[open-government] EU Consultation on gov data re-use.

[Ton Zijlstra]

Hi all,

The European Commission last Friday has opened a consultation based on
three questions the new PSI Directive gives the EC a guiding role in.

http://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/news/consultation-guidelines-recommended-standard-licences-datasets-and-charging-re-use-public

The revised Directive
<http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2013:175:0001:0008:EN:PDF>calls
on the European Commission to assist the Member States in implementing the
Directive in a consistent way by issuing guidelines on

   - recommended standard licenses,
   - datasets to be released/improved as a matter of priority and
   - charging for the reuse of documents.

The objective of the consultation is therefore to seek the views of
stakeholders on specific issues to be addressed in the 3 sets of guidelines.

I think this is an important consultation, that needs a significant input
from the wider open data community.

When it comes to licensing and charging, there is I think a significant
difference between established (commercial) re-users (which are sure to
respond to the consultation) and 'new' users of data. Innovation, societal
resilience and grass-roots effort is best served with getting as close to
the open definition as possible, whereas established players individually
from their perspective are best served by staying away from the open
definition: licensing and charging are great ways to put a barrier to entry
on the low end of your existing market or niche, and thus protecting
yourself from competition or challengers.

When it comes to prioritizing datasets for release or improvement I, as
lead editor for the Open Data Census (http://census.okfn.org/), am eager to
hear your thoughts, and if possible welcome you to the Open Data census
workshop in 2 weeks at the OK Conference in Geneva (
http://okcon.org/open-data-government-and-governance/session-d/). To me the
datasets we currently track are 'infrastructure' (geo, spending, voting,
company register and such, transport), whereas I suspect that to take on
certain societal issues different core data sets are needed (healthcare,
education data, financial system, energy / water, etc).


Best,


Ton
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Interdependent Thoughts
Ton Zijlstra

ton at tonzijlstra.eu
+31-6-34489360

http://zylstra.org/blog

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