[Open-Legislation] The State of Open Data in Europe

Mon Jan 17 14:29:23 UTC 2011

UNCHARTERED WATERS: The State of Open Data in Europe
http://assets1.csc.com/de/downloads/CSC_policy_paper_series_01_2011_unchartered_waters_state_of_open_data_europe_English_2.pdf
(Alexander Schellong / Ekaterina Stepanets)

Opening up government data  to the public has been part of the European
> policy agenda since the introduction of the PSI directive in 2003. European
> Member States continue to lean towards a cautious approach of making their
> data available to citizens. This is partly caused by conflicting legal
> frameworks, cultural norms and the idea to recover the costs of data
> production. At the same time and inspired by activities in the U.S. and UK,
> the open data movement has emerged in many countries around the globe.


They have a simple demand: Government agencies should put as much of their
> data online as possible in a machine-readable format so that everyone can
> re-use it since they were paid for by taxes. This study analyses the current
> state of the open data policy ecosystem and open government data offerings
> in nine European  Member States. Since none of the countries studied
> currently offers a national open data portal, this study compares the
> statistics offices’ online data offerings. The analysis shows that they
> fulfill  a number of open data principles but that there is still a lot of
> room for improvement. This study underlines that the development of data
> catalogues and portals should not be seen as means to an end.
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