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

Fri Jan 14 11:16:32 UTC 2011

>I have yet to
>hear a compelling argument that it should stop doing so.

'A' compelling argument probably doesn't exist (apart from "otherwise we'll
show up with pitchforks and torches"). The simple question "why not charge
for gov data?" has no simple answer as the context (relationship
gov-society) is an inherently complex one. In complex situations answers are
the sum of a long list of contributing factors.

So you'd need gov to weigh the sum of a list of arguments agains the one
argument of getting some revenue from a number of their transactions. All
those arguments are part of the equation, it's not a question of which
single one 'defeats' the charging idea.

Some of those arguments would be in my perception:
1) any company will charge those costs in the price of their product, so the
customer pays. However they already paid through taxes. Unless the revenue
goes directly to cut taxes for all, citizens are actually paying twice. As
are the owners of the companies involved (they are after all also citizens).
Charging for data hence becomes a 'data-tax'.

2) setting a price has consequences if it's based on the perceived
market-value:
This will always be according to what one sees happening now, in established
markets. You are then damaging innovation efforts as any price creates a
threshold for novel ways of doing things. Innovation is not about merely a
novel product, it is also about novel costing-structures, novel distribution
channels, and novel customer groups (the ones that cannot be served by the
incumbent costing structures and distribution channels) Setting a price this
way helps incumbents in the re-use niche involved, and impedes new entrants,
as it assumes that innovation apart form the product does not change other
aspects of the playing field. Government is then basically saying: under
this price threshold nothing much can happen, in fact we are making it
actively impossible as we set that minimum cap.
Setting a fixed price creates a minimum threshold (which is also
assymetrically favouring those companies that can afford it better and thus
a market intervention), setting a relative price is effectively an
additional revenue-tax for the companies involved.
This way of pricing also turns the government into a market party/player.

3) innovation efforts are not non-commercial. Thinking that innovation
happens as research, analysis etc, and then after a while magically becomes
a commercially viable product, is far from reality. Innovation happens not
in the lab (new knowledge can happen in the lab, but innovation and new
knowledge are not synonymous) but in experimenting in the market. Innovation
is a trajectory, a path of exploration, repeated 'life' attempts at getting
a still changing and developing product to take a market foothold, not an
incident of something shooting out of a lab. Thus the non-commercial /
commercial distinction will indeed have an effect on possible innovation.

4) setting a price has consequences if it's based on incurred costs (other
than incremental costs of distribution)
What are the costs of getting data and getting it ready for release? Is
collection part of it? Is putting it on-line part of it? Even if it's in the
same format you collected it in? There are no separate systems or processes
for it, the datasets are a result of the entire system of government
executing its tasks. And are you charging all of those costs to commercial
re-users? Also to pay for non-commercial re-use, which is basically party of
gov's requirement to actively inform the citizenry about its ongoing tasks?
Also, there are positive effects for data release to government itself
(transparency, participation etc., as well as higher effectiveness and
efficiency in their own tasks). Are you going to account for that off-set
first in determining the costs of the data-sets? If you cannot clearly
demarcate the costs, you are in fact charging for what you think others will
be willing to pay (see item 2). I have a feeling that isolating specific
costs will bring you to a load of trivial costs, ending at the conclusion
"let's charge incremental distribution costs". Anything above that will be
again a wholly arbitrary price setting.  Government is not supposed to be
acting arbitrarily but predictably and controllable.

5) Administrating billing, monitoring and policing of commercial use will
either cost more than the revenue collected (this being government after
all), or it will drive up prices for the data-sets to effectively preclude a
larger part of potential commercial use of said data, raising the threshold
more towards the high end of any re-use market and excluding not just new
entrants but also the smaller incumbents in a market, again constituting
market intervention for the sake of monetizing a single transaction.

6) Commercial use may in fact make gov's work lighter,with e.g. products in
the area of having informed citizens making better decisions about their own
lives, and thus make less demand of other government services.

7) Who will set the price? Who is actually mandated to set a price on a
given dataset? How do we know it is fairly/reasonably calculated? Where are
the checks and balances for those decisions? If any gov institution sets its
own price (now the case it seems) you create a confusing and unpredictable
landscape. Unpredictability in resources is not something companies will
take lightly: they will move away from that, and stop using the data. At the
same time this might be the real revenue opportunity: charge not for the
data, but for the service level companies want to have on top of what a gov
does as part of its own tasks. Data with no strings attached, and SLAs with
a price tag.
If all gov institutions adhere to the same price setting process, this
probably needs legislation first as well. Is there currently a legal basis
other than the phrase in the PSI directive (costs plus reasonable profit
margin, which applies to all re-use, not just commercial) for pricing?

All in all, charging for commercial use of data is only interesting it seems
to me if you stick to looking at only the basic transaction, not at the
chain or ecosystem that transaction is part of. If you look further than
just the transaction you are for all intents and purposes raising a data-tax
and doing market interventions. Or if you want to influence behavior (like
rising tobacco taxes), sending out the message "we'll punish you for using
this data", or if you want to get some short term revenue at the cost of
less innovation, higher taxation. Neither of those is the stated goal of any
government at this point when it comes to data re-use.

Now, back to reading the actual research out of Strasbourg.

best,
Ton
-------------------------------------------
Interdependent Thoughts
Ton Zijlstra

ton at tonzijlstra.eu
+31-6-34489360

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

On Thu, Jan 13, 2011 at 10:40 PM, James McKinney <oxford.tuxedo at gmail.com>wrote:

> > There is no need to sell the data to cover any costs since this is done
> by taxpayers money already.
>
> I agree there is no need. But if a government chooses to have NC
> restrictions in order to generate revenue from commercial use, then,
> assuming it is at all successful in generating revenue, I have yet to
> hear a compelling argument that it should stop doing so.
>
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> euopendata at lists.okfn.org
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