[Advocacy Advisors] European Commission's PSI Guidelines

[Dimitar Parvanov Dimitrov]

Dear list,

I am just returning from a PSI roundtable and workshop
<http://psialliance.info/documents/PSIAllianceAgenda2Jul2014DRAFT.pdf> here
in Brussels where Szymon Lewandowski from DG CONNECT
<http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/connect/en/content/open-data-policy-and-public-sector-information>
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
<http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2013-December/129015.html>)
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
<http://www.lapsi-project.eu/> and CreativeCommons we were pushing the
following points:

   - No NC restrictions (distributing our brochure
   <http://www.wikimedia.de/images/1/15/CC-NC_Leitfaden_2013_engl.pdf>)
   - 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
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/advocacy_advisors/attachments/20140702/de093712/attachment.html>