Results of the online consultation of stakeholders"Review of the PSI Directive"

Executive summary

The 2010 consultation on the review of the PSI Directive spurred high interest among different categories of stakeholders, with 594 responses received - an over 15-fold increase compared with the 2008 consultation. The Commission received responses from 37 countries, including from all Member States but Cyprus, with almost 30% of all responses submitted by German respondents and 80% of all responses submitted by respondents from 11 Member States (DE, FR, UK, FIN, ES, IT, BEL, NL, SWE, AT, PL). 5 Member States submitted official positions in response to the consultation, (Belgium, Denmark, France, Netherlands and UK). However, on top of these five, several individual Ministries and governmental services submitted responses online and these were each time included in the PSI bodies' category.

The responses embrace the different actors present in the PSI value chain: PSI content holders, other public authorities not holding any PSI, PSI re-users, academics and experts, citizens and 35 respondents identified as "other", among which were e.g. public companies, interested associations, standard setting organisations. The responses from the PSI re-users cover to a considerable degree the different active sectors of the information reuse market. Considerable input was received from small scale IT companies – re-users of PSI as well as from important re-users of geographical, legal and business information. The main European publishing and broadcasting associations as well as companies representing this sector also provided their input. The response of the PSI Alliance, which represents the views of an important group of private sector companies and associations active in the PSI field, should also be noted. Among PSI content holders were e.g. representatives of individual ministries, local governments, meteorological and geographic institutes, statistical offices, land registries and cadastres, judicial authorities. Among other PSI bodies were several archives, public broadcasters, libraries.

An overwhelming majority of respondents signalled that PSI re-use has not reached its full potential and supports further action to stimulate re-use and to promote cross-border provision of PSI based products and services, although responses to the last topic showed some difference of opinion among the PSI bodies.

In general, a majority of respondents favours amendments to the Directive although support for amendments ranges according to the category of respondents from some 40% of PSI content holders up to over 70% of re-users.

Suggestions for legislative amendments and for additional soft-law guidance did not differ significantly among specific categories of respondents. Respondents signalled many issues that in their view remain problematic, but several topics stand out clearly within the submissions.

Respondents across all categories, with strongest support from re-users, academics and "others", called for amending the general principle to establish a right to re-use (with a notable exception of Belgium, which expressly pleaded for maintaining the current discretion).

Generally, respondents across all categories also called for legislative amendments or soft-law clearance on the issues of public task, charging, several issues related to data and licensing conditions.

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Just as re-users and academics, PSI bodies have indicated that the lack of a clear definition of what constitutes a public task is one of the main hurdles for data re-use.

Many respondents in all categories addressed the issue of data formats. In general, respondents ask for more re-use friendly formats. Many ask the Commission to harmonise and standardise ways of making data available, standardise access formats and procedures for data and metadata delivery, many indicating a preference for open digital formats.

The question of charging received much attention from all respondents. It is clear from many submissions that clarification and guidance on many charging issues is required, including on charging strategies versus open access or on admissible tariffs. Re-use at charges based either on full or on partial cost recovery did not receive support of stakeholders and frequently respondents also called for either a proscription or a clarification of the term of "reasonable return on investment". Most support went to free non-commercial re-use. Some 30% of respondents favoured marginal costs solutionsMany arguments in favour of and against the marginal costs solution were advanced by respondents in all categories and there is no consensus on this point. and many submitted suggestions on how to address the charging challenge. This multitude of proposals demonstrates that no one size fits all (e.g. core data / raw data versus value added; type of end use) and these differences must be accounted for in order not to inhibit data re-use.

Mainly PSI re-users and academics (with fewer PSI bodies) also pointed out that restrictive and /or un-harmonised licensing terms are frequently a barrier to re-use and that acceptable conditions should be more precisely spelled out in the Directive. Many respondents across categories called for standardisation of licensing terms, frequently suggesting the Creative Commons framework. Among the re-users and the academics, many respondents called for stronger obligations regarding redress mechanisms and transparency. A recurring remark from re-users is the difficulty to locate a competent interlocutor within PSI content holders.

More specifically on the question of scope, respondents generally favour an extension of the Directive, with little difference among opinions regarding each excluded sector but with differences in support rates: least support from PSI holders (around 50% for each sector) and most from academics and citizens (neighbouring 80% for each sector). Representatives of the excluded sectors essentially recalled the arguments against extending the scope that were used to justify the initial exclusion of these sectors from the scope of the Directive, i.e. preponderance of third party intellectual property rights on materials held by these public bodies. An additional argument, relating to protection of privacy and personal data, was brought forward against extension of scope by representatives of public archives.

Finally, respondents across all sectors generally called for support and deployment measures to promote PSI re-use, including across borders. These measures range from guidance on many topics (licensing, charging, public task, data quality) to support for the development of national data portals and for a European single access point to data.

In summary, responses to this consultation demonstrate that although compared with the previous review, the culture of re-use has made its way in many Member States (in particular the UK, France, Denmark), much remains to be done to maximise the potential of PSI re-use and to fully exploit the rules established by the 2003 PSI Directive, several provisions of which require amendments or clarification.

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1. Background

The Digital Agenda for Europe lists the revision of the Directive 2003/98/EC on the re-use of public sector information (PSI Directive) among key actions for achieving the Digital Single Market. It highlights that governments can stimulate content markets by making PSI available on transparent, effective and non-discriminatory terms. This is an important source of potential growth of innovative on-line services.

Consultation of interested parties forms part of the review process. The purpose of this open consultation was, therefore, to gather information from as many sources as possible, including governments, public sector content holders, commercial and non-commercial re-users and other interested parties, on their views on the review of the PSI Directive. The information thus received provides valuable input for the impact assessment that will be carried out by the Commission in the first half of 2011, subsequently followed by proposals for possible legislative or other measures.

The online consultation was launched on 9 September 2010 and closed on 30 November 2010. The consultation was published on the Commission's 'Your Voice in Europe' webpage at http://ec.europa.eu/yourvoice/ipm/forms/dispatch?form=psidirective2010. The launch was publicised through a press release1, on Twitter2, on the Information Society PSI Thematic Website3 and on the ePSIplatform portal4. In addition, all types of stakeholders were informed about the consultation and invited to submit their views through their associations and individual email messages, including through the PSI Group for Member States.

2. Replies to the consultation: statistics

The Commission received 585 responses online and further 9 responses by email. The responses embrace the different actors present in the PSI value chain: PSI content holders, other public authorities not holding any PSI, PSI re-users, academics and experts, citizens and respondents identified as "other".

5 Member States: Belgium, Denmark, France, the Netherlands and the UK (submitted by National Archives on behalf of the UK) submitted official position papers to the consultation, albeit only the UK via the online consultation.

In fact, several responses from individual ministries or other governmental entities were submitted online, but it remains unclear to what extent these submissions represent the official views of the Member State, views of the entity as a public sector body or the individual views of the person having submitted the response.

The responses from the PSI re-users cover, to a considerable degree, the different active sectors of the information re-use market. Considerable input was received from small scale IT companies – re-users of PSI as well as from important re-users of geographical, legal and business information. The main European publishing and broadcasting associations as well as companies representing this sector also

1 (http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/10/1103&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en)2 http://twitter.com/infsoe4 3 http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/policy/psi/index_en.htm4http://www.epsiplatform.eu/news/news/european_commission_launches_digital_agenda_consultation_on_psi_policy_and_directive

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provided their input. The response of the PSI Alliance, which represents the views of an important group of private sector companies and associations active in the PSI field, should also be noted.

The majority of respondents to this online consultation on the review of the PSI Directive were private citizens (48%). The remaining 52% is composed of 23% academic/experts, 13% PSI re-users, 8% PSI content holders, 4% public authorities and 4% others.

37 countries of residence were referred (not all respondents indicated their country of residence). The overall distribution of respondents by nationality was:

Germany: 174France: 50UK: 48Finland: 33Spain, Italy: 31 eachBelgium: 30The Netherlands, Sweden: 28 each Austria: 20Poland: 14 Czech, Denmark, Greece, Slovenia: 8 eachHungary, Portugal: 7 eachLuxembourg, Norway: 6 eachBulgaria, Latvia: 4 eachLithuania, Romania, Switzerland, USA, Croatia, Ireland, Slovakia: 2 eachAlbania, Australia, China, Estonia, India, Malta, RSA, Turkey, EU: 1 each

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Analysis of responses

3. Context and possible actions to consider

The following overview based on the replies to the 6 individual sections of the consultation provides a detailed overview of comments and ideas brought forward in the submissions. For reasons of clarity some of the comments have been regrouped, even if they were submitted in response to separate questions.

3.1. Do you think that PSI re-use has reached its full potential in Europe? 3.2. Could further action towards opening up public data resources and practical measures

facilitating re-use […] contribute to unlocking innovation and developing new services, applications and mash-ups?

An overwhelming majority of the 571 respondents who replied to this question (89% ) signalled that PSI reuse has not reached its full potential in Europe.

Among those who responded that PSI reuse had indeed reached its full potential in Europe, there were 5 PSI content holders (Météo France, the Lithuanian Ministry of Finance State Tax Inspectorate, French Ministère de l'Environnement, Estonian Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications, French Ministry of the Interior), 2 academics, several citizens and several PSI re-users (Rubicon from Spain, Geosys from France, a Hungarian navigation services company). However, the PSI re-users who agreed that PSI re-use has reached its full potential at the same time strongly supported new actions in this area.

Among Member States, all that responded (Belgium, Denmark, France the Netherlands and the UK) believe that PSI reuse has not reached its full potential in Europe. Denmark reported in its submission

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that a study made by Gartner Group estimates that the business potential in the re-use of public data in Denmark alone could be worth more than EUR 80 million yearly.

Several respondents had no opinion on this issue, e.g. the UK Met Office or the Croatian Meteo Info, the Spanish Cadastre, the Finnish National Archives.

In addition to the above, an even greater majority of the 568 respondents who addressed the second question gave very strong support (72% of respondents out of 95% responding positively) to further action towards opening up public data resources and practical measures facilitating re-use for unlocking innovation and developing new services.

agree strongly 72%

disagree strongly2%

agree 23%

no opinion 1%

disagree 2%

Could further action towards opening up public data resources and practical measures facilitating re-use contribute to unlocking innovation?

In general, both the re-users and the public authorities (both content holders and others) strongly supported additional measures and many chose to qualify their answers in further questions by providing suggestions as to the possible amendments to the Directive and supporting soft law measures (see below).

Among Member States, all respondents believe that further action could contribute to unlocking the innovation potential of re-use.

3.3. Do you think that divergent national rules can make it more complicated to grasp economic opportunities and to develop cross-border products and services? And

3.4. Should further action be taken at Community level to promote cross-border products and services re-using PSI? 

In the area of cross-border products and services based on re-use, 85% of the 572 respondents who replied to this question declared that divergent national rules can be an obstacle to reap the benefits of the internal re-use market.

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Do you think that divergent national rules can make it more complicated to grasp economic opportunities and to

develop cross-border products and services?

disagree6%

disagree strongly1%

no opinion8%

agree48%

agree strongly37%

The figure appears to be very high taking into account that the PSI Directive, adopted inter alia to remedy the shortcomings of the fragmentation of the internal market in this area, was adopted in 2003 and implementation by the Member States was completed in 2008 . 86% of the 566 respondents expressed support to further Community actions to promote cross-border provision of PSI based products and services.

Should further action be taken at Community level to promote cross-border products and services re-using PSI?

agree40%

no opinion8%

disagree2% disagree strongly

4%agree strongly

46%

In more detail, several academics disagreed that divergent rules are an obstacle (at the same time as many agreed that further action should be taken at Community level to promote cross-border products and services). Also, 20 citizens disagreed with the first statement and 9 agreed that further action

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should be taken at Community level to promote cross-border products and services, whereas 11 were against any such further action.

Among the PSI bodies community some differences of opinion appear, despite a generalised support in favour of additional actions to support cross-border provision of PSI based products and services. The Conseil Général of Seine-Saint-Denis in France, the Dutch National Broadcaster, the UK National Archives, the Suomi.fi portal team of the Finnish State Treasury and a Czech authority declared that divergent national rules are no obstacle in this area. However, while the former 2 also objected to any further action to promote cross-border services, the latter 2 declared that such action is indeed necessary while the Czech authority had no opinion in this matter. On the other hand, the City of Espoo and the Finnish National Board of Education agreed that divergent national rules can be an obstacle in this respect but objected to additional action in favour of cross-border products and services based on PSI. Finally, the UK Met Office declared having no opinion on the issue of divergent national rules, but strongly objected to any further Community Action to support cross-border provision of PSI based products and services.

Re-users were quasi unanimous (only two disagreed and the majority strongly agreed) that divergent national rules are an obstacle to cross-border provision of products and services based on PSI and quasi unanimous (some had no opinion) with respect to the necessity of further action to support it.

All responding Member States believe that further stimulating action should be taken at Community level to promote cross-border PSI re-use although the UK believes that divergent national rules do not make it more complicated to grasp economic opportunities and to develop cross-border products and services.

3.5. In your opinion, should the PSI Directive be amended?3.6. If yes, more substantive amendments to the Directive? and/or technical adjustments to the Directive clarifying some of the provisions?

A significantly lower number of respondents – 471 - replied to the question whether the PSI Directive should be amended. Of those, some 70% think that the Directive should be amended.

The percentages of those in favour of further amendments among categories of respondents were: some 65% of citizens, under 50% of PSI holders and 60% of other PSI bodies, 73% of PSI re-users 61% of academics.

Among Member States, Belgium and the Netherlands believe that the Directive should be amended, including substantive amendments and technical adjustments. Denmark and France believe that the Directive could be amended although priority should be given to the implementation of the current regulatory framework as it has not yet produced all its effects. France is also against taking any soft law measures, including issuing any guidelines, at this stage. UK opposes both substantive amendments to the Directive and adoption of further soft-law measures.

An even lower number of respondents (372) addressed the question of which type of amendments should be brought to the Directive. Of those, 79% favour substantive amendments, and slightly fewer (76%) are in favour of technical adjustments to the Directive.

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more substantive amendments to the Directive?

79,57%

9,14%

0,00%

10,00%

20,00%

30,00%

40,00%

50,00%

60,00%

70,00%

80,00%

90,00%

yes no

respondents

and/or technical adjustments to the Directive clarifying some of the provisions?

76,88%

5,38%

0,00%

10,00%

20,00%

30,00%

40,00%

50,00%

60,00%

70,00%

80,00%

90,00%

yes no

respondents

Among the PSI holders, some 60% were against any amendments to the Directive. Among the public authorities not holding any PSI, only 2 believe that the Directive should not be further amended. 1 was against substantive amendments but favoured technical adjustments. Among the PSI content holders objecting to further amendments to the Directive were all responding national meteorological offices except for the Norwegian and the Swedish ones, several ministries (5) and 4 institutions holding geographical information (e.g. Ordnance Survey). On the other hand, among those who favoured amendments, there were several national archives, the Spanish Cadastre (whereas the UK one was against), several ministries and local governments. Responses in this category demonstrate that while most object to further amendments, views diverge among respondents operating in the same sector (e.g. Met Offices, Cadastres, ministries, local governments). Among re-users, a majority (about 73%) believe that the PSI Directive should be amended. Among those who support a revision of the Directive, only 5 oppose substantive amendments to the Directive and 9 re-users did not express an opinion. Also 5 re-users are against technical adjustments / clarification of the provisions of the Directive and 11 respondents did not have an opinion on this topic.

Among the academic community, some 61% are in favour of amending the Directive. Among those who believe that the Directive should be amended, 9 oppose substantive amendments to the Directive, 2 oppose technical adjustments, 4 had no opinion on what type of amendments should be brought, 60 respondents favour substantive amendments and 54 favour technical adjustments. Among the citizens, over 65% believe that the Directive should be modified in some way. A majority of those who believe that the Directive should be modified favour both substantive amendments and technical adjustments, 8 object to substantive amendments and favour technical adjustments and 7, inversely, favour substantive amendments and object to technical adjustments.

Of the others, all but one of those who responded favoured substantive amendments whereas all favoured technical adjustments to the Directive.

3.7. If you think that the PSI Directive should be amended, which issues should in your opinion be addressed? Which provisions should not be amended?

Member States

To the extent that the directive is amended, Denmark supports amending article 6 concerning charging principles by removing the "reasonable return on investment" from the permissible charges, based on

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the premise that the innovation potential of SMEs could be significantly improved by limiting charges for access to public data (data collected/produced within the public task) to marginal costs.

If the directive were to be amended, France would privilege from the following topics: creation of a general right to re-use; on top of charges incurred by public bodies, charging should also take due account of the economic advantage of re-using information enjoyed by operators in a business environment; a more explicit consideration for IPRs belonging to public bodies, while clarifying that the right to re-use comprises the right to exploit these IPRs; revision of the directive could be an opportunity to better articulate and coordinate with theDirective 95/46/EC, in particular as regards the rights of persons whose personal data are re-used.

The Netherlands supports: amending the general principle so that all accessible information becomes re-usable; a requirement to make data available in machine readable formats; with respect to charges, the adoption of the principle of marginal costs, including administrative costs; no licenses on governmental data, subject to exceptions (not defined in the submission). PSI bodies (content holders and other)

First of all, several respondents suggested that the Directive should create a general right to re-use public information, arguing that public information is a common good and the mere possibility of re-use is not enough. Similarly, several respondents suggested that the Directive should provide for an obligation to release specific datasets and opinions varied as to which datasets should fall under this obligation: obligatory re-use for energy transition policy of EU; public bidding, transportation and weather data, locations of public buildings. Another respondent suggested that a release priority with respect to some datasets (no suggestion which) should be provided for. Such a priority must be accompanied by a common structure of data release in order to facilitate cross-border services (e.g. CODICE in the case of public procurement data).

Secondly, a respondent pleaded for removing impediments in data sharing inside the governmental bodies, by establishing data portals or clearing houses for public data, such as the national geo-portals foreseen under the INSPIRE Directive. Another respondent suggested that mutual exchange should be key rather than a "simple" provision of public data from the authorities towards the private sector. A respondent suggested mandating a central office in national public administrations to assess public contracts.

Respondents also pleaded for more clarity regarding release of raw / source versus value added data and for adopting standardised formats for the release and provision of data for re-use. A respondent also mentioned the necessity to provide data in machine readable formats. Moreover, several respondents pleaded for the development of technical tools that allow real interoperability.

Licensing issues were addressed by some respondents. One suggested dividing the data into two categories: those that do not require a license for re-use, and those re-usable under an open license, e.g. CC-BY,

Several respondents addressed the issue of charging. Some suggested that charging for re-use is a barrier and that fees should be restricted to specific datasets (no suggestion as to how these datasets should be identified) and another pleaded for a prohibition to charge for datasets already financed by the public institution/government. Many PSI bodies called for a generally clearer guidance on charging strategies versus open access, taking into account not only data types (e.g. core versus value added, data versus information products), but also type of end use (public, academic, business), and of the

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delivery platform. A respondent suggested that the latter will be particularly subject to changes within the next years e.g. increased web viewing tools (which allow value added data to be viewed but not downloaded), mobile platforms (e.g. smart phones), linked data.

Some respondents suggested that financing of PSI holders should shift from transaction-based to task-based to prevent public institutions from engaging in market activities and competing against the private sector to remedy the budget cuts they are facing. Many respondents in this category also pointed to the issue of an unclear public task, suggesting that the difficulty in defining the public task is a hurdle to data sharing; so standardised definition(s) in the Directive would be beneficial.

Several respondents suggested that the Directive should define indicators to assess the impact of the PSI on economic development.

Among isolated remarks, a respondent suggested that because of risks of data aggregation and related personal information, the PSI Directive should have a more explicit reference to the European Data Protection Directive in terms of article 1(2); a respondent from Norway pleaded for a more effective implementation in EEA states, such as Norway; a respondent suggested to clarify the status of NGOs who often collect, use and/or analyze data in order to communicate with governmental bodies (NGOs should be encouraged to contribute volunteer citizen science data to national public data portals); a respondent suggested to replace the definition of "record" so that the concept of "information" be used in this context;

Finally, a respondent pointed out that crowd-sourcing, increased use of linked data and enhancement of PSI will create new IP issues, particularly with the advent of GPS enabling smart computing, as well as issues of loss of control, which will need to be dealt with.

PSI re-users

Re-users generally pleaded for changing the general principle and establishing an obligation to provide public sector data for re-use.

Among those, some called for a precise definition of "open data" and re-usable formats while others pleaded for an obligation to deliver raw data (if information is stored in a digital form), some underlining the importance of open standards.

When it comes to the scope, several respondents called for extending it to the cultural sector, some to research and broadcasting data, while several others (notably the PSI Alliance) called for priority to be given to proper implementation and application of the current rules before widening the scope.

With respect to licenses, several respondents indicated that licensing terms are frequently a barrier to re-use and that while they should be mandatory for commercial re-use, the acceptable conditions should be more precisely addressed in the Directive. Also, re-users stated that one of the major obstacles facing commercial re-users, particularly those creating pan-European services, is inconsistency in licensing terms and standards so in order to unleash the full economic, social and democratic potential benefits of PSI, greater attention must be given to harmonised standards. Also, some respondents called for re-use allowing text-mining and data-mining.

With respect to dealings with public sector data holders, several respondents pleaded for greater transparency within the PSI holders (pointing to a frequent lack of interlocutor in charge of asset lists). In this respect, several respondents pointed out that the term of 20 days (Art 4) seems excessive for a

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re-usability request reply in the current environment, with information often immediately accessible in a click (proposal for 5 days and 10 days for complex requests).

With respect to charging, several suggestions were made. Publishers (especially in the legal sector), for example, called for a distinction between raw and enriched data. Where the former - published within their public service mission - can be available for free, the latter should be provided in the competitive sector against payment if it has been enriched (indexing, comment, consolidation, search engines, thesaurus, hypertext links etc). These respondents argue that this is necessary to ensure a level playing field between the private sector and the public data holders controlling the data. Several re-users pleaded for writing the principle of charging marginal costs of re-formatting and re-distribution into the Directive. Others have also called for a more precise definition of which costs can be charged for and some for removing the "together with a reasonable return on investment" language from Art.6. Finally, several respondents pleaded for an obligation to deliver raw data for free, including for commercial re-use, where its creation was already financed from the public purse.

Again, the issue of meteorological data was clearly signalled. A re-user active in the sector of meteorology and climate change for the renewable sector signalled is bound to retrieve ALL meteorological information (like weather data, weather models) from US and work with US-provided data for users in Europe due to the restricted access to meteorological data by the national European meteorological services. As a result, European know-how is exported abroad, services are provided at much higher technical level to US consumers than to customers in Europe, the development of industry-dedicated meteorological services is much more advanced in the US than in Europe. The respondent identifies one reason: European meteorological data are collected by the national meteorological organisations but retained from further use (or to be more precise: one may buy this information for prohibitive costs.)

A frequently addressed issue was the need to clarify the “public task” because of the unclear boundary between a PSI holder's public task and its commercial activity, leaving room for ambiguity and potential cross-subsidy. In that respect, re-users also underlined that some PSI holders profit from selling data while still staying within the letter (but not the spirit) of the Directive, to the prejudice of private re-users. A number of respondents suggested establishing a mandatory independent PSI regulator in every Member State (without clearly suggesting its competencies although a re-user suggested that all Member States should publish the PSI requests and beneficiaries if data is not generally re-usable). Many re-users also called for a requirement for PSI holders to always justify a refusal to deliver data for re-use, subject to regular review.

Some respondents called for a standardised efficient redress mechanism, coupled with sanctions for non-compliance, which is often lacking in Member States. In that respect, several re-users stated that, in general, formalities for the request for PSI work well in principle and should not be amended, but instead non-compliance should be sanctioned (currently not foreseen). A re-user also deplored the lack of common definition of terms such as "reasonable effort" or "acceptable price".

Finally, a number of re-users pointed out that copyright is still being used to block public data re-use. For example: (1) the Austrian High Court ruled that public registers are protected by the sui generis copyright protection (Database Directive) which then is argued to block PSI re-use or charge copyright charges beyond the provisions laid down in Article 6; (2) public bodies who resell their geospatial PSI under commercial terms tend to place significant IPR restrictions on other re-users, thereby limiting innovation.

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Academics/experts

Academics generally pleaded for introducing a general obligation to make public sector information available for re-use. Some argue that since access to information is one of the core tenants of the essential facilities doctrine that was upheld by the EU in matters of regulation of network industries, it is essential to ensure proper access to data sources that have the potential to create competitive markets in goods, services or digital applications, e.g. public transportation real-time timetables.

Second, some pleaded for extending of the scope of the Directive to include data from cultural and research/education establishments, (e.g. information on holdings of public collections).

Furthermore, in order to prevent de facto monopolies over the exploitation of PSI, academics generally call for open and transparent licenses, preferably standardised, based e.g. on CC-BY or CC0-like licenses. Several academics suggested that no licence should be required for re-use of public sector data after 15 years.

As was the case of re-users and some public sector bodies, academics also call for a harmonised (standardised) way of making data available, standardised access formats and procedures for data and metadata, preferably in open digital formats (possibly in an annex listing admissible data formats, or qualifying characteristics of data files deemed machine-readable).

Academics generally pleaded for clarification of admissible tariffs based on a clear differentiation between data that is demonstrably part of the Member-States operations (which should be re-usable for free, including for commercial re-use) and data that is produced as part of a service provision activity in the competitive sector, (which should legitimately be charged for), provided the raw PSI that may allow for the generation of such services be re-usable for free. Several academics called for the default rule of access at marginal cost of dissemination, others for eliminating the costs of “collection” and “production.” Another group of academics suggested free non-commercial re-use (at least, if data is available and provision is via download) together with incremental cost for commercial use together with a de minimis rule for minimal commercial use. In all cases where data is available against payment, the academics call for a requirement of clear and transparent calculations of the charged price.

This category of respondents also points out that the issue of public task needs addressing, by a more precise definition of the terms and their alignment with other EU legislation.

Similarly to re-users, academics are calling for stronger obligations regarding redress mechanisms and transparency. One respondent suggested that the Directive should create an opposable right to data re-use with an amendment specifically establishing the means of recourses available to citizens at EU level, and the related obligations of Member States. Several respondents also called for a specific list of sanctions for non compliance and a possibility to appeal to an EU body.

Finally, several academics underlined that establishing a national open data portal should be one of the minimum and binding requirements. In that respect, the idea of establishing lists of "key", high value re-usable assets (e.g. postcode data, location data, transport data) was proposed.

Citizens

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Generally citizens expressed the view that all public data should be available to everyone free of charge without any licensing restrictions, possibly under a GPL, LGDL or one of the Creative Commons licences. However, if licenses apply, their provisions should be harmonised across Europe. Several citizens suggested that data should not be deliverable on request but should be made available upfront by public sector bodies. According to a respondent, this would remedy the general lack of information on the existence of available data. Several citizens called for obligations for a catalogue of PSI that must be made available for re-use by public sector bodies. One citizen proposed to write into the Directive the rule of 3 criteria for the availability of PSI: open data, open standards, open source.

Several citizens also called for extending the scope of the Directive, in particular to publicly funded broadcasts and publicly funded research data.

Several citizens called for reasonable pricing for commercial use and free for private and public use. In that respect one citizen called for clarification of the notion of commercial reuse, proposing e.g. where Web service uses PSI and features advertising to cover technical costs (but without generating massive profit) it ought to be considered non-commercial.

With respect to formats, many citizens pleaded for delivery of data in open formats free of any fees or IPR restrictions.

Also, the majority of citizens underlined the need to protect privacy in relation to data re-use, e.g. with respect to any data collections that could be used to generate profiles (medical records, taxation information).

Other

In this category respondents also generally called for amending the general principle to establish a binding obligation on PSI bodies to make their data available for re-use. Also, most respondents called for an obligation to deliver raw data but e.g. W3C suggested that while raw data is good as a starting point, public authorities should be encouraged to follow the example of data.gov.uk and produce Linked Open Data, eventually moving to the default rule of free availability of linked open data.

A respondent suggested that the scope of the exclusion of documents in which third parties own intellectual property rights needs to be clarified, to clearly bring documents within the scope of the Directive: a) where the third party is another EU public sector body; b) where documents contain re-usable content that is not protected by the third party rights; and c) where the third party has licensed the document for re-use.

Furthermore, the necessity to clarify the "public task" was also mentioned, to establish a clear separation between the missions of public service and state activities in a competitive marketplace. In that respect one respondent also mentioned that reasons for restraining PSI re-use should be clearly stated, transparent and subject to regular review.

Another suggestion concerns continuity of data provision, i.e. making available data for which no continuity can or will be guaranteed should be labelled and actively advertised as such.

With respect to costs, some respondents suggest that a marginal cost principle would be appropriate while others argue that where public sector information is available in a format that can be offered on-line without any additional work, it should be made available for non-profit purposes free of charge but that public authorities might charge for own costs (e.g. cost of collecting geographical data). Another

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respondent suggested that as a general rule public bodies should not charge fees from other public bodies for information they need to perform their tasks.

As in the previous categories of respondents, proper segregation of public accounts to prevent cross subsidy, improved measures for redress and sanctions for non-compliance were listed.

Finally, a respondent suggested creating a European body to preside over arbitration or a court equipped to resolve disputes between PSI holders and re-users.

3.8. Should "soft law" measures be taken possibly in addition to a modification of the Directive, such as Commission guidance or recommendations, regarding the application / interpretation of the PSI Directive?3.9. If yes, which "soft law" measures would you favour?

This question was addressed by about 3/5 of the respondents, half of whom were in favour of soft law measures. The percentages of respondents were highest among the academics (83%), followed by the re-users (some 80%), about 73% of citizens followed by 70% of PSI holders and other public bodies.

Should "soft law" measures be taken possibly in addition to a modification of the Directive regarding the application /

interpretation of the PSI Directive?

65,94%

34,06%

0,00%

10,00%

20,00%

30,00%

40,00%

50,00%

60,00%

70,00%

80,00%

90,00%

100,00%

yes no

respondents

Among those favouring additional soft law measures were almost 65% of re-users, slightly fewer (about 64%) PSI holders/other PSI bodies, some 56% of academics and about 40% of citizens.

Member States

Belgium suggested developing a set of instructions/recommendations including examples to clarify the notions of re-use, return on investment, types of license, scope of application, and effectiveness of the transparency principle. These complementary elements would not be binding on Member States in order to avoid additional costs of implementing legislation.

For the Danish authorities, guidelines and sharing of good practices are the main drivers of re-use of public data.

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The French authorities consider that the question of "soft law" measures or guidelines from the Commission is premature, because of the diversity of situations in Member States, variety of information types and sectors concerned and the highly evolving digital economy sector.

The Netherlands suggest the following "soft law" measures: standardization of metadata; exchange of best practices; establishment of a European data portal aggregating the national data portals; recommendations for accessibility and retrievability of documents; promotion of use of open source and open standards.

PSI bodies (content holders and other)

Respondents in this category generally called for guidance and recommendations on matters of practical application but underlined that the Commission should not advise on interpretation of the legal text.

Among issues most often brought up were: model licenses for re-use of PSI; practical procedures for public entities such as a guide on the internal review of reusable data; promotion of and guidance on the calculation of marginal costs; strengthening of the prohibition of exclusive arrangements and of discrimination; prohibition of re-use by public authorities in case of direct competition with the private sector.

Individual respondents called for a clarification of the difference between "use" and "re-use"; clarification of the notion of return on investment; preferred technical formats, semantic standards, technical protocols (not prescriptive). In this respect, a respondent called for a public repository for software. Another respondent called for the establishment of a common structure for datasets in order to facilitate the establishment of cross-border services.

Also, several respondents suggested that the Commission can contribute to promulgating and raising awareness of techniques and technologies that can facilitate effective re-use of PSI through mechanisms such as promotion of studies, European benchmarks operations and best practice share events. Also, respondents suggested that soft law measures could force governments to fund “cross-governmental” national data-portals (i.e. between research establishments and different ministries) to solve impediments in data sharing and quality, standardization and use of semantic web data combining methods. A respondent suggested setting up a strategic dialogue (e.g. Hollemkolum Norway in Energy sector) between the public sector (policy makers and operational level) and private sector and science.

Re-users

Re-users suggested a number of soft law measures, although some proposals were clearly relating more to the substantive changes of the Directive, concerning e.g. the mandatory availability of data for re-use, availability of data free of charge or establishing the marginal charges principle for the re-use of data. Also, a number of respondents called for measures to ensure a level playing field without unfair competition between public sector administrations competing against private undertakings by a mandatory availability (against payment) of value-added content (not only by making raw information available within the public service mission).

Generally re-users called for recommendations/guidelines regarding the application of the Directive.

A majority of respondents in this section called for recommendations and/or guidelines regarding licences by proposing licensing models or compiling best practices in freeing up data by public

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institutions and in re-using data by companies. Some also called for recommendation of open content licences, including preferred technical formats and semantic standards protocols (without prescribing them). In that respect, one respondent suggested that when data is made available in a closed format, the publisher of the information should provide a FOSS conversion program.

A large number of respondents also called for guidance/recommendations on price calculations, including on the basis of the marginal cost principle.

Individual respondents suggested: creating an administrative body / a European Agency with actual real investigative and injunctive powers; defining the label of "education and research" institution to prevent national bodies from using this provision to withhold data from re-use; adopting guidance papers similar to those adopted for the Water Framework Directive.

Academics/experts

This category of respondents submitted very diversified responses with many suggestions for soft law measures. Some argued that soft law precedes substantive amendments while others stated that soft law measures are just complementary to new binding provision and while they cannot alone be sufficient, they could have a positive impact on access and re-use.

Generally, academics called for more awareness raising actions from the Commission, including exchange of best practices, expertise, and experience to connect exemplary public sector bodies with those that have not yet made their data available. Several academics called for recommendations and/or guidelines on practical implementation of the re-use provisions within public institutions. Several respondents proposed that such recommendations should indicate how to implement national open data portals, including the minimum sets of data to be made available and best practices regarding licensing terms, keeping in mind that license proliferation will create strong transaction, legal, translation and uncertainty costs, which are likely to impede trade of data and data application services across Member States. Another respondent suggested catalyzing Member-States' efforts through a http://data.europa.eu portal, that would maintain a list of all accessible PSI across the EU, possibly offering metadata translations where useful, format harmonization, possibly constituting a transition solution for Member-States or local authorities that might need technical assistance for data hosting.

Several academics called for more Commission action to underline the direct economic benefits for society and business of a wider PSI re-use, e.g. by use of best practice collections, case studies, cost benefit analysis, research and development programmes etc.

Several respondents also called for guidance or recommendations for data publishers to use liberal licenses (e.g. "Creative Commons Attribution") and to use standard and simple data distribution formats: CSV, RDF, XML or JSON, putting the focus on publishing raw data dumps before publishing smart only query API such as RESTful HTTP services. Many respondents called for recommendations on standards, including common identifiers/URIs to make the data comparable across languages and countries. Many academics also called for open source client and server solutions for information services, including, where possible, open implementations. An academic called for encouraging research in semantic web and linked data technologies by building on targeted linked data initiatives like LOD2, and bringing online under linked data format a few data sources for which semantics applications add palpable value for end-users and application developers.

Similarly to previous categories of respondents, academics seek guidance on the calculation of costs and clarification as to whether, and the extent to which, the costs that can be re-charged to re-users

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should relate only to the provision of the documents supplied, or whether the charges should be calculated so as to recover the costs relating to all documents supplied by the public sector body. Moreover, some call for guidance if a marginal cost is applied to prevent cross-subsidy between products (including, where necessary, segregation with independent review and challenge possibilities).

Individual respondents called for policy guidance on the interpretation of the concept of ‘public task’ and on the terms "access" and "re-use", including by the public sector body itself. The latter is mandated by a perceived confusion between these terms (e.g. does showing information, obtained under Access legislation on a web site, constitute re-use) and a possible overlap with Directive 2003/4/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 28 January 2003 on public access to environmental information.

Citizens

Among the citizens, the issues of open standards and/or open source dominated in the submitted responses. Many respondents suggested using the Creative Commons or GPL licenses (GNU General Public License¹ or the Lesser GPL² for public information); many called for guidance and recommendations on formats of published data and data repositories and a citizen suggested establishing a body similar to the Swedish IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) to collect and promote best practices, standards and guidelines among Member States on issues such as protocols and interfaces for data-exchange between PSI capable systems.. Many respondents also called for a list of common standard licenses to ensure harmonisation across Member States.

Many citizens called for more communication campaigns to promote the rights of access and re-use of public data, including the promotion of national data portals along the UK example. In that respect, a citizen called for a European central platform to connect the content of all EU Member States' data. Finally, one citizen submitted that the database law is an obstacle for releasing open data in EU (in comparison to the US).

Others

In this category, respondents generally called for guidance on the interpretation of the Directive, guidelines regarding the creation of licences (European models); recommendations on how to calculate prices on the basis of the marginal cost principle; detailed guidelines on what data should be made available for re-use as well as guidelines on interpretation of the concept of ‘public task’.

One respondent called for awareness initiatives aimed at public sector bodies in the Member States on the possible benefits of opening up and for guidelines including best practice examples. Another respondent called for practical guidance in the form of a Commission framework to ensure compatibility of different Member State implementations, particularly for pan European projects and opportunities.

Finally, a respondent indicated that soft law measures alone are insufficient, in particular as currently a significant part of the PSI Directive is perceived as having the effect of a soft law.

4. Substance, scope (article 1)

4.1. Currently, the PSI Directive is not applicable to information held by cultural, educational and research establishments and public service broadcasters. In your opinion, as far as information is

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not covered by third party intellectual property rights (excluded in any case from the scope of the PSI Directive), should the Directive apply to information held by public service broadcasters / educational and research establishments / cultural establishments?

A majority of respondents to the consultation addressed this question (about 95%). Of those, a majority favours extension of the scope of the Directive with small fluctuations according to the currently excluded sectors.

With respect to extending the scope of the Directive to public service broadcasters: 72% of respondents are in favour (with some 43% strongly in favour), while over 7% are against and 14% of respondents have no opinion.

public service broadcasters?

agree; 29%

no opinion; 14%

disagree; 4% disagree strongly; 3%

agree strongly; 43%

More in detail, 44% of PSI content holders and other public institutions are in favour of the extension, over 12% against and 34% indicate no opinion. Among the PSI re-users, some 68% are in favour, almost 5% against and 27% indicate no opinion. Among the academic community, over 80% of respondents favour an extension, some 6% are against and 14% have no opinion. Finally among the citizens, over 84% of respondents favour an extension with almost 7% against while among the respondents in the "other" category, some 43% are in favour, some 16% against and 41% have no opinion.

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public service broadcasters?

44%

68%80% 84%

43%

12%

5%

6%7%

16%

34%27%

14% 9%

41%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

PSI holder PSI reusers academic citizens others

no opinion

diagree

agree

With respect to extending the scope of the Directive to educational and research establishments: some 80% of respondents overall (with over 50% strongly) are in favour, some 9% against and some 7% have no opinion on the issue.

eucational and research establishments?

agree; 31%

no opinion; 7%

disagree; 5%disagree strongly;

4%

agree strongly; 53%

Respectively in each category: some 53% of PSI content holders and other public institutions, 72% of re-users, over 87% of academics, 86% of citizens and over 55% other favour the extension, while over 8% of PSI holders and other public institutions, almost 8% of re-users, 7% of academics, over 9% of citizens and almost 14% of others are against this extension and the remaining respondents either indicate having no opinion on the issue or did not address this question.

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educational and research establishments?

53%

72%

87% 86%

55%

8%

8%

7% 9%

14%

39%

20%

6% 5%

31%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

PSI holder PSI reusers academic citizens others

no opinion

diagree

agree

Finally, with respect to extending the scope of the Directive to cultural establishments, over 73% of respondents favour the extension, 7% are against and some 20% have no opinion or did not address the question.

cultural establishments?

agree; 32%

no opinion; 20%

disagree; 4% disagree strongly; 3%

agree strongly; 41%

Among the categories of respondents, almost half (49%) of PSI content holders and other public sector institutions, over 72% of re-users, 78% of academics, over 80% of citizens and over 55% others favour this extension, whereas some 10% of PSI content holders and other public institutions, under 4% of re-users, almost 6% of academics, some 7% of citizens and over 8% of others oppose it. The remaining respondents either do not have an opinion on this issue or did not address this question.

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cultural establishments?

49%

72%78% 80%

55%

10%

4%

6% 7%

8%

31%24%

16% 13%

37%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

PSI holder PSI reusers academic citizens others

no opinion

diagree

agree

Member States

Belgium supports extension of the scope of the directive to all three excluded sectors.

Denmark did not respond to the question.

France stated that it is not advisable to extend the scope of the directive.

The Netherlands neither supports nor opposes an extension of scope but stated that any such extension should be preceded by impact assessments on the impact of reuse in the excluded sectors.

UK opposes extending the Directive to all 3 currently excluded sectors.

4.2. Could you please indicate reasons for or against the inclusion of information held by these establishments? What would be the benefits / difficulties if the scope was extended to cover such information? Are there certain data sets, if not all, held by these establishments that could be valuable for developing new services or applications and that should be made available to re-use?

The main reason for extending the scope of the directive, put forward by respondents in all categories, is that data/information funded by tax payers' money should be accessible and re-usable. Some respondents advocate re-usability for free at least for non-commercial purposes, some at marginal costs with possible exceptions. Several respondents elaborated that because of their public service mission, all documents created and/or held by public service broadcasters, educational research and cultural establishments should not be held as proprietary goods, but opened to public access and consultation, notwithstanding IP rights held by their creators (which may play a role in the determination of the price, if any).

The others reasons mentioned for the inclusion of information held by the three types of establishments were: cultural, social and economic growth.

Regarding the cultural and social issues, extension would promote knowledge and democratisation of education in many areas; respondents also believe that the extension would enhance transparency of the public service.

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Concerning economic growth, an extension of scope would boost innovation and lead to the creation of new services and products.

With respect to the exclusion of research and educational as well as cultural establishments, several respondents pointed out that some public bodies (e.g. operational meteorological institutes) abusively class themselves as “research establishments” to restrict re-use of the operational data they generate. Several respondents thus call for closing this loophole by either extending the scope of the directive to research and cultural establishments or, if exclusions are maintained, to define them in a way that makes such artificial restrictions impossible.

Several respondents argued that as cultural establishments may have a privileged or monopolistic access to some cultural/artistic/sport/entertainment information, the re-use of that information may represent the only opportunity to access the raw data necessary for the development of cultural products. However, the chronic lack of public funding may create a tendency towards “monetizing” as much as possible the re-use of the information and content held by these organizations. A large amount of the content produced by cultural and educational institutions is the result of public funding and as such it needs to form the basis of open content for the production of value added services and products.

With respect to publicly funded research data, several respondents argued that publication may be delayed for a couple of years so that researchers can publish scientific articles, but as soon as the article is published, the data should become publicly available to everybody.

Several respondents put forward reasons against extending the scope.

Importantly, several representatives of the excluded sectors pointed out that (1) a substantial proportion of the information they hold would be subject to copyright and other rights owned by third parties so these establishments are often not in a position to grant the right to re-use and that (2) information is created under a number of different models, including third party funding, and significant resources would be required to identify what can and can't be made available. If the scope of the PSI Directive was extended to include them, the task of identifying and clearing the third party rights would impose a major burden on these organisations and there would be a significant overhead in managing access to this information on a blanket basis.

Respondents argued that vast amounts of third-party materials (protected by copyright), which might potentially be included in the scope of the Directive, are systematically acquired by public bodies. An extension of the scope could lead to the inclusion, not only of data generated by the public sector, but also of the value-added contributions of the private sectors. In any case, any amendments to the scope of the directive must ensure that incentives such as copyright protection for the resulting value-added products and services are preserved and strengthened.

With respect to cultural institutions, in particular archives, several respondents strongly argued against their inclusion within the scope of the directive based on two arguments: opposition to a "commercialisation" of written heritage and "privatisation" of its management as well as risk for fundamental rights such as privacy and protection of personal data resulting from re-use of material in genealogical archives. Some alerted to the risk of creating new data which should not be financed by the PSI Directive and public money. Costs of digitisation and preservation were also mentioned as a concern. One respondent expressed that making data available creates a system that will become totally dependent on public money.

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Furthermore, one respondent argued that the only advantage would be that the price for re-use of the information would be more strictly regulated. Another respondent stated that it is not clear which information held by cultural, educational and research establishments and public service broadcasters could be made available under the PSI Directive.

With respect to broadcasters, several respondents opposed extension of scope to these institutions based on their specificity, invoking in particular the issue of necessary protection of journalistic freedoms with respect to unpublished material.

Representatives of this excluded sector also responded strongly opposing the extension based on the following arguments. First, they argue that the PSI Directive must not interfere or overlap with the public service broadcasters' remit as defined exclusively by each Member State (Amsterdam Protocol on the system of public broadcasting). Setting out in the PSI Directive the conditions under which public service broadcasters have to give access to their content would therefore interfere and overlap with the definition of the public service remit, which falls within the exclusive competence of the Member States. It is also for Member States to organise the commercial exploitation of the remit, within the framework of European competition rules, including the rules on State aid and the 2009 Broadcasting Communication. Further, they argue that the PSI Directive must respect copyright law and must not interfere with the normal exploitation of intellectual property rights held by public service broadcasters. In particular, given that third-party rights (e.g. music rights) are an integrated part of virtually all broadcasted material, i.e. not only of acquired or commissioned productions but also of programme material produced entirely by the public service broadcaster itself, this would effectively exclude nearly all broadcasted material held by public service broadcasters that could be potentially suitable for the re-use intended by the PSI Directive. In any event, requiring broadcasters to make available their material on which third parties hold rights would cause serious difficulties in view of the complexity of copyright clearance for such re-use and in many instances, e.g. with respect to commercial re-use of archived material, this has proven to be practically impossible or financially unfeasible. Thirdly, the principles established in Articles 8 and 11 of the PSI Directive could come into conflict with the exclusivity of intellectual property rights held by broadcasters as producers of audio or audiovisual programmes. For example, the practice of licensing audiovisual works to third parties, as is done by broadcasters to other media entities, is largely based on exclusive arrangements (for a certain territory and/or for a certain period of time). Any interference with the exercise of such exclusive rights would be possible only if, and to the extent that, it would be compatible with the international treaties and European law on copyright. In this context, no distinction can be made between material produced by commercial entities and that of public service broadcasters. Finally, to protect editorial freedom and the confidentiality of sources, public service broadcasters must not be obliged to provide access to unpublished journalistic material to guarantee public service broadcasters' editorial independence and freedom.

Finally, several respondents argued against extending the scope because (1) the directive is not working as it stands now and (2) the first and foremost aim should be effectively applying the current directive. Extending the scope will drive a highly political debate that could weaken the directive and even lead to question it as such. One respondent suggested however, that once the directive is properly applied, the discussion about extending the scope could be launched.

Member States

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Belgium provided the following reasons in favour of an extension of the scope:

- A general extension of scope would simplify the European and the national implementing rules.- The audiovisual media services are cultural and economic services and their importance for education and culture can be significant to re-users; also, they offer significant employment opportunities and stimulate economic growth and investment. Their provision to third parties could have a significant economic impact.- Cultural institutions (museums, orchestras, operas, ballets, archives…): increased visibility of institutions; increased use of information held by the institutions (better valorisation); possibility of return on investment- Extension of scope to documents held by cultural institutions is consistent with the Digital Agenda as it contributes to achieving the Digital Single Market, which requires that the cultural content, specifically held by the public sector, be made available to society.- Extension of scope to educational institutions (schools, universities, libraries, research institutes): an extension in this area is essential for the development of teaching, research, innovation and for contribution to Europe 2020.

Belgium also listed the following reasons against an extension of scope:

- Public bodies subject to the directive are subject to pressures from re-users so the decision not to allow re-use will need to be substantiated.- The current wording of the first three articles of the Directive should be radically reviewed.- Regulation of audiovisual media services lies within the competence of Member States. In Belgium, the competence is split among the Flemish, the French and the German communities.- Lack of common standards (for data and metadata)- Privacy protection (extra burden to render the information anonymous)- Copyright law and database protection.

France submitted that the policy reasons for the exclusions provided in the preamble to the Directive continue to prevail. The cultural, scientific and broadcasting data carry a specific value that justifies their preservation, transmission to future generations and their dissemination to the widest audience. The nature of some public information (photographic collections, representations paintings, art reproductions, recordings of performances, lectures of professors, PhD academics, etc.) cannot, a priori be assimilated with the public information as defined for the purpose of the Directive.

Moreover, it seems essential to retain some flexibility regarding the applicable rules in order to exclude or limit the re-use of certain sensitive information (collections of war archives, collections of copyright works, personal data) or certain types of uses. In addition, the spirit of the Directive, which allows reuse of only a part of a set of data, may be contrary to achieving scientific or cultural objectives when it is appropriate to maintain the completeness of a collection or the context of delivery of the data. It therefore appears that in a context where the normal rules of re-use have not themselves been stabilized and where their implementation is still partial, an extension would certainly be premature. In relation to the cultural sector, a working group on digital cultural heritage has been set up at the French Ministry of Culture and Communication in 2009. Its task was to make recommendations to clarify and optimize the conditions for re-use of this data, in compliance with the law. According to France, this work proves that the limitation of scope is not contrary to an active policy of re-use of

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public cultural information. Rather, the exemption favours the definition of an ambitious re-use plan as it ensures respect of the specificity of the public cultural information. As stated above, the Netherlands neither supports nor opposes an extension of scope but stated that any such extension should be preceded by impact assessments on the impact of re-use in the excluded sectors.

According to the UK, a substantial proportion of the information held by the establishments listed would be subject to copyright and other rights owned by third parties. It follows that these establishments are often not in a position to grant the right to re-use. If the scope of the PSI Directive was amended to include such establishments, they would be faced with the considerable administrative burden of dealing with re-use requests and identifying and clearing the third party rights. Some of the establishments identified, notably museums and public broadcasters, are heavily reliant on their ability to be able to exploit commercially their information holdings. This would compromise their ability to do so by bringing them within the scope of the Directive.

5. Definitions (article 2)

5.1. Do you think that the definitions of the PSI Directive cause problems and should be amended or clarified?5.2. If yes, could you please indicate which definitions / problems, and how they could be clarified / addressed?

NO 32%

YES 31%N.A. 37%

37% of participants did not address this question. Actual respondents showed a division of opinion, with 32% opposing amendments or clarifications and 31% stating the opposite. Member States

Belgium suggested clarifying the following terms:

- Definition of "re-use" as currently too vague and too broad- "information" (title) and "document" (Article 2, Definitions) should be explicitly combined.

Denmark has not made any suggestions.

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France submitted that no definitions require any clarification at this stage. However, the French authorities submitted that the lack of a derogatory regime for the public archives is an obstacle to the re-use of archival material containing personal data, especially in projects aiming to establish commercial databases and in the constitutional of the nominal search index files containing public records available on the Internet. These archives may include data relating to people who may no longer be alive, the knowledge of which by third parties can have significant consequences for the private lives of the people still alive, e.g. information on acquisition or loss of French nationality, criminal convictions or data relating to health. While the Directive 95/46/EC, to which the PSI Directive refers, can be interpreted as protecting only living persons, it would be appropriate to introduce a specific provision on the protection of personal data concerning deceased persons taking into account possible repercussions for their heirs of dissemination and re-use of data (possible reputational harm, invasion of intimacy etc).

The Netherlands did not address this point in its response.

The UK believes no definitions require clarification.

Public bodies (PSI content holders and other)

Only a few respondents in this category addressed this question.

First, the concept of "public task" was indicated as problematic. In this respect, one Met Office stated that it is important to recognise when defining the public task that one size does not, and cannot, fit all. The public task for each organisation must be defined on an individual basis, taking into account the entirety of the work being undertaken. One respondent suggested that the term "public task" be replaced by "competence". Moreover, some respondents called for clarification of the term "body governed by public law" which is deemed problematic in view of the increasing numbers of tasks no longer performed directly by state agencies.

Secondly, several respondents indicated that the term "document" is obsolete and should be replaced by "data" or "information.

Finally, one respondent suggested that the definition of "format" could be further specified to include "machine readable" formats.

Re-users

First of all, several respondents called for a clarification of the definition of "public sector body". One argued that the definition wrongly excludes private companies providing services of "general public interest".

Several respondents put forward that a lack of definition of the "public task" is a key failure of the current Directive because many public administrations tend to regard data as their own property and are thus reluctant to make it available for re-use.

Furthermore, several respondents put forward that the term “document” has become obsolete and does not fit the open data environment and should be replaced with the term "information".

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Several respondents also called for a precise definition of the terms "raw data" and "added value". In this respect, a respondent invoked a situation whereby a PSI holder (wrongly) defined the action of making the data available as adding value, which can be charged for additionally.

Several respondents argued that there is a need to define the actions that are covered by "re-use", and one invoked that this should be done as opposed to just adding value to data, in which case re-use restrictions should not apply.

One respondent argued that the Directive should provide definitions of marginal costs and of available formats. Another respondent called for a precise definition of "costs of production" to avoid a situation whereby a PSI holder defines them as the costs of running the entire institution (e.g. ministry of justice costs include prisons, but data relates to county court judgements).

Academics/experts

Several respondents called for a clarification of the concept of “public task”. In this respect, a respondent suggested that the definition should result from a process involving public consultation.

Some also called for a definition of the term of "public bodies", in particular to encompass public sector bodies that have changed their status (e.g. UK Royal Mail) because some data is or is not PSI depending on the Member State.

Several also argued that “reasonable return on investment” should be substituted with a term that is more consistent with recital 14 (“charges that do not exceed the marginal costs for reproducing and disseminating the documents”). One respondent also called for a clarification of the concept of "marginal costs".

Furthermore, some respondents called for replacing the terms “information” or “document” as too narrow.

Finally, a respondent argued that the definition of re-use could possibly be reviewed but noted that this carries the risk of limiting the current broad scope and there is no suitable alternative.

Citizens

Relatively very few respondents in this category addressed this question.

Several citizens called for a clarification of the term "public task". 2 respondents called for a clarification of what is meant by "re-use". One respondent called for the definition of the term "documents" and one for an explanation of "electronic means".

Others

Several respondents in this category called for a clear definition of "public task". However, a number of respondents argued that although it is impossible to define the problematic term "public task", the Commission should develop a procedure to enable Member States to give more precision to the concept.

Some respondents argued that the term "public sector body” should be extended to all those associations and companies that are under control of the public sector.

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Another respondent argued that the term "documents" is ill-suited for real open linked data and should be substituted with a term that encompasses other types of information, such as e.g. sensor data.

Some have called for removing the wording ‘initial purpose’ from Art. 2 because seen as confusing.

Finally, several respondents also called for substituting the concept of “reasonable return on investment” with a term more consistent with recital 14 (that encourages “charges that do not exceed the marginal costs for reproducing and disseminating the documents”).

6. General principle (article 3)

6.1. Do you think that all public sector information which is already publicly accessible should also be re-usable?6.2. In your opinion, what would be the advantages / disadvantages of this?

AgreeStrongly 61%

Agree 27%

N.O. 1%

Disagee 3%

DisagreeStrongly 4%

N.A.4%

This is one of the questions that rallied most support from respondents: 88% were in favour (61% strongly in favour) of making all accessible public sector information also re-usable. Only 7% expressed their disagreement with this possibility.

Advantages

The advantages mentioned by respondents were mostly based on economic reasons: many respondents referred to the possibilities it brings to the IT market, the emergence of new business and employment and the creation of public and pan-European services; several respondents referred to the new applications that may be developed by private users. Additionally many respondents referred to the economic growth that re-use brings to society.

Moreover, respondents mentioned the cost-effectiveness and the economic reduction of transaction costs in particular if re-use is possible under standard open licenses and for free. Two respondents stated the re-usability of PSI will in the long term reduce the administrative burden on public authorities and private organisations.

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The argument that knowledge can only grow if shared, was used to justify importance of re-use. The mere information held by a person or by a group of individuals, or even by the totality of citizens, does not achieve the purposes of the Directive expressed in the first Recital of the PSI Directive or create any knowledge. It is the exchange of information and opinions among individuals which achieve such purpose, provided that it takes place on the basis of secure, public and verifiable information.

Several respondents mentioned also a possible positive effect on a meaningful participation of citizens. It would help governments in one of their most important goals: getting the right information, to the right people, at the right time. "The political decision-making process requires good information and open data is one major prerequisite to achieve this; it even helps political decision makers to better understand their own issues". Also, open data was mentioned to help meet specific requirements of weak communities, such as people with special problems/challenges (allergic, handicapped etc.).

Other relevant issues brought up by respondents were values underlying democracy, bringing transparency to the democratic system, control over the government and the value it would bring to trust in society, more accountability of public administration toward citizens and the efficiency of the government and administrations as well as impact on education and research.

Disadvantages

Few people expressed their concern about the disadvantages of Public Sector Information re-use. Many respondents expressed their concerns about protection of private data and privacy rights as some data might be very sensitive and might infringe citizens' privacy. Extra care should be taken when re-using data that can expose private lives to detailed public scrutiny. One respondent gave a concrete example "e.g. census data, even when anonymous, could be traced back to individuals when intelligently combined with other data (e.g. linking wealth and location) combined with telephone-books (linking addresses and names) and postcode databases (linking addresses and location)".

Several respondents stated that there are no disadvantages but strong precautions have to be ensured: clear identification of source (uncertainty may arise from the origin and authenticity of the data), re-use license, clarification of conditions for quality control and responsibilities.

Other disadvantages mentioned were: the possible loss of control over data; the fact that public bodies could face greater workload or need to invest without any direct benefits; potential conflict with rights under national legislation, such as freedom of information laws, if a universal right of re-use were to be imposed at European level. Specifically for public sector bodies, loss of income at a time when many face considerable financial constraints was mentioned, as well as additional costs and administrative burden on public bodies resulting from providing documents in other formats (e.g. re-useable rather than PDF).

Member States

Belgium opposes amending the general principle for the following reasons:

- Individual data accessible to all for the sake of increasing knowledge should not be mixed with re-usable information. The Directive should, above all, seek to offer businesses what they require and not dilute the useful information.- A central PSI registry should only contain a selection of re-usable information, it would increase transparency about the re-use conditions, including licenses and charging conditions.

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Denmark did not address this question in its submission.

France supports amending the general principle so that all accessible information becomes re-usable. According to the French authorities, the rule can help to identify re-usable information while reducing the administrative burden of requests for re-use. However, the conditions for re-use of the information, which may be subject to constraints (content subject to rights of third party intellectual property, personal data) must be clear and unambiguous and easily available.

The Netherlands and the UK are favourable to making all accessible public information re-usable.

7. Processing of requests (article 4)

7.1. Do you think that the requirements applicable to the processing of re-use requests should be tightened or clarified?7.2. If yes, how should this be done?

N.A. 29%

NO 30%

YES 41%

With respect to requirements applicable to processing of re-use requests, 41% of respondents believe that the requirements should be tightened or clarified while 30% stated the opposite clarified and 29% did not address this question.

Member States

Belgium is against tightening the rules on processing of requests unless to alleviate them to only state several principles such as a reasonable time to respond along the national practices or a right to obtain redress.

Denmark did not address this question.

France, the Netherlands and the UK submitted there is no need to adapt the current rules.

PSI bodies (content holders and other)

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Only a handful of respondents in this category addressed this question.

A Portuguese PSI holder suggested that the limit of 20 days foreseen in the Directive for responding to a re-user's request should be reduced to 10 days, as provided for in the Portuguese law transposing the Directive. A similar remark on the excessive length of permissible time to respond was made by the Swedish Met Office.

A Spanish PSI holder suggested that the processing of requests must be simplified by creating a portal where datasets are available for re-use.

PSI re-users

More respondents in this category addressed this question than in the previous one.

One re-user suggested that a standard request form should be made available to avoid refusal based on insufficient specificity of request or wrong request format. Several also suggested that all relevant information (data sets available, metadata) should be made available as a web-service without demand.

Several re-users stated that a suitable statutory maximum length of time should be reduced to 10 days for complex requests and to 5 days for all others. In this respect, several respondents also suggested that the process of handling a request for re-use should be aligned with that for access to information.

Several re-users also called for a simple redress mechanism in case of refusal.

Academics/experts

One respondent stated that although art. 4 is not the most problematic of the Directive, Member States could have less discretion on how and when to make information available for re-use. For instance, when a PSI body holds information in electronic format and the user needs it in such format, the public sector body should not have any discretion with respect to the format of provided data. Several called for more specific wording, e.g. "reasonable" time delay or "as far as possible" to avoid the current broad scope for interpretation, which may make certain provisions difficult to enforce.

Another academic suggested that a simple standard European process should be provided for.

As among re-users, several academics pleaded for re-use without the need for specific requests.

Moreover, several academics stated that the current foreseen time to respond is too long given that a lot of information in question is already digitally available. In this respect, one respondent stated that delays are used as a tool to reduce competitiveness.

Several academics pleaded that the Directive should be more specific on the process of appeal, including meaningful redress, complemented by guidance from the Commission on processing of requests. A respondent suggested that the process be similar to the one foreseen by the INSPIRE Directive, including a default right to re-use with pre-defined possibilities of refusal.

Citizens

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Among the relatively few citizens who addressed this question, most called for availability without demand. One respondent suggested that request procedures only be maintained for commercial re-use. Also, several respondents called for request tracking and follow up.

Several respondents called for clearly defined instances of permitted refusal. In that respect, a citizen suggested that a request may only be denied if it violated basic human rights of one or more individuals and that circumstances in which such restriction must be lifted should also be specified.

Others Several respondents stated that although art. 4 is not the most problematic of the Directive, Member States could have less discretion on how and when to make information available for re-use. Several other respondents stated that re-use not subject to prior authorisation or request procedures.

Furthermore, several respondents suggested that means of redress take into account “redress mechanisms” provided by other laws (e.g. personal data protection) and that links between the PSI Directive and other relevant European Directives already in place (eProcurement, Data Protection, eServices, etc) should be foreseen.

8. Available formats (article 5)

8.1. In your opinion, should more re-use friendly formats (e.g. machine readable, based on open standards software, xml format etc.) be promoted?8.2. If yes, could you please specify which formats and how?

N.A. 7%NO 10%

YES 83%

83% of respondents favoured more re-use friendly formats, such as machine readable, based on open standards software, xml format, etc. Only 10% were of the opinion that no more re-use friendly formats should be promoted and 7% did not reply to this question.

Respondents generally indicated that specific re-use friendly formats depend on the nature of the data and on the sector concerned: personal data registries; statistical data; text documents; movies or audio. All agreed that open and simple standards should be promoted as it is the only way to ensure general access and re-use. When these standards are not available, as a minimum, formats should be "re-use

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friendly", e.g. using machine readable format and avoid use of proprietary licensing. Therefore, governments need to develop action plans to move to such standards and act against proprietary lock in.

Respondents suggested the following re-use friendly formats: XML, Open Document Format (ODF preferable to OOXML, although both are standardized by ISO), ASCII Text, net CDF, ESRI raster and shapefile). Many respondents also listed the Resource Description Framework (RDF), a World-Wide-Web-Consortium official standard, allowing for easy, extensible integration of all types of knowledge from a distributed network of data providers. A respondent suggested that institutions could set up local RDF repositories available over the internet. If done properly, this will integrate the data into the "Web of Linked Data".

For both audio and video relying on open formats, the WebM suite was suggested as a good option. FLAC/Ogg-Vorbis is a tool to be used only for audio and Theora or H.264 are two tools to be used only for video. Image files can be mentioned in TXT (compressed in ZIP or similar). *.png, *.tif, *.mp3, *.wma, *.wmv, *.mov, *.avi should be used for multi-media content like videos, image and sound files.

GML was recommended to be used for geographic information and Shape, JPEG, GWL, WFS, WMS, KML for geographical data; for geo-spatial or observational records, the Geo-TIFF format is widely used as his format maintains the location information. For Web Services the WMS, WFS, gpx .loc .img shall be used in Navigation Systems. RSS, CSV, Clear correct HTML, - SHP, KML – shall be used for spatial data.

Several respondents indicated that at this moment better machine readable formats (such as RDF or other semantic Web standards) should just be encouraged and not imposed, because of the significant effort and investments required from public bodies. The first goal of public bodies should be to publish and make freely re-usable “raw data now” and not to improve the formats under which these data are available.

Member States

Belgium stated that formats suitable for re-use (e.g. machine readable) should be promoted. In this respect, the role of the client – re-user of the information is paramount as public services should strive to respond to the requirements of re-users.

Denmark did not address this question.

The French authorities stated that an exchange of good practices at EU level relating to the upstream integration of requirements for the provision of data within information systems, including through the adoption of open formats, could be envisaged. However, the French authorities object to format requirements imposed by virtue of law.

In their response, the Netherlands advocate promoting machine readable formats to enhance the retrieval of documents.

The UK favours promotion of more re-use friendly formats. The response clarifies that the UK Government is in the process of developing initiatives which will entail making information available in re-usable open source formats and, where reasonably practicable, in machine readable form. This

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can be achieved by means of guidance issued at national level and which operates within the framework established by the PSI Directive.

9. Charging (article 6)

9.1. In your opinion, public sector information should be made available for re-use i) at charges based on full cost recovery, together with a reasonable return on investment?ii) at charges based on full cost recovery? iii) at charges based on partial cost recovery?iv) at marginal costs for reproducing and disseminating the documents? v) at marginal costs as the basic rule with certain limited exceptions?vi) for free as regards both commercial and non-commercial re-use vii) for free as regards non-commercial re-use

% Agree strongly

Agree Noopinion

Disagree Disagree strongly

No answer TOTAL

i) at charges based on full cost recovery,

together with a reasonable return on

investment?

3,8 6,3 4,6 24,3 46,8 14,2 100

ii) at charges based on full cost recovery?

3,3 9,6 5,3 31,1 35,9 14,8 100

iii) at charges based on partial cost

recovery?2,6 13 9,7 29,9 27,5 17,3 100

iv) at marginal costs for reproducing and

disseminating the documents?

12,7 26,7 10,3 19,5 16,6 14,2 100

v) at marginal costs as the basic rule with

certain limited exceptions?

7 25,3 13,7 23,1 16 14,9 100

vi) for free as regards both commercial and

non-commercial re-use

30,4 20 9 16,8 11,3 12,5 100

vii) for free as regards non-

commercial re-use49,1 17,1 7,8 6,4 7,7 11,8 100

The majority of respondents opposed re-use at charges based on cost recovery with highest opposition to charges based on full cost recovery together with a reasonable return on investments (71%) and a slightly lower opposition to charges based on full cost recovery (67%). Over 57% of respondents opposed re-use at charges based on partial cost recovery.

Furthermore, participants were divided on the two marginal costs propositions. Over 39% supported re-use at marginal costs for reproducing and disseminating the documents, while 36% opposed this option.

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32% supported re-use at marginal costs as the basic rule with certain limited exceptions while 39 % of respondents opposed it.

On the other hand, respondents support free non-commercial re-use (66,2%) whereas 50,4% supported free non-commercial and commercial re-use.

Member States

Belgium opted for re-usability at charges based on full cost recovery, together with a reasonable return on investment. With respect to free non-commercial re-use, Belgium stated that a potential exception should merely be indicative and not included in the provisions of the Directive as the current text also allows for re-use free of any charges.

Denmark stated that charges for access to public data (defined as data collected within the public task of an institution) should be set to marginal cost as an upper limit. Consequently, there should no longer be room for reasonable return on investment.

France favours maintaining the current charging structure, i.e. that the total fees collected should not exceed the sum of the costs of collection, production and distribution, together with a reasonable compensation for the investment. France also underlines in its response that it is within the task of public administration to generate profits by making public data available for re-use. According to the French authorities the charging principle should take due account of the investments made by the administration to produce and disseminate information, while being consistent with the economic benefits of fostering data re-use. Pricing should also take due account of the nature of the data and its economic value. Finally, France submits that a pragmatic approach, allowing different pricing models, including free of charge, should be promoted.

The Netherlands favour a structure based on maximum marginal costs defined as costs of making the data available (e.g. making a copy, adapting the data to remove personal information), excluding costs of actual production or collection of data.

The UK did not indicated preference for any of the listed charging structures. 9.2. What would be the benefits of charging based on marginal costs? What could be the disadvantages?

Benefits of charging based on marginal costs

Respondents believe that a charging regime based on marginal costs is socially efficient, since it implies that an optimal quantity and variety of information is produced and distributed. Also, in their view, the regime allows reaching the highest volume of dissemination and maximizes the impact of positive externalities related to access and re-use of PSI, such as new business opportunities, improved downstream competition and lower charges for end users.

One respondent referred to "Models of Public Sector Information Provision via Trading Funds" report, which has shown that the case for pricing no higher than marginal cost (which, for most digital data will be zero) on basic data products is very strong. This study also advances no disadvantages to the charging based on marginal costs on a national/international scale.

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Other advantages mentioned were encouraging of the re-use of PSI and promotion of its easy accessibility to everyone by government. In this perspective, the government's action is regarded as a public service and as an investment in the civil society dynamism, education, research, as well as in the creation and dissemination of innovation and development of services.

Respondents also mentioned that making information available for re-use at a charge is better than not available making it available at all; although, respondents underlined that the cheaper the information is, the more the data is utilised.

Moreover, respondents consider that marginal costs encourage Public Sector to invest in re-use of PSI, which will in turn permit return on the investment. Public Sector bodies will receive extra income for re-use information, so they will be willing to provide information in formats suitable for re-use by private sector companies.

An important advantage that respondents put forward is that marginal costs will prevent the public sector from competing directly in the market with an unfair advantage against private companies. Also, respondents argue that marginal costs ensure that the administration does not charge twice (when taxpayers already paid for the creation of the information and should not be charged twice, e.g. for the costs of dissemination and reproduction).

Charges based on marginal cost also allow the original sources of information to maintain high quality standards and strategies of continuous improvement of data. Furthermore, respondents put forward that a small cost based on marginal costs is desirable so that users consider if they really need the data; it would result in distinguishing serious from non-serious users.

Finally, other advantages mentioned by respondents were: revenue for the government; decrease of the administrative tasks; lowering of entry barriers for providers wanting to use data; emergence of a generation of a stronger private sector economic activity leading to greater employment and tax returns.

Disadvantages of charging based on marginal costs

A frequently recurring argument is that public data has already been paid for once – by tax.

Exploratory data use is largely impossible when marginal costs are demanded. For public research (e.g. universities) even marginal costs can mean a burden and prohibit data re-use.

This possibility would very strictly limit access to the information and would not provide any costs benefits to the public institutions, as overhead with charging the marginal costs would be most likely higher than any profits coming from it. Also, it will create transaction costs (workload for both sides) while the free reproducing could be fully automated in most cases.

All forms of cost recovery, including marginal cost recovery, are very vulnerable to bad or arbitrary practices by government agencies, which either want to manipulate the legislation, or are simply non-creative and/or inefficient, when it comes to designing inexpensive procedures and processes.

Wealthy companies could make unreasonable profits from simple rehashes of the free/cheap public data without adding innovation or giving any profits back to the public. A license with special clauses for commercial use could prevent this - public institutions sometimes rely on income from commercial exploitation of their data (e.g. cartographical services from licenses on their map data). By opening this

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data, this income would disappear, threatening the continued existence of these services (a license making a distinction between commercial and non-commercial use would prevent this).

Costs can be a barrier to accessibility. Charging, even a marginal cost, would dramatically affect the visibility and distribution of the public sector data.

Another disadvantage mentioned was the difficulty to define marginal costs.

It was also mentioned that as soon as the public sector charges for public sector information, the market will be dominated by big players. The European ICT landscape is characterized by small highly innovative SMEs in the IT sector. Charging for public sector information will bar market entry for these innovative companies.

One respondent reported disadvantages of charging based on marginal costs compared with full cost recovery: the need to reduce other services if funding is to be found for PSI when budgets are being cut; the potential loss of information produced by public bodies resulting from the lack of funding; and a loss of quality in PSI resulting from a reduction in funding. Also the respondent reported of the disadvantages when compared with free provision of PSI: the maximum possible exploitation of the PSI might not be achieved.

According to another respondent, marginal costs do not include extremely high costs that occur from collection and production of PSI content. Restricting charges to marginal cost would deprive the PSI content holders of resources that are needed to simply maintain and preserve the collection and production tools, when these activities are not 100% tax-funded. Also marginal costs can bring PSI content holders to put them in default vis-à-vis the competition law, if the private sector deliver products similar to PSI data.

Member States

Belgium stated that marginal costs require public authorities to have transparent accounts; help to counter the erroneous and overly commercial argument of private parties, according to which they already paid for the information; and provide public information to a larger number of potential re-users.

Denmark argues in its response that high charges are a barrier to re-use and that the innovation potential of SMEs could be significantly improved if the charges were based on marginal costs (upper limit).

The French authorities reiterated their position that marginal costs should not be the default charging rule because marginal costs do not include the sunk costs incurred to facilitate the provision of public data for re-use. Imposing marginal costs removes any incentive for governments to make the necessary investment ultimately against the interests of re-users.

France also argues that where comparable data are already marketed, pricing based on marginal costs can raise difficulties in terms of competition. Moreover, in the context of strong pressure on public budget resources, the business logic cannot ignore the requirement of budgetary equilibrium of PSI bodies. The loss of income associated with marginal costs can not only reduce the efforts to make more data available for re-use, but also, in some cases, make PSI bodies abandon production of certain data or lower their quality.

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Although the Netherlands favors marginal costs, the authorities did not provide any details on the advantages or disadvantages of this charging system.

The UK did not address this question.

9.3. What could be the exceptions to a default rule of marginal costs?Member States

Member States made the following suggestions for exceptions:

Belgium: extra costs for using re-use friendly formats, standardization; cost for preservation

France: difficult to identify objective criteria for the exceptions

PSI holders and other PSI bodies

The following suggestions were made for exceptions to the rule of marginal costs:

- Educational and R&D purposes (as in Portuguese law) (1 respondent)- Historical data in analogue archives (very high digitisation costs) (1 respondent)- Where a complex presentation of information is required e.g. manipulation of information in formats that require purchase of software / for sophisticated products, which require maintenance and further development / In cases where information is prepared particularly for specific areas of the industry (e.g. multinational commercial companies) (reasonable cost recovery/full costs) (3 respondents) - For non-commercial re-use in cases with high social impact (1 respondent)- Possible on a case-by-case basis taking into account the effects on quality of re-use (1 respondent)

One respondent stated that it is difficult to name any as organisations need to recover costs in order to continue to be able to provide a service.

Another respondent (French Met Office) stated that marginal costs must remain an exception and apply only in cases where collection and production of data is financed entirely by public funds. Considering marginal cost charging as an exception is in fact important when many Member States are implementing significant budgetary cutbacks.

PSI re-users

Re-users suggested the following exceptions to the marginal costs rule:

- When there is an important (e.g. technical) difficulty to provide/adapt the information (4 respondents)- For re-use in R&D and education (1 respondent)- If marginal costs and fixed costs are unlikely to result in more than x % of cost-recovery in any given year, then the PSI can be priced in any desired manner (1 respondent)- For re-use for commercial purposes (e.g. unless re-use in sale of added value service) (3 respondents)- Where several re-users agree to share the costs of making the dataset re-usable by e.g. redaction of name-linked data (1 respondent)- Extra costs generated by partnerships between re-users and an authority to collect information (2 respondents).

One respondent stated that no exceptions should be allowed to avoid abuse.

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Academics

Respondents in this category suggested the following exceptions:

- If investment is required for manipulation of data to make it easier to provide for re-use but in any case exceptions to a default rule of marginal cost should be avoided or subject to constant and careful scrutiny (1 respondent) / If creation of PSI is not possible without charging (2 respondent)- Data that are not of public interest and require an investment to be transformed into a re-usable format should be available at a partial/full cost (1 respondent)- Commercial re-use (additional suggestion: highly profitable commercial re-use) (9 respondents)- R&D, education (6 respondents)- When not being able to recover full costs would result in a significant loss of PSI of the required quality. This respondent provided a more detailed explanation arguing that the key issue is how far the collection, production and dissemination of PSI should be financed by the taxpayer and how far, if at all, it should be financed by the user, as a matter of financial policy, economic efficiency and social utility. If the primary objective is to maximise revenue generation from re-use charges (and thereby reduce the burden on taxation), this may well reduce the extent to which PSI is re-used due to pricing levels which make it outside the reach of some user groups – not all of which have equal purchasing power (c.f. utility companies and Non-Governmental Organisations). There is common experience and agreement that provision of PSI at marginal or zero cost increases the number of users. Overall, any exceptions to a default rule of marginal costs should be reserved for those instances when not being able to recover full costs would result in a significant loss of PSI of the required quality.- If actors on a market devolve to a government agency the development of an advanced service or infrastructure that the actor(s) are ready to pay for. However, in parallel with such a pay-service, there should always be a basic, cost-free service (with a lower service level), financed by the government. (1 respondent)- Re-use in open source projects (1 respondent)- Wherever total costs are not prohibitively high (e.g. marginal costs if exceptionally high download data volumes would be incurred by extremely popular but very large data sources).

Citizens

- Commercial exploitation of data (9 respondents) / for high-volume clients (1 respondent)- Non-commercial re-use (5 respondents)- For non profit organisations if charging is the default rule (3 respondent)- R&D and education (4 respondents)- Data of potential interest only to a small number of users (1 respondent)- Data that is absolutely necessary to provide certain type of services, for which consumers are willing to pay a large fee (1 respondent)- No costs if the cost for determining the marginal cost and for charging it is higher than the combined cost to retrieve the requested documents (1 respondent)- Services using data from several EU countries and then provided back at no cost (1 respondent)- In case of significant sunk costs very unlikely to ever benefit the public sector body in question or any other access to PSI (1 respondent)- In case of exceptionally high costs or difficulty to digitise or convert (2 respondents)- Customised requests (1 respondent)

Others

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In this category, the following suggestions for exceptions were made:

- Free re-use when pan-European citizen centric application development is to be encouraged (1 respondent)- Exceptions to the default rule of marginal costs to be narrowed to very specific situations not subject to interpretation. The purpose of charging must remain to have PSI available for re-use in a more efficient way, and not to allow PSI holders to gain profits. (2 respondents)- In case of budgetary autonomy of public bodies (not funded by tax), the sale of data represent a substantial proportion of their budgets, so pricing can take into account a reasonable portion of costs, on the condition that those PSI bodies communicate how these costs are calculated. If data requires heavy processing to make them usable, partnerships could be envisaged between the administration and re-users, ensuring that there is no risk of exclusivity (2 respondents)- R&D (2 respondents)- When not being able to recover full costs would result in a significant loss of PSI of the required quality (1 respondent)- Marginal costs only when exclusivity applies (1 respondent)- If data is customised for re-users (1 respondent)- Exceptional charges should be levied solely for the task of cleaning, improving and increasing re-use of PSI and should not be re-directed to other tasks carried out by the public sector body (2 respondent) / for expensive data infrastructure where commercial investment were made to complete the data collection (1 respondent) - Free for non-commercial use (2 respondents)

9.4. Do you think that the current rules on charging (allowing full cost recovery,together with a reasonable return on investment) should be tightened and/or clarified inrespect of how much re-users can be charged?

9.5. If yes, in what way?

N.A 25%

NO 21%

YES 54%

54% of the participants are in favour of tightening and/or clarifying the current charging rules in respect of how much re-users can be charged. 25% did not answer this question and 21% of the participants oppose any changes.

Member States

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According to Belgium, the current rules on charging (allowing full cost recovery, together with a reasonable return on investment) should be tightened and/or clarified in respect of how much re-users can be charged because these concepts are alien to the Belgian public law. It would be necessary to explain these terms by way of examples and to update them. Also, Belgium finds the recitals inflexible.

Denmark pleads for the removal of the "reasonable return on investment" from permissible charges.

The French and the UK authorities are against revising the current article 6.

PSI bodies (content holders and others)

Several respondents stated the need for a standardised guidance on what "reasonable" means, driven to a certain extent by market factors but controlled in order to ensure fairness (e.g. as done by the Information Fair Trader Scheme in UK).

Another respondent suggested a benchmark for costs for classes of information.

Several respondents called for no charges for non-commercial re-use.

Finally, one respondent suggested that it should be clarified that it is not always necessary to charge, whereas the current provision setting the maximum charges allowed encourages institutions to always charge for their data.

Re-users

Several other respondents argued that it is necessary to clarify the rules of charging to avoid any system based on turnover of re-users. Moreover, although necessary to clarify, it is difficult to define the reasonable return on investment. Given the general objective of the EU PSI initiative to foster growth by allowing the private sector to widely exploit public data, tariffs should not allow recovery of management costs of public bodies. Moreover, these respondents called for a stricter definition of cost recovery. Several respondents argued that reasonable return on investment should be deleted from permissible charging for re-use.

Several respondents argued that some information available in a database has already been paid for (e.g. commercial or land registers fees). This revenue is usually not accounted for when a PSI body calculates its fees for re-use (or access). The Directive should be clarified to avoid the double charging.

Several respondents argued that charges should be calculated depending on the type of re-user and purpose of re-use.

One respondent stated that clarification is needed where charges may be justifiable as in cases where the data holder has made genuine investment to improve the availability of data to re-users and needs to be able to recoup this to make the developments worthwhile.

Another respondent argued that cost decrease should be directly proportional to increase of re-use requests. Moreover, "production costs" should be specified.

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Several other respondents called for a clarification that only the marginal cost of re-distribution can be charged by PSI bodies.

Academics

Generally, academics call for a clarification as to which costs can be charged and how.

According to many academics, return on investment should be deleted from permissible charging and data should fall into two categories: data collected within the public task of a PSI body should be made accessible in its raw form, without aggregation or other forms of "refinement"; data, the sale of which is a competitive activity. However, when the latter falls inside the boundaries of PSI, in order to avoid trade and competition distortions, the raw data collected by the government acting as a natural monopoly should be made available free of charge. Also, several academics argued that negative costs of collection (mandatory data collected against a fee, e.g. land or commercial registers) should be deducted from any charges for delivery of that data to re-users and others suggested that cost decrease should be directly proportional to increase of re-use requests.

One academic suggested that re-use charges (PrRU) should only include marginal cost of producing, storing and disseminating the data (MC) minus the percentage of public funding for such activity (PF) times a multiplier calculated upon the kind of use (e.g. from 0 - private use - to 1 – commercial use; fair commercial uses and political uses should be compared to private use; KU): PrRU= KU*(MC-PF).

One academic stated that no "one size fits all", i.e. a body investing into collection and analysis of information should be able to recoup the investment; on the other hand, no public organization should be allowed to charge for bad, unstructured data claiming high collection costs.

Citizens

Among the citizens, many called for no costs at all, many for establishing the default rule of marginal costs of distribution, many others for rules differentiating costs for commercial and non-commercial use.

Among more detailed responses, many citizens called for proscribing or (fewer) for clarifying the "reasonable return on investment" term.

Others

Several respondents in this category stated that the full cost recovery regime should be proscribed or clarified as to what constitutes cost recovery, "reasonable return on investment" should be deleted from the Directive and a default rule of charges based on marginal costs of distribution written into its provisions.

Moreover, respondents called for a unified EU pricing policy on re-use. Several suggested that the system should be clarified so as to prevent establishing a charging structure based on turnover of re-users.

10. Transparency (article 7)

10.1. Do you think that the current transparency rules regarding conditions and standard charges for re-use of PSI should be changed / clarified?

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10.2. If yes, could you please indicate how you think this should be done?

N.A 33%

NO 24%

YES 43%

33% of respondents did not address this question. 43% stated the current transparency rules regarding conditions and standard charges for re-use of PSI should be changed/clarified and 24% opposed any changes.

Member States

Belgium is of the opinion that the current rules should be changed/clarified. Making data available for re-use does not generally come within the public task of public sector bodies. As a result, PSI bodies have not developed appropriate accounting structures (including basic calculation of fees, if any) dedicated to this task and article 7 imposes a significant burden.

France and the UK do not see a need to change or clarify the current transparency requirements.

PSI bodies (content holders and others)

Very few public sector bodies addressed this question. Among those that did, a respondent called for a firm obligation to make re-use conditions and standard charges available in the respective public body website, together with the formula for calculating the cost and another one suggested that a pan-European portal should be set up to provide a single access point to all data resources.

PSI re-users

Several re-users addressed this question and most called for upfront publication (not availability upon request) of the calculation basis for re-use charges. Also, several re-users called for an obligation to set out the connection between the applied charges and the actual costs of production. Moreover, respondents suggested that detailed annual costs should be published on a yearly basis, listing organizations paying for the data.

Academics

In this category, also only a few respondents addressed this question.

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One academic suggested that applicable conditions and standard charges for re-use should always be published through electronic means and that the public sector body should always indicate the calculation basis for the published charge, if this charge is greater than zero.

One respondent suggested that public sector bodies be obligated to maintain segmented accounts to demonstrate, where necessary, that no cross-subsidies are applied.

Citizens

In this category, also few respondents addressed the question.

Suggestions made by citizens ranged from an obligation to report annually all income from re-use charges, through a requirement of simple language in terms of re-use conditions and publication, a standardized list of acceptable licenses to appeals against decisions to be handled by a separate national entity, with a possibility to appeal to a common EU forum.

Others

In this category, relatively more respondents addressed the question of transparency.

One respondent suggested that the frequent lack of clarity on ownership of certain data must be remedied by clearly documenting it in advance.

Another respondent suggested that applicable conditions and standard charges should always be published through electronic means (not only “where possible and appropriate”) and the calculation basis for the published charge should always be indicated (not only “on request”), if this charge is greater than zero. Several other respondents suggested that accounting and pricing principles need to be clearly articulated and published.

One respondent called for a harmonised or even unified re-use pricing policy.

Finally, two respondents reported that frequently transparency rules are not applied. A respondent then suggested that activities of PSI holders should be reported publicly and regularly reviewed and that any calculations should be connected to the different data distributions/services and not to the authority as a whole.

11. Licences (article 8)

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11.1. Do current licensing regimes of Member States or of individual public sector bodies still create problems for re-use (e.g. by imposing unfair conditions or by unduly restricting the possibilities for re-use)?11.2. If yes, what can be done to address these issues?

N.A. 27%

NO 11% YES 62%

62% of total respondents believe that the current licensing regimes of Member States or of individual public sector bodies create problems for re-use of information whereas only 11% believe the opposite. 27% of the participants did not address this question.

Member States

Belgium, France and the UK stated that the current licensing regimes do not create problems for re-use. However, France also submitted that exchanges of good practices on the issue of licenses at European level would contribute positively to the development of a genuine European internal re-use market. In this context, a non-prescriptive framework could be defined collectively by PSI bodies and re-users, including the main features of a standard license for re-use.

PSI bodies (content holders and others)

Several respondents in this category suggested using the Creative Commons framework for licensing data.

Several other respondents called for clear standardised licences accommodating varying practices/approaches in different states. Also, one respondent added that the Commission should deal with multilingualism issues related to licensing.

One PSI content holder from the UK indicated that many licensing problems were resolved by adopting the Open Government Licence (published in 2010 by OPSI).

According to the Met Office (UK), it is unlikely that licensing issues can ever be fully resolved as Member States are independent nations and perceived problems are an inherent outcome. The Swedish Met Office suggested recourse to the arbitration proceeding as applied by Ecomet.

Finally, several respondents pointed to the need for clear guidance and awareness-raising related to licensing provisions the data owners and the re-users community.

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Re-users

Several re-users called for guidance on permissible licensing conditions and many called for standardised licenses across Europe. In this respect, several respondents also suggested developing a set of minimum provisions for licensing regimes and a respondent suggested harmonising licenses based on Creative Commons.

Two respondents pointed out that many currently available licenses limit commercial re-use, a feature that should not be permitted.

Academics

First of all, several academics called for guidelines on acceptable licenses, some for model licenses and their promotion. In this respect, one academic pointed out the complexity of a situation where data obtained from different sources is combined for re-use and where rules can inhibit the full exploitation of the PSI. Several other academics called for standard, non-exclusive licenses, uniform across Europe and offering swift redress possibilities. A respondent called for a swift mechanism to suppress restrictive licensing regimes and practices.

Several respondents suggested using Creative Commons' licenses, one suggested the IMHO "Creative Commons Attribute" license that allows both commercial and non-commercial re-use along with distribution of derivative work (original data mashed up with external sources for instance). Another expert pointed out that frequently licensing regimes restrict commercial use by default, and require users to ask permission on a case-by-case basis, thus generating unnecessary transaction costs.

Specifically, representatives of the COMMUNIA network submitted that Public Sector Information will only achieve maximum possible impact if users understand how they may use the content. The management of copyrights and other intellectual property with regard to PSI should be considered from the outset when making data available to the public. In particular, COMMUNIA recommends taking into account the following standard legal tools:

- CC0 (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)- The Public Domain Dedication and License

(http://www.opendatacommons.org/licenses/pddl/) - The Public Domain Mark (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/)

Citizens

Several citizens suggested using a GPL license, several others - an open content Creative Commons, Art Libre (http://artlibre.org/licence/lal) or BSD-like licenses and another citizen - free documentation licence formats, e.g. GNU Free Documentation Licence for data delivery.

Several other citizens suggested drafting a list of standard licenses that Member States should take into account in determining their own standard licenses. Similarly, another citizen suggested the Commission should provide guidelines and recommendations together with examples of existing well-designed and well-received licensing regimes.

Others

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An association suggested creating models of licences, stating obligations of the PSI holder (e.g. format, frequency of updates, quality) and of the re-user (sourcing, update). Another respondent proposed harmonised licensing based on the European Union Public License).

Several respondents indicated the need for standard licenses and clear conditions, together with an efficient redress system in case of refusal to make data available.

12. Practical arrangements (article 9)

12.1. Do you think that more measures should be taken to facilitate the search for documents available for re-use?12.2. If yes, which measures?

N.A.19%

NO 14%

YES 67%

A majority of respondents to the consultation, 67%, agree that more measures should be taken to facilitate the search for documents available for re-use against 14% of the participants, who do not think more measures should be taken. 19% of the participants did not address this question.

Member States

Belgium is of the opinion that more measures should be taken to facilitate the search for documents available for re-use. Suggested measures include standardization of search facilities (in full respect of the discretion of public authorities to declare their data reusable).

Denmark is advocating a "one entry to public data re-use" policy and service, offering uniform and efficient treatment of the legal, economic and practical aspects of re-use. It suggests a common European solution, e.g. a portal giving access to data and containing basic information on public authorities.

The French authorities do not take a clear position on this issue. After having described in detail the work undertaken by the Agence du patrimoine immatériel de l'État (APIE) to facilitate access to re-usable documents, the French declare that the main objective is to promote active engagement of public bodies and foster a dialogue with re-users to better meet their expectations.

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The Netherlands favour additional measures and stated that the European Commission should draw up key principles for the establishment of a European data portal aggregating national data portals in the future, e.g. based on the INSPIRE model.

The UK is of the opinion that no more measures need to be taken to facilitate the search for documents available for re-use.

Among the measures suggested by PSI bodies (content holders and other) were:

- greater convergence between access regimes and re-use, e.g. provisions on proactive disclosure linked to re-use obligations

- central portals modelled on the data.gov example should be encouraged and specific areas on public websites (e.g www.education.gov/open) should also be promoted; a European portal; local, national variations of the data.gov.uk model in each EU member state; Common metadata harvesting and portal for the metadata index

- semantic web, linked data web initiatives- if possible, all information should be exposed to indexing by major search engines (Google,

Bing, etc)- obligation for every public sector body to provide complete and accessible information about

their data for re-use; specialised PSI metadata registers; specialised PSI web pages located on PSI providers´ web sites, IDEA: develop a logo to be displayed on websites that offer re-usable PSI, with an underlying hyperlink to a PSI site.

Re-users suggested the following measures:

- a centralised and readily accessible source of information on available data; recommendation to create portals or platforms and linked data; build interoperable databases

- each PSI body should name a person in charge of PSI issues.- build a catalogue - an Information Asset Register - of all PSI in Europe based on the UK

central government model, OPSI's Inforoute; the JOCE system for public procurement in the EU offers a model for mandating compliance; e.g. the British CKAN interface is a good example of a non-capital-intensive solution to list all available documents.

Academics/experts proposed the following measures (first two sets of measures indicated by the majority of respondents:

- Facilitate creation of online asset lists/catalogues/portals/registries, obligation to make meta-data available (freely in technical and legal sense), possibly using open standards respecting the principles of the semantic Web; public catalogue with a specialized search engine managed by the public authority;

- data.europa.eu - Indexing optimisations for search engines and PDF with OCR text embedded.- Recommendations to public authorities about how to publish data- Adopting common metadata schema and standard licences, in the direction of creative

commons

The citizens suggested the following measures:

- Most respondents suggested centralised (including a pan-European) access platforms such as the exemplary data.gov.uk; publicly available lists of available data sets; obligation to make metadata

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available; single, pan-European mandatory or recommended standard for publishing catalogues in machine readable format (XML - e.g. Atom).

- List of classes of data generated by public sector that must be available for re-use- Standards for data bases and access procedures- Linked data approach- indexing of the databases

Respondents in the Others category suggested the following measures:

- The majority of respondents suggested facilitating the creation of: asset lists/portals/registries, with meta-data made available (freely both in technical and legal sense); national & European search portals

- Obligation to make asset lists available on each PSI holder’s website- Obligation to nominate a responsible person in charge of asset lists within the PSI Holders

organisation.

13. Non-discrimination (article 10)

13.1. In your opinion, have the current rules on non-discrimination caused problems in practice and should they be tightened / clarified to foster fair trading conditions?13.2. If yes, could you please specify how you think this should be done?

N.A. 46%

NO 32%

YES 22%

46% of the respondents to the consultation did not address this question. Among the rest, 22% were of the opinion that the current rules on non-discrimination have caused problems in practice and should be tightened/clarified to foster fair trading conditions against 32% opposed any changes.

Member States

Belgium, France, the Netherlands and the UK are of the opinion that the current rules have not caused any problems in practice and do not need to be amended.

Denmark did not address this question.

Only a few respondents in each category specified more in detail how the current rules can be strengthened.

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PSI bodies (content holders and others)

Several PSI bodies stated that the current rules are unclear. Non-discrimination rules should be strengthened and reference made to State legislation/guidance on fair trading (if available, e.g. UK IFTS).

The Swedish Met Office suggested clarifying that a level playing field must be ensured between the commercial component of a public sector body and private service providers.

PSI re-users

A re-user draws attention to cases where added-value on-line services of public sector bodies operate with a timing competitive advantage over comparable services supplied by private sector bodies, resulting from the fact that public sector bodies have prior access to their own PSI used in their data services. To ensure a level playing field, an obligation to supply data at the same time to the commercial component of a public authority as to private service provides should be established, unless there are clear and justified reasons for not doing so. The respondent suggests that the Commission recommend good practices in this area and that public bodies be obliged to launch a public procurement procedure for the creation and operation of its added value service, where applicable (example of processes underpinning Eurlex, e.g. indexation, XML treatment, quality control of texts, developed by private companies after public tenders).

Several other respondents also suggested that parity of treatment between re-users and the public body holding the relevant data should be ensured where the two sides compete in downstream markets.

Finally, several re-users pointed out that charges set by PSI bodies are often prohibitive for SMEs and favour only big players able to afford them.

Academics/experts

One respondent suggested that a general non-discrimination clause should be introduced, and that in particular there should be no discrimination between commercial and non-commercial uses, also because the notion of “commercial use” is difficult to define.

In this category as in the previous ones, respondents also referred to the problem of public task and commercial activities of public sector bodies.

Citizens

One respondent stated that non-discrimination is sometimes used to actually raise the barrier for access, while there are real differences between requests for re-use. He further argued that non-discrimination is a hollow phrase as long as open licensing and marginal cost charging are not yet reality.

Others

One respondent stated that re-use rules should account for differences among users in terms of size: big players, SMEs, individuals. Several other respondents stated that the concept of ‘comparable’ categories of re-use is problematic and should be substituted with a general non-discrimination rule, in particular to avoid discrimination between commercial and non-commercial use.

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Several respondents also pointed out that the notion of “public task” should be defined to ensure level playing field between the commercial activities of public sector bodies and those of the private sector.

14. Prohibition of exclusive arrangements (article 11)

14.1. Do you think that exclusive arrangements are a problem and that more measures should be taken to address them?14.2. If yes, could you please specify which?

N.A. 27%

NO 18%

YES 55%

55% of participants support further measure against 18% who oppose them. 27% of respondents didn’t address to this question.

Member States

Denmark did not address this question.

Belgium, France, the Netherlands and the UK are of the opinion that exclusive agreements are not a problem and that there is no need for any additional measures. France also declared that the cases identified in the Commission's 2010 survey of exclusive agreements, provided that they are indeed concerned by the prohibition, will be dealt with under the appropriate French legislation.

Few responses specifying measures against exclusive agreements were submitted in all categories of respondents.

PSI bodies (content holders and others)

One respondent stated that although most exclusive arrangements have now largely been eliminated, some PSI holders still hold an exclusive mission (from the government) to distribute and sell certain information. He further argues that these exclusive missions should be scrutinised and possibly assigned to private undertakings.

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Another respondent stated that exclusive arrangements are a problem, but the Directive is already comprehensive and sufficient in this domain.

PSI re-users

One respondent stated that prohibition of exclusive arrangements should be extended to private companies (or mixed-organisations) handling public service tasks.

Several respondents stated that although most exclusive arrangements have now largely been eliminated, some PSI holders still hold an exclusive mission (from the government) to distribute and sell certain information and that these should be scrutinised and possibly assigned to private undertakings.

Another respondent pointed out that the "reasonable return on investment" clause has been used to set up what are in effect exclusive arrangements by tailoring specific cheaper licenses for the exclusive benefit of very large re-users (which in a lot of markets don't have any competitors). Academic/expert

Several respondents argued that although exclusive agreements are a problem, they are currently not the priority and that it suffices if existing rules are carefully enforced.

Another respondent specified that article 11 should be clarified so that exclusive arrangements existing on the date of entry into force of the Directive are to be deemed automatically terminated as of 31 December 2008. Moreover, information on the existing agreements which qualified as exceptions under paragraph 2 should be disclosed so to assess whether the exception has been abused or needs any adjustment. The UK APPSI submitted that there they are not aware of a notable reduction in the number of exclusive arrangements in the UK since implementation of the Directive, although there is evidence that some public sector bodies converted some arrangements into non-exclusive licences in anticipation of the Regulations coming into force. APPSI recommends that, wherever exclusive arrangements remain, a justification should be published and that all such information about exclusive arrangements should be centralised in each Member State, see e.g. http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/information-management/policies/exclusive-agreements.htm.

Citizens

Generally, respondents stated their opposition to exclusive arrangements.

One respondent suggested that circumstances under which exclusive arrangements can be made should be stated more specifically, and the burden of proof should be placed on the PSI provider to show the public benefit of such exclusivity.

Several respondents specified that where exclusivity is allowed, it should be framed in clear short time-limits. Others

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Several respondents stated that although exclusive agreements are a problem, they are currently not the priority and that it suffices if existing rules are carefully enforced.

Contrary to the UK APPSI (see above), the UK Chartered Institute for IT stated that there has been a notable reduction in the number of exclusive arrangements in the UK since implementation of the Directive. However, the rest of the submission is identical to that of APPSI. 15. Practical measures

15.1. Should the Commission encourage deployment measures at national level such as exchange of good practices, awareness raising and/or practical measures facilitating re-use?15.2. If yes, could you please indicate which deployment measures?

N.A. 8%NO 10%

YES 82%

82% of respondents support further deployment measures at national level such as exchange of good practices, awareness raising and/or practical measures facilitating re-use. Only 10% disagree and 8% did not address this question.

Respondents made the following suggestions for possible deployment measures:

Member States

Belgium is of the opinion that the Commission should encourage deployment measures at national level and advocates a continuation of the current policy of exchanges and communication between Members States.

Denmark strongly advocates an active role of the Commission in promoting re-use, including knowledge sharing between Member States and other initiatives to highlight and illustrate the necessity of public data re-use.

The French authorities stated that the Commission can effectively assist Member States in implementing their re-use policy by enhancing coordination and promoting exchange and sharing of best practices. France suggests more frequent meetings of the expert group in Luxembourg with a thematic agenda.

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The UK is of the opinion that the Commission should encourage deployment measures at national level such as exchange of good practices, awareness raising and/or practical measures facilitating re-use. In this respect the authorities believe that an ideal forum for the exchange of best practices is already provided by the Commission’s PSI Working Group the ePSI Platform, and in the UK by inter alia the Advisory Panel on Public Sector Information (APPSI) and the Licensing Forum.

PSI bodies (content holders and others)

- Many suggested that the Commission foster sharing of good practises (e.g. through Web communication platforms); cross-country fertilization to provide guidelines for standard licences; training for civil servants in the field of re-use

- Cooperation between access to information and re-use regulators - Stimulate development of benchmark mechanisms involving all Member States, encourage

national action plans- Promote central access points, such as www.data.gov.uk

PSI re-users

- exchange of best practices; PSI Alliance pointed out that an ideal forum for the exchange of best practices is already provided by the Commission’s PSI Working Group the ePSI Platform; create a light weight platform for interested parties to convene regularly to share ideas, best practices.

- design a European Open Data label signalling to re-users that a data is freely re-usable without any charge or restriction

- Introduce conditions for all programs/projects funded by the EU related to re-use of the information produced/collected during these programs/projects

- Organise "awareness raising sessions"; stimulate creation of applications- Promote open standardisation- Consider research programs in identified gap areas, like data classification and minimum

metadata added to information sources (to facilitate pickup of data offered). - Support 2-3 interested Member States with accelerated programs to demonstrate the viability

of the approach taken. - Partner with global organizations like WEF, OECD, World Bank to evaluate how PSI is

contributing to global indices and include its progress in relevant surveys and benchmarks. - Allow non-discriminatory value creation at multiple levels (aggregation, facilitation, curating)

to foster sustainable commercial stakeholder’s interest and ability in offering PSI data.

Academics/experts

The majority of respondents suggested the first three sets of measures.

- Exchange of best practices among Member States, re-users etc- Awareness raising initiatives at EU, national and sub-national level, including for legal

counsels- Open data portals, including a central European portal; provide a central repository with

information on the relevant formats, possible software, best practices, etc.; a catalogue of catalogues of available PSI.

- Data standardisation- Training for Public Sector organisations as to which data are to be covered by PSI legislation;

recommendations on how to publish data; - Adoption of linked data and Web technologies

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Citizens

- Exchange of good practices; one respondent submitted that an Oxford University study concluded that effective adoption of open PSI re-use needs a social infrastructure as much as a technological one.

- Common, open standards for deployment (data base standards, access standards, exchange standards)

- Awareness-raising campaigns (including contests with awards)- European open-data platform (e.g. the EU FP6 project "European Model for Bioinformatics

Research and Community Education" (EMBRACE network of excellence), for standards of information formats)

- Central registry of recommended licenses

Others

- Development, publication and communication of implementation frameworks, emphasising use of open standards

- Sharing of best practice exemplars- Publication of available data/contact points - Awareness raising initiatives at EU, national and sub-national level- Guidance and/or recommendations on Article 9– a good example for comparison is the

handbook that was published by the Commission with regards to the Services Directive.- National and pan-European data portals.

15.3. Should the Commission promote practical measures such as national portals (like the www.data.gov.uk or the www.data.gov in the US) with a strong political drive towards opening up the wealth of public sector data?15.4. If yes, could you please specify which measures?

N.A. 6%NO 9%

YES 85%

85% are in favour of promoting practical measures such as national portals with a strong political drive towards opening up the wealth of public sector data. 9% disagreed and only 6% of the participants to the consultation did not address this question.

This question received strong support from respondents in all categories. The following specific comments were made:

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Member States

All Member States support the Commission's active role in this area.

The UK in particular has listed the practical initiatives launched by the UK government which have helped to promote the re-use of public sector initiatives including data.gov.uk, the UK Government Licensing Framework and the London Datastore. Details of other initiatives and progress can be found in the UK Government’s Annual reports on PSI at http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/information-management/policies/reports.htm. 

PSI bodies (content holders and other)

- Development of central portals like data.gov can be a fundamental mechanism to promote the re-use of public sector information.

- National portals with a common framework of metadata- Swedish Meteorological Institute: portals should be promoted without prejudice to client to

client channels, especially for operationally perishable data (e.g. meteorological observations and numerical output)

- An EU-wide (or Commission) portal- French Ministry of Ecology: in the field of geographical information, the issue is on the one

hand to create interoperability between the national, sub-national and thematic spatial data infrastructures and on the other hand to create "virtual geoportal" facilities, which can address the requirements of separate communities of users.

PSI re-users

- Support for the data.gov.uk – like portals- Central national repositories- An EU-wide competition to reward those institutions / countries / individuals / sites that have

been exemplary in releasing and re-using PSI- Cloud computing would especially support the “pan-European” component in the PSI

directive with its non-discriminatory delivery of data and applications across European member states.

Academics/experts

- One-stop-shop portals, provided by relevant national or regional authorities; a requirement for all MS to establish national data portals by 2013, at least with a minimum list of datasets

- Portals should facilitate adoption of common technical and legal (e.g. licensing) standards- A European multilingual portal - Common formats and APIs - Fostering of interoperability for data exchange

Citizens

- A pan-EU portal- National portals with the same standards and protocols for data access; e.g. an interesting

project is http://yr.no where the Norwegian meteorological institute Meteorologisk institutt and the national public broadcaster NRK not only publish the weather forecasts online, but also use open formats (XML) via an open API to enable others to build upon that information

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- Metadata of available datasets- Standards for publication and storage of PSI- At least a catalogue of the public institutions providing PSI.

Others

- Interoperable national portals- Pan-EU portal.

16. General issues

Some 30% of all respondents addressed these last four open questions.

16.1. What changes in policy of Member States and/or public sector bodies regarding re-use of public sector information have you noticed since the adoption of the PSI Directive in 2003?16.2. What have been the positive effects of the PSI Directive and of these changes? Please give also figures on growth in terms of turnover, staff, number of clients, downloads etc., where possible.

Member States

Belgium indicated the following changes since the adoption of the Directive: full awareness of the principle of transparency; coordination of the federal public services with a view to provide a PSI one stop shop; dialogue with the private sector

Denmark and the Netherlands did not address these questions.

France listed the following changes:

- Greater awareness within the government about the economic and social value of public data- Transformation of the information dissemination policy - Data re-use has become an indispensable part of the theme of innovation and economic

development in the digital age - Administrations receive more and more requests. in many sectors, from new players (large

and small) and for information hitherto not subject to any exploitation by private re-users.

The UK listed the following changes:

- The launch of data.gov.uk - The development of the Information Fair Trade Scheme which regulates information trading

and licensing across the public sector - The launch of the UK Government Licensing Framework and the Open Government Licence - Use of semantic web technology. - The statutory complaints process (currently being externally reviewed to ensure that it

remains fit for purpose). - Increasingly, many local authorities are making their information available for re-use by this

means. - Political support for PSI initiatives across the UK is ensuring greater compliance across the public sector, especially at local government level. The support at ministerial level has been driven and accelerated primarily by a focus on the social and democratic benefits of making PSI more available for

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re-use, rather than being driven by wider economic benefits argument on which the PSI Directive is based.  

The UK also stated that the PSI Directive has helped highlight the benefits that can flow from making information available for re-use and thus led to the growth of new information products and services. There has also been a significant increase in the number of community based websites which are based on public sector information. The UK notes however, that there is a lack of empirical evidence on the economic benefits that flow from re-use.

To illustrate the positive impact of the Directive, the UK submitted that the number of licences issued since the UK Regulations came into force in 2005 increased by 14,761 giving a cumulative total of 22,030. Similarly, 4,600 datasets have been identified for re-use via data.gov.uk and the site is averaging 3,000 ‘hits’ per day. In addition since the launch of the Open Government Licence on 30 September 2010 there are encouraging signs that local authorities are now adopting this simplified and enabling approach to licensing.  

PSI bodies (content holders and other)

Several respondents from the UK indicated that changes there are well documented with www.data.gov.uk as well as the Open Government Licence and Information Fair Trader Scheme developed by the Office of Public Sector Information, use of semantic web technology. Moreover, Ordnance Survey has launched OS Open Data, making many of its core datasets available for re-use free of charge.

A Portuguese respondent indicated that the Directive was transposed in Portugal only in 2007 and although a culture of openness starts to take effect, it is still premature to analyse the impact of the Directive.

Finish respondents indicated that the idea of open access to data is now more widely accepted and that some PSI bodies have made all data available for a marginal cost.

The Austrian Met Office indicated that there has been an increase in transparency of licensing and pricing.

The French Met Office stated that it respected the principles of the Directive prior to its adoption so the Directive only formalized existing practices. It further stated that the growing demand and offer of PSI is primarily due to the development of information technology and to the continuous efforts made by PSI content holders for making an easier access to data and for increasing the list of PSI data. According to the French Ministry of Ecology, the PSI directive still remains widely unknown within the geographical information community, possibly due to the fragmentation of the GI community. According to the French Ministry of Environment, there is an increasing drive towards making data available for free or against marginal costs, due to a progressing "cultural revolution" within public sector bodies. However, this progress is often stifled by inappropriate management of IPR by these institutions.

The Swedish Met Office indicated that within the meteorological community, ECOMET was set up to regulate the exchange of data between the Meteorological Services to meet the demands of a level playing field with the private sector.

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The Spanish Directorate General for Cadastre stated that in the cadastral sector many Member States are changing their policies and cadastral agencies are looking for other forms of financing than sale of cadastral products. According to the Dutch cadastre, an increasing number of public organisations have started to open up their data for re-use.

A Dutch respondent stated however that no useful changes occurred, i.e. accessibility of public registers has not lead to re-use outside government and the costs of this type of data-exchange outpace the public efficiency. Similarly, a Belgian respondent (Transport authority) stated that change has only occurred in theory in terms of a long term objective for some public sector bodies.

PSI re-users

In this category of respondents, views vary significantly.

Several re-users pointed to the following positive changes since 2003 including: OPSI and APPSI in the UK; Open Government Data initiative in the UK; Information Officer in Slovenia; new PSI Law in Sweden; cadastral information free of charge in Spain and Netherlands, low-priced in Austria; marginal pricing in the Dutch law. In particular, a French respondent indicated that the PSI Directive brought more awareness among public sector bodies about re-use despite the existing 32-year old French rules.

Several respondents submitted the following figures:

- more than 1000% increase in the re-use of PSI in Austria in particular (as well as in Netherlands and Spain but yet to see any changes in Sweden)

- the private sector in added value meteorological services has grown substantially (c. 40%) from a very low base but the overall growth of the sector has not been equally good (c. 1.2% p.a.) - in comparison: in the USA where PSI is readily available at the cost of redistribution, growth in the sector has been c. 17% p.a.

A Dutch re-user submitted that since the adoption of the Directive, his company has grown considerably (he has not provided any figures). Another Dutch SME (5 employees) submitted that it relies for 30% on consulting and developing based on handling of public information since 2009, whereas the company did not do any consulting in this area before that date. A UK company active in geo data services submitted that it has almost tripled in staff numbers (from 100+ to 300+) and revenue (many 10s £milllion) since the introduction of the Directive - not as a direct result of the Directive but the growth nevertheless reflects the changing PSI climate.

According to several other respondents, the Directive has raised awareness of the potential of PSI, and also focussed attention of public sector bodies on greater efficiencies in its management. Public sector bodies are more responsive to the demand of the information from the private sector and that the most remarkable change is the proactive approach of some of the public bodies.

On the other hand, re-users indicate that contrary to the more open countries like the UK, Norway, Spain and the Netherlands, newer EU Member States are very hesitant or reluctant to adapt to the changes. Moreover, several re-users stated that in their particular areas (meteorological, geographic information) there is strong opposition towards re-use and/or open ignorance concerning the PSI Directive and the relevant national laws.

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Several respondents indicated that implementing PSI laws have not been correctly applied and as a result, creation of news products and services is slowed down. In particular, respondents indicate that strong opposition and open ignorance among PSI bodies concerning the PSI directive and the relevant national laws still remains (although it depends on the area), that information is not always available or accessible; it often remains expensive and licensing terms restrictive. According to figures provided by a UK respondent, most of the 200,000 PSI content holders are unaware of the Directive, a survey of all 465 local authorities in November 2010 showed that only 9% were aware of the Information Commissioner's instruction to include their register of information assets in their publication scheme (of these, all said they did not have such a register, but a handful did have undated plans to produce one).

Academics/experts

Within this category of respondents, views also differ significantly.

According to one respondent, the significant variance between progress made in different Member States and/or in different regions of the same Member State confirms that the current Directive does not guarantee uniformity, since it is not sufficiently binding on all accounts.

The UK is again mentioned a number of times as the MS where most policy and field changes have occurred. A respondent reported that with respect to marine data e.g., several changes have taken place – the proposed marine Data Archive centres, the Crown Estate database, opening of data from the Geological Survey (OpenGeoscience), from the Ordnance Survey and the UKHO. Respondents also mentioned the Open Government Data initiative in the UK together with the creation of APPSI and OPSI. Although work is still in progress, these efforts lead to more openness stimulating research and reuse.

Also, one respondent indicates that similar positive changes occurred in France such as the creation of responsible authorities, officials in charge of re-use in many national and local administrations, much better information on PSI re-use, on the Directive, including ambitious actions from local authorities.

Several other respondents indicated generally that much more data is currently available in the web-sites and that discoverability of data generally improved.

On the contrary, several respondents stated that very little change occurred and the Directive has had little impact on improving re-use in many Member States. Respondents often oppose little progress to significant changes resulting from the Inspire Directive (e.g. in Finland, Germany).

One respondent reports that not much change has occurred in Germany. A lot of e.g. good environmental data is published but license information is missing. With respect to geodata – the Inspire directive is implemented without any synergy with the open data movement.

According to several respondents, some MS adopted the Directive but have so far made no effort to promote its application (e.g. Italy) or no practical results of this law have been seen yet (e.g. Sweden). A Swedish respondent reported the public sector bodies' reluctance to amend their practices and that the greatest difficulties persist in the areas of geographical, meteorological and statistical data, where strong and powerful government agencies wish to continue "business as usual".

Citizens

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Few respondents in this category addressed this question and their views diverge as in the previous categories.

Several respondents in this category report slow positive changes in attitude and indicated the UK as the Member State where changes have occurred as a result of the adoption of the Directive (citizens indicate the data.gov.uk website as the main achievement).

Several citizens do not see any positive change (Germany is most frequently cited in this respect) while several others pointed out that it is impossible to assess what data has become available as a result of transposition of the PSI Directive and what changes are the result of constant advances in technology and bandwidth. One citizen stated that the changes are due to public authorities realising the economic benefits of opening up data rather than due to a direct link with the directive. Several respondents stated that the Directive has resulted in more charges being imposed on re-users for data re-use.

Others

Generally, respondents indicate the change of mindset as the main achievement of the PSI Directive.

One respondent described the source of positive changes in this area as the move of the market towards "transformation of services" aimed at improving delivery to citizens. As a result, an "open world" is becoming the default and closed environments less and less accepted, let alone at Government level.

Several respondents stated that as a result of the Directive, some Member States adopted significant measures and took relevant steps forward: the best example being the UK. They also submit that overall progress differs significantly among different Member States and/or in different regions of the same Member State. In order to ensure more uniformity, provisions of the directive should be more binding on the Member States.

A French association reported increasing awareness of public data value with new actors becoming actively involved in the debate and discussions: associations of citizens, local authorities, clusters and innovating companies, experts and deputies. As a result of the Directive in France, where a right to re-use was established, all public bodies whose main mission is to produce and disseminate information have published their assets list and the mission of the Access Commission to Administrative Documents (CADA) was redefined to provide redress and give advice.

Several respondents stated, however, that although there is a significant difference among progress in different Member States, a comprehensive estimate is rendered difficult as the Directive does not impose on Member States the obligation to gather information on the issue. However, the respondents submit that success in some Member States is less related to the PSI Directive than to individual political initiatives and the pressure of civil society. In this respect, another respondent submits that the PSI Directive came in the middle of the climate change concerning the publication of information on the Web and has as such been useful although its exact impact is difficult to conclude.

Finally, several respondents submitted that the PSI Directive was warmly welcomed by the industry and by SMEs but red tape has hampered the necessary follow-up initiatives.

16.3. What are the remaining barriers to re-use (availability of information, charging, licensing conditions, etc.)?

Member States

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Belgium indicated the following remaining barriers:

- Lack of openness of the public sector, lack of knowledge about the benefits of sharing information

- Difference between the main role of public services and the economic interest of re-use of public information

- Insufficient availability and discoverability of information

Denmark indicated that high charges remain a barrier for re-use for public data.

France listed the following barriers:

- Insufficient visibility of existing data available for re-use - Insufficient clarity of the re-use conditions - Inadequate data formats

The UK indicated the following:

- The non-mandatory nature of the PSI Directive - Perception of the process of making information available for re-use as an administrative

burden. - Cultural barriers within public sector bodies.

PSI bodies (content holders and others)

In this category, respondents indicated the following barriers (most respondents indicated the first two barriers):

- Insufficient awareness and availability of information- "Culture" issues in public sector bodies, in understanding the benefits of offering information

for re-use and recognising the synergies with access to information – perception that making available is an administrative burden; lack of knowledge and of competences within public authorities - need for practical guidance;

- Low level of understanding of concepts like "machine readable formats" in many smaller public bodies e.g. local councils, who may hold important information that could be available for re-use.

- Inadequate charging; charges on data delivery - Lack of clear licensing conditions- Lack of standards

PSI re-users

The following barriers were listed by respondents:

- Restrictive licensing conditions; licensing conditions unfavourable to commercial re-use; inconsistencies in licensing practices across the EU;

- Prohibitive pricing; data availability against charges; cost of provisioning and delivery - data is most often stored on servers within public administrations, not prepared to allow external, scalable

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access - additional cost factor from network bandwidth for public authorities and especially for SMEs leveraging this data.

- Lack of asset lists; lack of data visibility; lack of raw data; lack of data consistency (one-time publications vs. ongoing update; live stream vs. snapshot; “lifecycle” of data); lack of cost-efficient platforms to initiate the network effects of combining different data sources in innovation solutions and services.

- Formats restricting accessibility and re-usability; Data is held in application-specific, non-re-usable formats (sometimes technical formats, but more often proprietary government semantics)

- Lack of awareness and understanding surrounding PSI re-use; mindset of public bodies- Lack of definition of public task; unfair competition from public sector bodies engaging in

commercial activities - Lack of general obligation to allow re-use- Lack of uniform interpretation of Directive 95/46/EC (data protection) has direct negative

consequences for the application of Directive 2003/98/EC- Too many intellectual property rights on public information (information belongs to the

people) - Lack of guidance for civil servants on how to apply the law- Lack of harmonization of the regulatory framework for data governance.

Academics/experts

- Charging, especially frequent lack of clarity on charging models and rationale- Restrictive licensing conditions; lack of interoperability between licenses- Insufficient awareness of the benefits of PSI re-use within the public sector- Lack of transparency in licensing and pricing choices and too much room for refusals and/or

imposing unfair conditions.- Limitations caused by propriety exceptions- Machine-readability of data, and of reuse conditions - Lack of metadata

Citizens

- Restrictive and/or complex licensing conditions- Excessive, prohibitive charging- Unsatisfactory availability of data; no inventory for available data; deliberate suppression or

burying (swamping) of information that should be properly visible.- Long delays for data delivery - Barriers to re-users with disabilities- Lack of interoperability of formats, lock-in in to proprietary formats.- Lack of strong political commitment and leadership to put in place policies and administrative

systems to make PSI available for re-use- No obligation to publish in machine readable standards (XML) - Lack of legislation to deal with privacy and ownership of data (data commons) - No metadata standards- General lack of pro-activeness on the part of public sector bodies - Public bodies using proprietary data and creating valuable but license-restricted derivative

works

Others

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- Insufficient data availability; lack of format interoperability- Lack of information about data sets, conditions and fees for re-use- Excessive or prohibitive charging; lack of transparency of charges - Restrictive licensing conditions; lack of interoperability between different licenses- Insufficient awareness of the benefits of PSI re-use among PSI bodies; absence of obligation

to permit re-use- Intellectual property rights on public information or privacy policy sometimes (ab)used by

public bodies to forbid re-use- Insufficient data quality; difficult physical access to information due to inappropriate storage- Inefficient and costly redress against refusals to provide with the information

16.4. Would you have any other comments or input that you wish to give regarding the review of the PSI Directive?

A number of comments were made in response to this last open question.

Member States

Belgium called for amending the preamble in order to put public services at the heart of the issue – they collect data mandated by specific laws to manage specific tasks and that must take precedence over any other goal. In this context, a discussion about what constitutes a public task should open. Finally, the PSI directive and the Inspire directive should be linked.

Denmark suggested in its response that prior to the adoption of a revised proposal, the Commission should conduct in-depth studies of barriers, challenges and socio-economic benefits of a more targeted focus in the area of PSI on the European level.

France and the Netherlands did not submit any other comments.

The UK stated that the PSI Directive provides a solid framework for encouraging the re-use of public sector information and amendments to the Directive could hinder momentum because of the uncertainty that amending the PSI Directive would bring. Although the Commission should resist the temptation to be too prescriptive in terms of defining the practical steps that each member state should take in implementing the PSI Directive, there remains scope for sharing examples of best practice that can best be achieved by regular debate at meetings and conferences and through the issue of best practice guidance. The key to successful implementation is the promotion of the social and democratic benefits as well as the economic benefits of PSI and strong engagement with PSI policy at ministerial level in member states. The UK National Archives is in the process of improving UK guidance on the meaning of public task the context of information trading, taking into account European Commission statements and comments on the subject.

PSI bodies (content holders and other)

- the review of the PSI Directive should take account of the effects of the INSPIRE directive

- due to increasing convergence between the access to information and the re-use areas, there is a case to be made that greater cooperation between access and re-use regulators will create a more powerful force to deliver more joined up information rights.

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- the focus of EU action needs to be on increasing awareness and availability in areas where the untapped potential is greatest: health, employment, environment and so on.

-- amendments to the Directive could hinder momentum because some public sector

organisations would be reluctant to introduce measures in the face of the uncertainty that amending the PSI Directive would bring. The Commission should resist the temptation to be too prescriptive in terms of defining the practical steps that each Member State should take in implementing the PSI Directive.

- the current Directive assumes that public bodies only undertake public tasks but many public bodies are also required to lessen the burden on the taxpayer by drawing in profitable revenue or private companies (e.g. water) undertake a public task. The Directive should not be amended or developed further whilst maintaining this assumption.

- caution against placing undue reliance on the results of this survey, since deficiencies in the questionnaire design will limit the number of responses and undermine the usability of the findings. Examples are leading questions, compound questions where two separate questions are linked with 'and', and the fact that in many cases it is possible to explain one's answers only if responding to the initial question in one way (i.e. the text box appears only if the answer is 'yes' or sometimes 'no').

PSI re-users

- One respondent commended the European Commission itself for voluntarily agreeing to adhere to the PSI Directive for its own operations, and called the European Parliament, the ECJ and the European Patent Office to follow its good example.

- A call to create an Observatory/ a PSI regulator with the representation of the private and public sector, at the level of each Member State and European level

- The lack of uniform interpretation of Directive 95/46/EC has direct negative consequences for the application of Directive 2003/98/EC

- The Directive still offers too much room for interpretation, so the next iteration should focus on further clarification and consistency in implementation.

- The impact of cloud applications on positive network effects and efficient provisioning of public data should be considered.

Academic/experts

- The success of the PSI Directive so far has been to catalyze energies and demand for data access and re-use, and there is tremendous demand for more open access conditions to the European public data resources. A significantly telling example was a French solar panel installation and operation company which had to resort to using NREL (American research lab)'s data on solar exposition in France rather than the data supplied by French agencies, because of poor technical access conditions.

- The Directive should not make such a sharp distinction between social and economic value. It should acknowledge the social value of PSI in practise, e.g. potential improvements to public service delivery.

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- A public feedback and complaints portal should be launched and implementation of the directive in the member states should be better monitored.

- Focus on privacy should be strengthened – through projects that foster a discussion on the issues.

Citizens

- Civil society at national level should be more engaged in this policy making as they can provide many success stories in using open data, e.g. Het Nieuwe Stemmen reached well over 3 million Dutch on the topic of political transparency.

- Comment by a young 29-year old citizen about his www.treinvertragingen.be project which helped citizens with filling in their compensation sheets when they experience long train delays (implementation of EU legislation). The problem was the re-use of some data from railtime.be which contains real time information about train delays – the project was taken down for illegal re-use of this data.

- Several citizens complained about the survey being launched only in English.

Others

- Market expectations and willingness of Governments to collaborate in order to deliver are slowly converging. The danger of lock-in to proprietary solutions must be recognised and mandatory use of available open standards needs to be confirmed.

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