Transcript ICTs and the environment: Perspectives and policies

Review of recent studies on PSI re-use
and related markets in the EU
Estimating the market value of PSI
Graham Vickery
Information Economics
Open Government Data Conference
Brisbane
23 September 2011
The background
• The public sector is and has always been a large producer,
collector and repository of a very wide variety of
data/information and content
• Two main technological developments have changed and
shaped the role of public sector information and content
• These are:
1. Technologies that enable digitisation of public resources as
they are produced, and retrospectively for public resources
already existing
2. Deployment of broadband technologies that enable better
access and findability, and more rapid dissemination of PSI
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Benefits from better access
• Knowledge is a source of competitive advantage in the
“information economy”
• For this reason alone it is economically important that there
is wide diffusion of public information
• Benefits from improving access to PSI and facilitating reuse
(taking account of legal requirements / restrictions) include:
– Development of new products built directly on PSI
– Development of complementary products such as new software and
services
– Reduction of transaction costs in accessing and using information
– Efficiency gains in the public sector
– Increasingly the crossing of public and private information to provide
new goods and services.
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What is Public Sector Information?
• Public sector information characteristics:
– dynamic and continually generated
– directly generated by the public sector
– associated with the functioning of the public sector, e.g. geo-spatial
data, meteorological data, business statistics
– often readily useable in commercial applications with relatively little
transformation of raw data
• This set of information is often the basis for informationintensive industries
• These activities use the raw data to produce increasingly
sophisticated and pervasive products, such as location data
accessed from smart-phones
• This area has received most attention and is the focus of e.g.
the EC Directive on the re-use of PSI
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What is Public Content?
• Public content characteristics:
– static (i.e. it is an established record),
– held by the public sector rather than directly generated, e.g. cultural archives,
artistic works where third-party rights may be important
– not directly associated with the functioning of government
– not necessarily associated with commercial uses but having public good
characteristics, e.g. culture, education
• It usually covers cultural, educational and scientific public knowledge
• Wide public diffusion and long-term preservation are major objectives
• The public task is potentially clearer, but because of rapid growth of
interest in all kinds of cultural goods and services, the potential for market
and non-market development is very large
• Distinctions between PSI / PC not clear-cut. There is a continuum of uses
and applications along the spectrum, from geo-spatial information with
very high commercial use, and cultural archives with limited popular
interest but high value to some. PC included in OECD Recommendation
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Categorisation and characterisation of public information/content
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Typical information, content and payment flows
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The PSI re-use value chain
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How big are PSI-related markets and activities?
• The EU27 PSI-based market is large. MEPSIR study 2006
concluded that the EU PSI re-use market worth EUR 27 billion
• More recent studies. Business as usual:
– Based on post-2006 studies the PSI market was approx. EUR 28 billion
annually in 2008 (without culture, science, etc.). Similar to MEPSIR
2006 but using different methodologies
– All studies show relatively rapid PSI-related growth. Taking 7% annual
growth, the 2010 market would have been around EUR 32 billion
– The direct economic impacts (the economic “footprint” of PSI) are
larger again due to direct PSI re-use activities in other sectors,
government and non-commercial activities not included in the
studies used for these estimates
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How big are PSI-related markets and activities?
• Business not as usual:
– What if access was freed up and PSI was effectively given away, lowering
costs, removing restrictions or reducing various embedded barriers?
– Welfare gains from completely open access to PSI could be of the order of
EUR 40 billion, depending on the importance of price and licensing
restrictions, and lack of easy access in different EU27 countries, e.g. no
lists, information not digitised, interoperability issues
• The big picture:
– PSI-related information can be used in a very wide range of direct and
indirect applications across the economy and aggregate direct and
indirect economic impacts from PSI applications and use across the
whole EU27 economy are of the order of EUR 140 billion annually. This is
business as usual
– If PSI opened up, infrastructure worked better and barriers removed
(difficult access / restrictions, data standards, lack of skills / knowledge in
key application areas) aggregate direct and indirect economic benefits for
the whole EU27 economy of the order of EUR 200 billion (1.7% of GDP)
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The economic dimensions of PSI. Gains from
improving access in specific areas
• What are the direct benefits from removing current barriers to
access and improving the underlying infrastructure?
• Some examples:
– Geospatial sector benefits increased by some 10-40% by improving
access, data standards, building skills. Better local government geospatial
policies could double productivity gains over next 5 years
– Large potential markets in financial, energy and construction sectors
– Obligatory national environmental impact assessments - costs down by
20% or EUR 2 billion per year; Open access to R&D results – gains
EUR 6 billion per year; if European citizens each saved only 2 hours per
year from better access - worth EUR 1.4 billion per year
• New applications and uses in a wide range of goods and services
industries and future innovations associated with easier access are
more important than the direct PSI market. Emerging second-order
uses can be expected to add further economic and social benefits.
And the consumer surplus may be even larger
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Removing barriers brings gains – but what is sacrificed?
• Gains from better access and expanded use have to be set against
costs. PSI revenues are relatively low. EU27 government revenues
at the upper end of estimates of the order of EUR 1.4 billion
• Generally a small part of agency operating budgets, less than 1% for
majority and a maximum of one-fifth in a few cases
• Evidence shows that improving access and lowering prices
dramatically has positive impacts on the number of users and
development of new uses, and changing access and pricing
policies provide opportunities to review role of public PSI tasks
• Government revenues foregone from direct sales of PSI could be
raised via basic replacement funding, possibly mixed with
“updater” funding models. The extra funding is estimated to be
very small compared with budgets of public sector bodies
providing PSI, and even smaller compared with additional benefits
from greater PSI-related economic activity
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