Dear list,

I am just returning from a PSI roundtable and workshop here in Brussels where Szymon Lewandowski from DG CONNECT talked about the guidelines for the re-use of public sector information to be released by the European Commission.

Background

Back in November 2013, me and Mathias from WMDE attended (see second article) a public hearing on the matter of implementing the revised Public Sector Information Directive to include re-use permissions. It was organised by DG CONNECT in Luxembourg, as many public sector bodies had signalled having a hard time understanding what needs to be done. Together with LAPSI and CreativeCommons we were pushing the following points:

No NC restrictions (distributing our brochure)
Free of charge access
Using standard licenses that are really free (strongly proposing cc-0 and cc-by)
We raised the issue of copyfraud

Commission implementation guidelines

While the document is not published yet, Szymon Lewandowski from the Commission presented the content that will be released in two weeks time. The Commission is recommending:

Not licensing material that is already in the public domain
Using cc-0 as a default license
Using cc-by where a public sector body doesn't feel comfortable with cc-0
If a body really needs to create an own license, it should make sure its compatible
Marginal charges are allowed can include return on investment not highter than 5% of fixed interest rate
However: online access and distrubution should be free of charge

According to Mr. Lewandowski they didn't include a statement on NC clauses, because they believed that this will only make people think about it, increasing the chances of using such restrictions.

Actual publishing of the guidelines
The actual guidelines will be released July 17th and will be called a "notice" (for some strange reason I didn't understand). Apparently they're being translated now.

Relevance

While these are non-binding, they still represent the official opinion of the European Commission or at least DG CONNECT. It clearly states that public information and content should be free and re-usable without restriction, making it a useful argument in debates with other DGs and third-parties.

The group also talked about how important it is to measure GDP impact of released data and content in order to win arguments in the future. In this field, Deloitte UK is already making efforts in putting a number on the money gained for the economy by releasing datasets. I shall share their analysis as soon as it is available to me (they promised to share it).

Cheers,
Dimi