Slide 1

PSI Pricing thematic meeting – Helsinki, 19-20 April 2007

Re-use of Public Sector Information
EC Project “Breaking Barriers to eGovernment”

Cristina Dos Santos
CRID – University of Namur
Belgium
[email protected]

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Slide 2

PSI Pricing thematic meeting – Helsinki, 19-20 April 2007

Project ‘Breaking Barriers to eGovernment’
 EU Project funded by the European Commission – DG
Information Society and Media
 Led by the Oxford Internet Institute - OII (University of
Oxford, UK)
In partnership with :
 CRID – Research Centre for Computer and Law (University
of Namur, Belgium),
 Gov3 (London, UK),
 TILT - Institute for Law, Technology and Society (University of
Tilburg, Netherlands),
 University of Murcia (Spain)

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Slide 3

PSI Pricing thematic meeting – Helsinki, 19-20 April 2007

Project ‘Breaking Barriers to eGovernment’

 Our study’s aims:
 Investigate the barriers to expanding effective
eGovernment services
 Identify the legal, institutional and organizational
foundations of barriers
 Recommend European initiatives to break barriers to
eGovernment

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Slide 4

PSI Pricing thematic meeting – Helsinki, 19-20 April 2007

Project ‘Breaking Barriers to eGovernment’

 Seven Key eGovernment Barriers identified:
- Leadership failures
- Financial inhibitors
- Digital divides and choices
- Poor coordination
- Workplace and organizational inflexibility
- Lack of trust
- Poor technical design

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Slide 5

PSI Pricing thematic meeting – Helsinki, 19-20 April 2007

Project ‘Breaking Barriers to eGovernment’

 Eight Key Legal Dimensions studied:
- Re-use of Public Sector Information (CRID)
- Privacy and Data Protection (CRID)
- Public Administration Transparency (CRID)

- Authentication and Identification (TILT)
- Intellectual Property Rights (TILT)
- Liability (TILT)
- Administrative Law (Univ. Murcia)
- Relationships between Public Administrations, citizens and
other ICT actors (Univ. Murcia)
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Slide 6

PSI Pricing thematic meeting – Helsinki, 19-20 April 2007

Project ‘Breaking Barriers to eGovernment’

 Definition of an eGovernment barrier?
« Characteristics – either real or perceived – of legal, social,
technological or institutional context which work against developing
eGovernment at the EU level, either:
because they impede demand, by acting as a disincentive or barrier for
users to engage with eGovernment services;
or because they impede supply, by acting as a disincentive or barrier for
public sector organizations to provide eGovernment services »
 As the research progresses, we will continuously reassess our
definitions of the main categories, refining current ones or
adding new ones when appropriate

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Slide 7

PSI Pricing thematic meeting – Helsinki, 19-20 April 2007

Re-use of Public Sector Information: Description
 Re-use of PSI is defined as “the use by persons or legal entities of
documents held by public sector bodies for commercial or noncommercial purposes other than the initial purpose related to
the public task for which the documents were produced” (source:
PSI Directive).
 Many eGovernment services depend on the re-use of information
gathered or produced by public bodies (which hold details about
citizens, enterprises, land use, public decisions, vehicles, food,
meteorology, health, etc).
 As the public sector information (PSI) is unique, the private sector
has also a great interest in this data as it may represent a unique
source of certain information, while the public sector has also an
interest in its own re-use (e.g. for commercial purposes).

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Slide 8

PSI Pricing thematic meeting – Helsinki, 19-20 April 2007

Re-use of Public Sector Information: European context
 EC Synergy Guidelines in 1989 (not binding), EC Green Paper in
1998
 The ‘PSI Directive’ (Dir. 2003/98/EC on the re-use of public sector
information)  the EU took action in this domain on the basis of the
Subsidiarity Principle of Art.5 of the EU Treaty, but was limited by
the principle of proportionnality set out in the same article (does
not impose the re-use)
 The EU re-use legal landscape is made of a patchwork of legal
layers  the EU layer is built on the access to public information
regimes allowed within the lower layers in Member States and the
specific re-use rules applicable at national, regional, state or even
at local levels

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Slide 9

PSI Pricing thematic meeting – Helsinki, 19-20 April 2007

Re-use of Public Sector Information:
Relationship to the 7 barrier categories identified
 Poor coordination  no overall guarantee in the EU regarding
PSI re-use (actually only the commercial re-use is not allowed in all
MS); problems related to intellectual property rights of third
parties, data protection requirements
 Leadership failures  the PSI Directive does not impose the reuse faculty
 Financial inhibitors  too blurred notion of “reasonable return of
investments”

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Slide 10

PSI Pricing thematic meeting – Helsinki, 19-20 April 2007

Re-use of Public Sector Information:
Relationship to the 7 barrier categories identified (2)
 Digital divides and choices lack of transparency and related
practical issues as: charges for re-use, re-usability of documents
formats, identifying the availability of documents, language
diversity and common standards for storing PSI
 Workplace and organizational inflexibility  lack of a European
culture of PSI re-use; problems of exclusion of some documents,
competition between public and private interests
 Poor technical design  documents formats, need for conformity to
technical open standards to ensure wide accessibility

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Slide 11

PSI Pricing thematic meeting – Helsinki, 19-20 April 2007

Re-use of Public Sector Information:
Remaining barriers identified about pricing
 PSI Directive: allows to charge also the costs of production of PSI
 problems of “double” charge to re-users, problems of evaluation of
such costs, necessity to ensure that they remain “reasonable”…

 Transparency: even if it is clearly requested by the PSI Directive, it is
still lacking in the practice of the Member States!
 availability of information about prices?
 Need of clear EU definitions of “public task”, “reasonable return of
investment”, …

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Slide 12

PSI Pricing thematic meeting – Helsinki, 19-20 April 2007

Networking to Project “Breaking Barriers to
eGovernment”
Project Website, Newsletters Subscrition and Forum on:
http://www.egovbarriers.org
Contact:
Dr. Rebecca Eynon (Project Manager)
Oxford Internet Institute, Oxford, UK
Email: [email protected]
Tel.: +44 (0) 1865 287210

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Slide 13

PSI Pricing thematic meeting – Helsinki, 19-20 April 2007

Thank you for your attention!
Cristina Dos Santos
(CRID - University of Namur, Belgium)
Email: [email protected]
http://www.crid.be/

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