Public Sector Information - Raw Data for New Services and Products

26 January 2010 - Commission action triggers new PSI bill in Italy - Following a letter of formal notice sent by the Commission to Italy on 23 March 2009 for incorrect transposition of Directive 2003/98/EC on the re-use of public sector information (PSI), the Italian authorities accepted to change their legislation transposing the Directive and proposed new PSI legislation, which is now pending before the Parliament as part of the legislative package to implement obligations stemming from EU law (Legge comunitaria 2009, A. S. n. 1781). The proposed changes to the national legislation aim in particular to incorporate the general principle contained in Article 3 of the Directive and to amend other provisions which might restrict the scope of the re-use legislation on grounds of lack of ownership of the requested PSI by the relevant public sector body or of its nature (e.g. cadastral or statistical data). The text of the proposed changes is available at: http://www.senato.it/japp/bgt/showdoc/frame.jsp?tipodoc=Emendc&leg=16&id=446877&idoggetto=538575  
 

10 December 2009 - The Commission has finalised its tendering procedure and awarded the contracts for the study for assessing the existence of exclusive agreements concluded by public sector bodies within certain EU Member States (MS) in the context of the PSI Directive. A first set of Member States (France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, Austria, Denmark, Belgium and the Czech Republic) will be object of the study in 2010. Please find below a list with the economic operators awarded with the task of undertaking such an exercise per Member State. Should you believe of the possible existence of exclusive agreements in a European Country please provide the relevant economic operator with the relevant information. Further information.

9 December 2009 - The Swedish authorities sent to the Commission the official report with the proposed Swedish legislation transposing Directive 2003/98/EC on the re-use of Public Sector Information, which was sent out to the stakeholders for a formal consultation during Fall 2009 as a step in the Swedish legislative process, and confirmed that in spite of some delay during the Summer break, they still expect the new legislation to enter into force on 1 July 2010, as planned and reported to the Commission. The Commission participated in the seminar Stimulating PSI re-use: European Progress organised by the ePSIPlatform in Stockholm on 24 November 2009, where the Swedish PSI bill was also commented and the calendar for adoption confirmed. More information on the proposed new Swedish PSI legislation and the official Swedish report can be found at:

http://www.epsiplus.net/news/news/sweden_publishes_new_psi_law_proposal

http://www.regeringen.se/sb/d/11451/a/132677

http://www.regeringen.se/content/1/c6/13/26/77/4cb8b630.pdf

9 December 2009 - PSI Developments in the MS: The UK Government published on December 7th an action plan "Putting the Frontline First - Smarter Government" which contains an ambitious and proactive PSI reuse agenda: "Our public data principles state that: Public data will be published in reusable, machine-readable form; Public data will be available and easy to find through a single easy to use online access point (www.data.gov.uk); Public data will be published using open standards and following the recommendations of the World Wide Web Consortium; Any "raw" dataset will be represented in linked data form; More public data will be released under an open licence which enables free reuse, including commercial reuse; Data underlying the Government’s own websites will be published in reusable form for others to use; Personal, classified, commercially sensitive and third-party data will continue to be protected."

10 and 18 November 2009 - In November 2009 two events organised under the Swedish Presidency ended with important political declarations in support of the EU PSI policy agenda. In Visby, on November 10th, participants adopted the "Visby Declaration - Creating impact for an eUnion 2015". The second event happened on November 18th in Malmö, where European Ministers responsible for eGovernment policy unanimously approved the "Ministerial Declaration on eGovernment". Both declarations recognise the economic potential of the PSI re-use and call on the MS "to make data freely accessible in open machine-readable formats, for the benefit of entrepreneurship, research and transparency".

16 November 2009 - Conclusions of the 25 September meeting on PSI portals: Technological, organisational and financial aspects of PSI portals do not represent a real issue. There is enough knowledge, technology and good practice available on which to build PSI portals. Open-source tools enable setting up a PSI portal with relatively low costs. Read the minutes of the meeting.
10 November 2009 - Javier Hernández-Ros, the Head of Access to Information Unit, is the ePSIplatform PSI Guest Blogger in the month of November. The ePSIplatform project is funded under the European Commission’s eContentplus programme. Its goal is to stimulate action, report developments and monitor progress towards a stronger and more transparent environment for the growth of national and European PSI re-use markets. The aim of the blog is to stimulate debate and discussion about the latest news, opinions, and strategies related to PSI re-use.

2 November 2009 - Today the Polish Ministry of the Interior held a consultative meeting on the proposed assumptions for the new law and on the need for Poland to respond to the European Commission infringement action (more information). So far, neither the legislative calendar nor the text of the proposed Act have been published.

What's New Archive

Monitoring the implementation and application of the PSI Directive in the Member States.

Analysing markets and stimulating the exchange of good practises.

Scrutinising in particular exclusive agreements.

 What's New Archive