[euopendata] Study says charge for public data...

Sat Jan 15 12:58:04 UTC 2011

Hi all,

As this thread has been mostly talking about pricing in general, we seem to
be forgetting that the trigger was a specific study in France for APIE as to
pricing which said that for commercial use an 'optimal' pricing policy was
possible without restricting adoption of re-use.

Peter posted a link to the management summary in English. The entire report
(in French) can be found at
https://www.apiefrance.fr/sections/acces_thematique/reutilisation-des-informations-publiques/etude-economique/view
as
a link to a PDF file at the bottom of the page.

In the attachment to this e-mail you find a Google translated version in
English of that PDF.

I have sent an e-mail to the researcher listed as contact person to request
more info on the method and process of the study. It seems at first glance
to be a literature/thinking excercize but I may be wrong.

My first impressions are the study isn't strong on semantics. 'Value added'
seems to mean the effort put into releasing the data by the public
institution.
And using the data-information-knowledge ladder is never a good sign to me
(with my knowledge/change/complexity background), as it implies a linear
hierarchy that isn't there. Yet that exactly is the basis they use for
suggesting 'optimal pricing', as the steps up the assumed ladder are used as
measure for value added.
And in this case they also seem to not realize that what constitutes
information or knowledge to the gov publisher of data may be simply raw data
for the re-user (as is e.g. the case with the EP's documents that Google
Translate uses to train their algorithms.)

Will come back with more after reading the report more.

best,
Ton

-------------------------------------------
Interdependent Thoughts
Ton Zijlstra

ton at tonzijlstra.eu
+31-6-34489360

http://zylstra.org/blog
-------------------------------------------

On Thu, Jan 13, 2011 at 11:20 AM, Peter Krantz <peter.krantz at gmail.com>wrote:

>
> https://www.apiefrance.fr/sections/acces_thematique/reutilisation-des-informations-publiques/economic-study/view
>
> "The authors conclude that in times of tight budgets, the optimal
> policy may be to charge for commercial reuse at reasonable rates
> designed to cover the cost of the added value. This policy rightfully
> shifts a share of the costs of producing PSI from taxpayers to those
> who obtain a commercial benefit from using it outside its primary
> purpose. Significantly, this approach would not diminish the overall
> economic equilibrium of PSI reuse. For non-commercial reuse, setting
> rates equal to the marginal cost of making the information available
> would be optimal in most cases, as the willingness to pay for this
> type of reuse is generally low. The study did not specifically address
> the case where public entities competes with private operators and/or
> are required to self-finance part of its budget."
>
> European Commission tweeted this with the hashtag #opendata:
> http://twitter.com/infsoe4/status/25495868148809729
>
> regards,
>
> Peter
>
> _______________________________________________
> euopendata mailing list
> euopendata at lists.okfn.org
> http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/euopendata
>
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