs, which remain high.

Perhaps the reason why the studies undertaken to date have not shown any material change is in part due to the transaction costs as cited above. As a result only large companies maybe have the financial strength to re-use large amounts of public sector information.

From the studies undertaken to date and the research paper it is apparent that measuring the transaction cost is time consuming and as such may not be suitable when undertaking regular measurements of economic activity arising from the re-use of public sector information as now envisaged by the European Commission.

If one wishes to regularly measure the economic activity related to the re-use of public sector information there is a need to identify a set of economic indicators that can be utilised when undertaking economic measurements. So what indicators could be used?

One approach could be to consider the economic indicators that have been used in economic studies that have been already undertaken and published at the pan European and Member State levels. The task would involve reviewing each study in turn to record the economic indicators used and then to collate the individual set of indicators identified to establish a combined list of the economic indicators which in turn would provide a frequency of use. The process could then be repeated by reviewing further economic studies that cover specific jurisdictions as well as economic studies within particular public sector information domains. The process could be repeated until it is clear that there is a set of economic indicators that are regularly used irrespective of the jurisdiction or the thematic information sector measured. As a result of the process it becomes self evident after several iterations that to continue the process of reviewing economic studies is not materially changing the set of indicators that have already been identified.

If one considers that the re-use of public sector information is a new developing economic activity then it is possible that the indicators used in past economic studies may not be applicable today. As such the set of indicators derived from reviewing past studies may not be useful for measuring the economic activity today or over the short term horizon of 18 to 24 months. Why would this be the case? There may be a range of reasons for this that will include amongst others for example the:

• Changes brought about from the implementation and compliance with the European Union PSI re-use framework;
• Impact of other European Union Directives and frameworks that are applicable to public sector information. For example the INSPIRE Directive;
• Impact of technological advances; and
• Quantity of public sector information that is held electronically.
• With this in mind the potential list of economic indicators would need to be assessed and tested in order to establish whether each economic indicator is suitable in today’s environment and for regular measurement of economic activity arising from the re-use of public sector information.

The process described above is that which the European Commission PSI Group’s Economic indicator work group has adopted. The first two iterations of reviewing past published economic studies and research papers in one particular thematic sector have been completed. The first iteration reviewed six economic studies – three at the pan European level and three at Member State level. The second iteration reviewed nine research papers from the geographic information sector. Further iterations are in process. The process so far has identified over 25 indicators of which only six have been used in three or more of the studies or research papers reviewed. The six indicators identified ranked in the order of use include:

1. Number of staff employed (6 occurrences)
2. The Organisations financial turnover (5 occurrences)
3. The data supply income (4 occurrences)
4. The number of licences (4 occurrences)
5. The total income (3 occurrences)
6. The PSI procurement cost (3 occurrences)

The list already raises a number of questions for which answers are now being sought:

• Are there indictors missing that one would expect to be regularly used in measuring economic activity related to the re-use of PSI?
• How robust are the indicators listed to change?
• How easy will it be to use each indicator in regular measurements?
• Are the indicators applicable to the supply side or the demand side or both in the value-chain?

Views on the above and other questions and concerns related to measurement of PSI re-use economic activity would be very welcome.

If you would like to participate in round table public discussions on the PSI re-use indicators at the public meeting that will be held on the 8^th June 2010 in Madrid then please contact the meeting co-ordinators (Ministerio de Industria, Turismo y Comercio, Spain (MITC) or ePSIplatform).

The European Commission has over the past decade commissioned at least three economic studies that have measured the economic activity from the re-use of public sector information (PSI) within the Europe namely: the PIRA, MEPSIR, and the MICUS studies. Each of these studies have employed to varying extents the cascade methodology supported by a questionnaire. The process slowly builds up the actual value added chain (separate bodies in the value chain that add value to the PSI) for each PSI holder incorporated within the study.

The cascade methodology first asks the PSI holder about their down stream PSI re-use customers. The identified customers are then asked about their down stream customers hence the term cascade. The PSI re-users immediately down stream of the PSI holder are also asked about how cost effective they have found the upstream PSI holder from whom they have obtained the PSI that they re-use. The methodology also involves either face-to-face interviews or telephone interviews to gather information.

Overall the cascade process is expensive and time consuming especially if the study embraces all PSI thematic sectors and 31 Member States of the European Union (EU) and the European Free Trade Area (EFTA). This then raises the question as to whether an alternative method could be deployed that could be run swiftly on a periodic basis – for example at six monthly intervals?

The European Commission put this proposal to the PSI Group working group on PSI indicators during November 2009. To meet the requirement the working group agreed to test the economic measurement of five thematic PSI re-use value chains. Each of the five value added chains would involve a small number of public and private sector bodies across a small number of Member States in order to make the measurements manageable. The results of these tests will be presented at the public meeting that will be held in Madrid on the 8^th June 2010.

The five value chains chosen were:

1. Cadastral Information
2. Case Law information
3. Company information
4. Postcode Information
5. Weather Observation Information

The working groups are now seeking EU Member State based organisations that would be willing to share their information and to participate in the test runs of the economic indicators that could be used in regular measurements of these value chains at six monthly intervals commencing from the summer of 2010.

If you would like to participate then please contact the European Commission's facilitator for this activity by email.

The 1^st July 2010 will be the 5^th anniversary of the implementation of the European Union Directive 2003/98/EC in Member States. (The Directive of the 17^th November 2003 on the re-use of public sector information (PSI)) The recitals in the Directive state that the objective is to stimulate economic activity within the Union and that this is likely to be further stimulated by technological developments over time. (Reference: recitals 3 and 5). The recitals mention growth in jobs (people employed) in the digital content sector and a growth of Small and Medium sized enterprises - two potential economic indicators!

The European Union Committee of the Regions during the February 2010 Plenary Session adopted a global response (The Opinion) to the European Commission’s Communication published in May 2009 that reviewed the implementation of the Directive. The Opinion confirms the objective of the Directive and points out that it is essential to determine a way of measuring the economic value of the information in an objective manner. (Reference: Clause 14) The Opinion has in effect backed the Commission's action plan announced in the May 2009 Communication to undertake further economic studies and regular measurements of economic activity over the period up to the 1^st July 2012.

However the Opinion also pointed out that in order to develop the market in PSI re-use it was important to implement policies that apply licensing and charging models to facilitate and maximise the re-use of PSI (notably through the application of marginal costs) (Reference: Clause 12). The Opinion at the same time welcomes the Directive's objective to minimise the administrative overhead placed on public bodies by the availability of the information. The Opinion thus hints at the way that the PSI re-use framework should be implemented such that these two requirements can both be met. Translating this into practice requires Member State PSI policies and public sector bodies to adopt:

• Non transactional licences recognised globally; (the use of Creative Commons type licensing so no burden in generating, describing and entering into licences with other parties)
• No financial charges (so no burden of collection of the financial charges);
• The information to be available online and electronic; (no prior communication with the public sector body so no burden – a move towards data.gov type services)

The above-mentioned implementation methods at the same time remove the economic indicators that have been used traditionally in economic studies and measurements. There is little point in implementing the minimised overhead framework only to then start to implement economic activity meters to support economic measurement. As a result the determination of the economic activity has become a challenge in itself!

Over the past five years a number of Member States have made good progress towards implementing the minimum overhead framework and this is likely to accelerate over the period running up to the 1^st July 2012.

The Opinion also stresses regarding the principle of a competitive PSI market that it is essential to ensure that private service providers face the same conditions as public institutions, to enable access to public data by private users. (Reference: Clause 13). To comply with this requirement means that Member States must adopt PSI policies that do not permit their public sector information holders to act commercially or if they do that they ensure that the public bodies that do act commercially are physically separated from the public task activity. From the economic measurement perspective a clear separation supports the measurement of economic activity from PSI re-use as the public sector commercial activities can be grouped with other economic actors that are engaged in PSI re-use or benefit indirectly from PSI re-use services. If there is no separation then this gives rise to a further challenge when undertaking measurements of economic activity. Economic studies over the past five years have been faced with a reluctance of both the public and private actors to release financial information related to PSI re-use.

The PSI re-use framework as set down by the Directive supports both commercial and non-commercial re-use. The latter sets yet a further challenge to measuring and estimating the economic value from re-using PSI.

Facing such a challenge then leads to the question: Why bother to undertake such economic measurements? Especially if it is likely to lead to economic estimates that are immediately challenged!

Putting aside human curiosity one reason why economic evidence is required is that those that set and implement policy would like to know whether the policy is meeting the high and lower level objectives or not. Hence the reason that the European Commission supported by the European Parliament and the Committee of the Regions wishes to undertake further economic studies and measurements.

The European Commission during the latter half of 2009 has commenced the preliminary steps that are preparing the way for undertaking these measurements and commissioning economic studies. During November 2009 the Commission through the auspices of the PSI Group has commenced work on these preparations.

To support the Commission preparatory actions to collect further economic evidence a public meeting will be held in Madrid on the 8^th June 2010. The objective of the meeting is to bring together those that have an interest in measuring economic activity to consider economic indicators. The desired outcome from the meeting is to agree a small number of indicators that can be used at regular intervals to determine the trend in economic activity related to PSI re-use. Further more whether the indicators need to vary depending on the thematic domain of the information (or sector) or there can be one set of indictors that can be used across all thematic domains?

If you wish to actively take part in proposing and justifying such indicators at the meeting then please contact the European Public Sector Information Platform meeting co-ordinator as soon as possible as the program for the June meeting is now under formation.

1. What indicators would you use if you were set the task of measuring the economic activity from PSI-re-use?
2. Would the indicators that you have chosen be sustainable overtime? Or pose the question another way could the indicators that you have selected be used at six monthly intervals over the five-year period from 1^st July 2010 to 1^st July 2015 without change?
3. Are the indicators that you have chosen applicable to only one thematic information domain or all information domains?
4. In your opinion has the PSI re-use framework in its first five years stimulated economic activity? If so what is the evidence that supports your opinion?

GeoVation is an Ordnance Survey (OS) initiative that’s funded and managed by OS with input from “external champions”. According to the GeoVation website (www.geovation.org), while GeoVation is founded and currently financially supported by OS, its mission is to: “’encourage and support innovation for social, economic and environmental benefit through the use of all geography’; not just the products and services of Ordnance Survey.” Apparently this decision was the subject of quite a lot of discussion in the OS boardroom. My view is that GeoVation is a more credible initiative if it is not exclusive to OS, so they made the right decision.

GeoVation’s aims are to:

1. promote the use of geography in innovation
2. make innovating with geography easier
3. provide support to new innovations that use geography by connecting people with geographic expertise to those who require it in realizing their objectives.

Membership is open to all. There is a small management committee organizing GeoVation’s activities right now.

In early October GeoVation announced “the GeoVation Awards Programme (GAP)”: a competition to develop new ideas that use geography. Entries opened on the 6th of October 2009 and closed on 4 January 2010. The judges were looking for ideas that demonstrated their innovative potential, sustainability and how they use geography.

The Awards were supported by OS, Ideas in Transit, ESRI, and the Technology Strategy Board, and attracted 150 ideas for 60 ventures. The judges created a short list of 9 finalists, who were all asked to present to and answer questions from the judges and attendees at Tuesday’s event, for the opportunity to win one of four cash prizes, with the money to be used to develop the winning ideas.

Full descriptions of the short-listed projects can be found on the GeoVation blog, here, http://www.geovation.org.uk/blog/. They were:

1. Mapland England & Wales: a massive (13m x 11m) walk-on map of England and Wales with full topographical detail.
2. Online Route cards for hill walkers: A site to provide walkers with tools to help plan appropriate routes, and the ability to have automatic messages sent to a designated emergency contact if the walker doesn’t arrive on time.
3. Mission: Explore London: a project to engage young people with geography through playful and thought-provoking missions.
4. Mapping Britain on Horseback: a British Horse Society initiative that aims to collate all equestrian routes in the UK.
5. Goodfindr iPhone App: using geography to source soft commodities in season.
6. London Blue Plaque: a search facility showcasing the hundreds of Blue Plaques erected over the years to commemorate famous people and places that have helped shape London and the world.
7. MaxiMap: a large-format educational floor map.
8. The Open Climate Data Repository: a service to provide a set of web-based tools to allow the public to view, analyze and feed back on climate data.
9. Open.HistoryMap: A project to map historic features, events and maps against a background of today’s maps or aerial imagery.

The entries ranged from existing, profitable businesses to ideas and vague plans for the creation of sustainable services.

The original plan had been to award four cash prizes: one for £10,000, two for £5,000, and the community choice award, voted by the audience, of £1,000. In the end, the judges decided to split the money differently, awarding £3,000 to London Blue Plague; £7,000 to Mission:Explore; and £10,000 to MaxiMap. MaxiMap also won the community prize.

I was pleased to see MaxiMap take home first prize: it’s run by two women, one of whom was a schoolteacher, who have created a simple and easy-to-use tool to help overcome some of the challenges of teaching children geography. Their presentation was clear and concise, their financials were sound, and they’ve already tested their idea and achieved some success. Well done, MaxiMap! And of course all of the other finalists.

The GeoVation champions also deserve congratulations, not only for creating an interesting event and encouraging innovation: for every person who attended the awards showcase (which was free), GeoVation donated £10 to MapAction. The day raised £750 for MapAction (www.mapaction.org), and chair Steven Feldman encouraged all of us to go home and match that contribution, to help the charity do more on its upcoming trip to Haiti. If you’re not familiar with MapAction, I’d encourage you to take a look at their site, and also consider a donation.

GeoVation plans to put on these awards next year, with the expectation that they will be more independent from OS. It will also be interesting to see where all of the finalists are with their businesses and projects in a year. If you’re interested in GeoVation, or the awards, check out the GeoVation site for information on the finalists’ progress, and upcoming events.

We assembled an excellent panel to discuss Labour and Conservative PSI policies and Locus’s perspective on issues surrounding PSI licensing, pricing and regulation. We also left plenty of time for attendees to ask questions, and raise their own issues for discussion.

Our panelists were:

Francis Maude MP, Conservative Shadow Cabinet Office Minister and Shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. The Minister leads the Party’s Implementation Unit, which is tasked with determining how policies will be implemented should the Conservatives win the General Election;

Professor Nigel Shadbolt, Professor of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Deputy head (Research) of the School of Electronics and Computer Sciences at the University of Southampton, and the Prime Minister’s Information Advisor; and

Sir Bryan Carsberg, Locus President, and former Director General of the Oftel and the Office of Fair Trading.

I chaired the event.

The presentations were thought-provoking and there was plenty of stimulating discussion. Here are some of the highlights:

Nigel Shadbolt spoke first, going through some of the key elements of the manifesto for government data that he and Tim Berners-Lee have published, (and which I referenced in my last blog; you can find it here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/jan/21/timbernerslee-government-data), and talking about the new data.gov.uk website. Some interesting points:

• “We’re now moving from a web of documents to a web of data”.
• Most of the government PSI that has gone onto the website is in spreadsheet format.
• On release day, the data.gov.uk website had 700,000 hits; the web servers had to be replaced three times to keep up with demand. Within the first 40 minutes of the site going online, users had created three new web applications using government data. The site is currently in Beta: it’s not “complete” and it’s hoped it never will be.
• The site is all open source, done quickly and at low cost. It uses the same platform as Wikipedia.
• In creating the data.gov.uk site Professor Shadbolt and Tim Berners-Lee had to grapple with the issue of what data should be free. Their view is that if creation of the data has been paid for by the taxpayer, then the public should have it. Further, if information is available through a Freedom of Information (FoI) request, why should it not be published as an RSS feed?
• When it comes to determining what data should be made public, the question should be not why, but why not.

Next up was Francis Maude, who opened by stating that “there is a decent chance of continuity” — that the Conservatives would very likely continue the great work that’s been done to release government data already. Other points made:

• The Conservatives recognize that having open data is uncomfortable for government ministers. “Transparency is not always agreeable.”
• We need public money to be spent better. Government spends £4 for every £3 it generates in revenue. That has to change. “We see transparency as a friend of that process.”
• We need to enlist the public to crowd-source consultancy, to be “armchair auditors” to scrutinize government spending.
• It’s understandable how we got to the current situation. OS and the Met Office are required to cover their costs; they then felt empowered to create added value and have squeezed out the private sector. This is not for the benefit of the economy as a whole. There’s in-built conflict in this arrangement.
• If we have the data, we should just put it out there. The Conservatives would release information on the salaries of the 35,000 most senior government employees and all contracts over £25,000 in value; provide an XML feed of council decisions; and publish the COINS database (this is the Combined Online Information System. It contains the Treasury's detailed analysis of departmental spending under thousands of category headings). Some of this will be uncomfortable.
• We need to balance getting the data out there with making everything just right; we would be inclined to trade off some quality in the interests of making data available more quickly.
• We propose to carry forward the work Nigel and Tim have done.

Our final speaker was Sir Bryan Carsberg, Locus’s President, and formerly the Director General of Oftel (Ofcom’s predecessor) and the Office of Fair Trading.

Sir Bryan opened with “Carsberg’s principles of regulation”: The best form of regulation is the promotion of competition. Monopolists often have an interest in postponing uses of new technology. Liberalization has been a tremendous boon in the telecom sector; there would be enormous benefits if we can open up use of information. Other points included:

• Pricing: Locus has always been cautious on price. It’s a no brainer that data financed by tax-payers should be released free; In other cases, we believe data should be provided at marginal cost.
• Locus is mainly seeking fair competition, whether or not the information is free.
• Information should be made available in an easy way: in telecom, we had the CLASS license. That provided ready access to the base infrastructure and the constraint that providers compete fairly. All players had access to the raw materials on the same terms, at the same price, with no-cross-subsidization by the incumbent.
• You could argue that many of the Trading Funds shouldn’t provide value-added services at all.
• No matter what the outcome of the OS consultation, “This will not work without regulation.”
• We can understand the reluctance to set up a regulator: it could be costly. Right now, though, we have OPSI, but it doesn’t have the power. So we’re incurring the cost and not getting the benefit.
• It needn’t be enormously expensive to regulate this sector. If there are big penalties for breaking the rules, that can be very effective.

The panel discussion was followed by a very lively question and answer session.

I asked to panel to comment on Sir Bryan’s assertion that we must have regulation if current PSI holders are to continue to act commercially. Nigel Shadbolt’s response was that quite a lot of time had been spent on the management of data to be released, the technology, and getting it all out under a Creative Commons license; how to regulate is still to be determined.

Francis Maude said he was reluctant to set up a range of new bodies: He feels that the OFT is good at this. But, “we’re open-minded.”

One participant said it would be “terrible if the whole environment changed on the first of April.” We’ve had years of consultation, but we do need to be able to prepare for whatever changes are brought in. We also need a set of principles that we can be sure will survive changes of government .

Other topics of discussion included:

The consultation on the future of Ordnance Survey: A key point: How much Ordnance Survey data should be made available for free, and the potential negative impact on existing commercial providers if, for example, OS maps, rather than raw data, are made freely available. Nigel Shadbolt responded that he and Tim Berners-Lee couldn’t avoid the issue of location and place when looking to open up government data. He felt the OS consultation didn’t need to be “as complex as it is.” He also finds it “odd to pay for information that you need to live your life.” There was general agreement in the room that raw data, such as boundaries, should be released. There is an argument that detailed mapping should not be released for free, but that all players, including OS, should have access to the raw data to create those maps, and should compete on the same terms to provide them.

Nigel said, :”Tim and I were told not to deal with OS. But we knew we had to. We will have to grasp the nettle…. We must decide what are the ‘totemic datasets’”.

How to find the right cost model to make data available for free: Francis Maude expressed relief that those of us who spend time of this issue also find it complex. Sir Bryan referenced the Cambridge Study, and noted that the cost of making basic data sets available is actually small. Some participants, though, disagree with the findings of the Cambridge Study, which assumes price elasticity of demand: it was noted that while there has been a 30% real price fall in MasterMap over the last few years, there has been no increase in use.

This led to a discussion of the whether or not Ramsey pricing (pricing according to the elasticity of demand of different customer groups through price discrimination) is appropriate where data is charged for. Sir Bryan noted that the OFT study concluded that the market could be greatly expanded if data was made available at marginal cost. He could see how Ramsey pricing could distort the market. Others considered it a mixed blessing for the mapping sector. Nigel Shadbolt suggested more work was required from economists.

Postcodes: There was a fair amount of discussion surrounding access to the postcode database. One participant said, “There will be trouble if we don’t release postcodes soon: OS and the Royal Mail have crucial pieces of data. Have we got a plan for dealing with postcodes and addresses?” The Ordnance Survey consultation document is vague on this issue. Nigel Shadbolt suggested that we should determine what the developer community would find most useful. However, if government doesn’t find a way to release postcodes, it’s likely the community will crowd-source them. Other participants made the point that there is a cost of maintaining the postcode address file, and that must be covered somehow.

Our Locus event highlighted the considerable progress that is being made in PSI policy in this country, but also emphasized that there is a long way to go in the next decade to unlock the full potential of the UK PSI marketplace. In particular, government must “grasp the nettle” of freeing up access to the postcode database and Ordnance Survey raw data so all can benefit fully from the PSI that has already been released.

According to the press release, “All of the data is non-personal and in a format that can be reused by any individual or business to create innovative new software tools, such as applications about house prices, local amenities and services, or access to local hospitals.”

Read the full press release, including quotes from Stephen Timms MP, Sir Tim Berners Lee and Professor Nigel Shadbolt, who will be speaking at the Locus event this evening.

And of course the website is here: http://www.data.gov.uk/

Data sets include information on crime, health, education, property prices, travel, the environment, agriculture, etc. It’s time-consuming, but fascinating, to browse through the list to see types of data that are being collected, and are now available for use. The plan is for the site to continue to add data from government departments each month.

In conjunction with the launch of data.gov.uk, the UK’s Office of Public Sector Information (OPSI), part of the National Archives, has drafted a new set of terms and conditions for the site that are “interoperable with any Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Licence.” The new model will replace the existing Click-Use Licence; OPSI expects to launch the new terms in May 2010.

The Guardian has an interesting article on how data.gov.uk came to be; Professor Shadbolt and Sir Tim Berners-Lee’s manifesto for government data; and an interview with both on the announcement and thinking behind the release of the data. These can be found here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/jan/21/how-official-data-freed

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/jan/21/timbernerslee-government-data

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/video/2010/jan/21/uk-national-data-website-launched

And if you’ve never seen Tim Berners-Lee’s TED talk on the subject of public data provision, where he asks the audience to join him in calling, loudly, for “Raw Data Now!”, it can be found here:

http://www.ted.com/talks/tim_berners_lee_on_the_next_web.html

Locus is very pleased by the announcement of the data.gov.uk website, and the release of so many government datasets. Of course, we, like many other parties, still believe that for this data to fulfill its potential, government must also find a way to make Ordnance Survey map data (raw data, in particular) and the postcode database available, without barriers. The data.gov.uk site is, however, a very good first step.

The initiative is part of a campaign to boost the transparency and accountability of City Hall, and will be formally launched at the end of January 2010. Plans are for the Datastore to contain over 200 different sets of information, such as crime rates, abandoned vehicles, schools data, hospital waiting lists and recycling rates. Here’s a link to the Datastore website: http://data.london.gov.uk/; more information can also e obtained by emailing datastore@london.gov.uk.

In a statement, Johnson said, “"I firmly believe that access to information should not just be the preserve of institutions and a limited elite. Data belongs to the people - particularly that held by the public sector - and getting hold of it should not involve a complex routine of jumping through a series of ever decreasing hoops.”

According to the Datastore site, the policy will be “to only withhold data where to release it would infringe privacy legislation or a contractual obligation eg commercial confidentiality.” The license conditions under which data can be used will vary for each data package; however, the site says that “in general the data held in this site can be used for most purposes, provided the Terms and Conditions of this site are not infringed.” The data comes in several different formats; each data package has its own licensing terms.

Locus is very pleased to see this initative coming to fruition, and we’re looking forward to seeing the rest of the datasets that are to be released at the end of the month. We believe that enhancing access to Public Sector Information (PSI) for re-use brings economic benefits as well as improving services to citizens. This move by the Mayor of London sets an excellent example which we hope to see repeated across Government in the coming weeks.

Locus, as some of you will know, was established to encourage the public sector (primarily in the UK) to maintain a trading environment that is fair and equitable, in particular in relation to the licensing and re-use of public sector information. Our members are private sector companies that are committed to working with PSI holders to maintain and develop a vibrant, information-driven UK economy that ultimately works to the benefit of the public sector, private sector and end consumer.

Locus acts as a forum for exchange of information, keeps its members up to date with latest policy developments, and provides advice and guidance. Each year we hold several events that are open to non-members, to raise the level of discussion on a particular topic. In January, we’re hosting what we expect to be a landmark PSI event examining the future of the UK PSI marketplace in light of the upcoming General Election. Right now the Labour Government is pushing forward a number of plans to give away data, and to change the structure of Ordnance Survey. However, if we have a change of Government in May (or before), that would very likely all change, making it difficult for those of us who work with PSI to know what the future will hold.

We’ve therefore put together a top-notch panel to discuss Government and Conservative PSI policy. Our speakers are:

• Francis Maude MP, Conservative Shadow Cabinet Office Minister;
• Professor Nigel Shadbolt, the Prime Minister’s Information Advisor, and
• Sir Bryan Carsberg, Locus President, and former Director General of the OFT and Oftel.

I’ll be chairing the event.

We believe this timely and exciting event will be an excellent opportunity to hear about Government and Conservative PSI policy ahead of the next General Election, and to provide policy-makers with input at a key time for PSI in the UK.

The event will be held on Monday 25^th January, 5.30-7.00pm, at Olswang LLP, 90 High Holborn, London, WC1V 6XX. For further information, or to register for the event, please contact Harriet Crosthwaite, of Luther Pendragon on

Tel : +44 20 7618 9136

or email: harrietcrosthwaite@luther.co.uk

This promises to be a very busy month for PSI in the UK; over the next few weeks I’ll provide blog posts with Locus’s views on the Communities and Local Government Consultation on Ordnance Survey; the London Datastore (announced today); derived data, and other topics as they come along.

Locus thanks the ePSIplatform for the opportunity to contribute our views to the PSI debate.