Transcript DIRECTIVE 2003/98/EC OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND …

DIRECTIVE 2003/98/EC OF THE EUROPEAN
PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL
of 17 November 2003
on the re-use of public sector
information
(PSI directive)
Theory and practice
Zsolt Ződi, Chief Publishing officer, Complex Kiadó, Wolters Kluwer
The goal of the directive
• Public sector information is an important
primary material for digital content
products and services
• Wider possibilities of re-using public
sector information should inter alia allow
European companies to exploit its
potential and contribute to economic
growth and job creation.
The scope of directive I – branches
of information
• The public sector collects, produces,
reproduces and disseminates a wide range of
information in many areas of activity, such as
social, economic, geographical, weather,
tourist, business, patent and educational
information. (4)
• The information types that has the greatest
importance:
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–
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–
legal (including official registers)
geographical
weather
statistical
The scope of directive II - the scope
of obligation of the public bodies
• The Directive does not contain an obligation
to allow re-use of documents.
• The Directive should apply to documents that
are made accessible for re-use when public
sector bodies license, sell, disseminate,
exchange or give out information.
• This means, that if they do so, they should
follow the minimum standards
• This rule is so strict, that they should follow
the rules, even if they themselves re-use
them when not acting as a public body. („To avoid
cross-subsidies, re-use should include further use of documents within the
organisation itself for activities falling outside the scope of its public tasks”.)
The scope of directive III Definition of document
• Very wide definition: covers any
representation of acts, facts or
information — and any compilation of
such acts, facts or information —
whatever its medium
• Can be database, picture, etc.
Anything, which is
‘CONTENT’
The scope of the directive IV
Definition of public sector
• Established for general interest, not for profit making
• Having legal personality
• Financed
– for the most part by the State,
– or regional or local authorities,
– or other bodies governed by public law;
• Subject to management supervision by those bodies;
– or having an administrative, managerial or supervisory board,
more than half of whose members are appointed by the State,
regional or local authorities or by other bodies governed by
public law;
Exceptions (what is not falling
under the directive’s scope)
• Computer programmes
• If citizen should prove particular interest for the access
under the existing regulation
• Personal data
• Copyright protected info (Including protected
databases)
• Info protected by National security
• Statistical or commercial confidentiality
• Documents that are generated via non public activity
• Documents held by public service broadcasters
• Documents held by educational and research
institute’s, museums libraries, archives, theaters, etc.
Main rules of the Directive I
• ‘General rule’:
‘the re-use of documents held by public sector bodies is allowed, these
documents shall be re-usable for commercial or non-commercial
purposes’
• ‘Speed rule’:
access should be given in reasonable time some information’s value is
depending on the ‘freshness’ (20 days)
• ‘Format rule’
sw independent if possible, and extracts (14) – and (23) member states should
ensure and help re-users that they can find the document’
• ‘Cost-based charging rule’
Where charges are made, the total income should not exceed the total costs
of collecting, producing, reproducing and disseminating documents,
together with a reasonable return on investment, having due regard to the
self-financing requirements of the public sector body concerned, where
applicable. – most problematic rule of the directive
Main rules of the Directive II
• ‘Published conditions rule’
publicly available rules and conditions are necessary
• ‘Fair conditions rule’
in some cases there are conditions, like non alteration or
indication of source. This should be fair.
• ‘Equal treatment rule’
homogeneous groups should be treated equally - see also
if the public body uses it for non public purposes (!)
• ‘No exclusivity rule’
only in exceptional cases (if there are no re-users and the
re-use is a public interest)
Problems in implementation
• Public bodies extensively perform commercial activity
They apply different rules to their own internal activity than to others
• Revenues generated by this activity is built into their budget
They ‘forced’ to go on, or even grow on this, sometimes on below cost price prices.
• Costs of the commercial activity is not fairly defined
Cost calculation in business sense is not existing at public bodies.
• Commercial use is different than ‘normal’ (i.e. compared with the information
request of a journalist), because
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it is regular (what if legal rules are changing, and the body has to adjust respectively the
data)
aiming to big quantities
requiring specific, predefined, non-changing formats (see also point 1.)
Specific quality requirements
• Cultural issues
‘it is not fair that a private company is making money out of our information’
• Corruption
This endangers the ‘extra revenue’ of some civil servants
• What if the number of requests is too high, or one is too difficult?
• Clash with existing data protection and freedom of information regulations
(i.e. in HU according to the Data Protection Act every public information is free of
charge. This is theoretically a favourable regulation than the PSI describes, but
nobody takes it seriously.)