[epsi-coord] Our conversation yday with the EC (Tom pls send out invoice)

Tue Sep 11 11:22:24 BST 2012

Hi all,

Katleen and I were in Luxembourg yesterday to meet with Katalin Imrei and
Szymon Lewandowski, our new PO's. Their deputy head of unit Ivo also joined
us. Katleen and Marc know him.

It was a very pleasant conversation, in fact it was a real conversation and
not just the lecturing of Juan we were accustomed to :)

Expressed our need to have better view of their expectations and their
work, so we can actually support them. Message came across.

They first asked about the TR on charging practices. They are eager to
receive it. I told them Marc intends to finish it before we leave for
Helsinki.

They are ok with the TRs we sent in, and will formally let us know in
e-mail. Then I'll publish them. They only thought in our Local and regional
data TR regional was getting too little attention. But we can publish as
is, Katleen suggested maybe adding a few more regional examples (Spanish,
French, and Italian come to mind)

They asked about the workshop next week, and I told them there was some
issue with the Finns who were supposed to be there.

They had no substantial remarks concerning the tech report. We briefly
discussed the 2 points we are worried about: the number of legal cases, and
the number of new members in the platform. I explained that number of
platform members is a bad proxy for actual community growth, but will do
some more in the coming months to promote membership.

PSI Scoreboard: they haven't heard from Juan yet on what the feedback was
he gathered in March to May. I think it will turn out to be nothing
substantial, if there was any feedback at all. Told them we are very eager
to republish the scoreboard. Some discussion on how to show actual
progress, not merely transposition of rules. Told them those type of things
are already in the indicators, and that we will see if over time we can do
more of that.

We also discussed some more general issues, apart from the epsiplatform
they were interested in. As both PO's are relatively new to the PSI topic
(Szymon was involved with Europeana in the past 2 years), they clearly
appreciated our long-term experience in this field, and were interested in
hearing our opinion.

On the PSI Directive they also had some things to say:

   - Parliament: Now the voting will start. By end of Sept lead committee
   needs to have gathered all amendments. They will vote end of Oct. plenary
   vote in Parliament in Dec. Good hope to close it in first reading. EP is
   favorable. Privacy protection is MEPs core concern. This is outside of key
   PSI issues of charging, scope extension.
   - Council: Cyprus wants to treat it as a priority in their presidency
   and end it in December. EC is a bit less optimistic it seems.  In the
   Council it is harder. Charging is the key issue here. Which is why they
   need our trendwatching concerning charging practices in Europe.

Katleen, if I've missed anything, feel free to add.

CORE ACTION:
Tom, would you make sure that the next invoice is send out asap to the EC?

I will have a phone conversation with Katalin in the week after Helsinki.
To hear how Helsinki went, and how their negotiations on the directive went.

best,
Ton

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Interdependent Thoughts
Ton Zijlstra

ton at tonzijlstra.eu
+31-6-34489360

http://zylstra.org/blog

*Share your real life open data experiences,*
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