Brussels, 12/12/2011 (Agence Europe) - On Monday 12 December, the Commission adopted a European strategy for the re-use of public sector information. The aim is to support the Union's economy to the tune of €40 billion a year. This strategy is arranged around three broad axes: first of all, the Commission will set the example by giving the public unfettered access to its information via a new portal; additionally, fair competition conditions will be established regarding open data across the EU; lastly, these new measures will benefit from funding of €100 million, which will go to fund research in the field of improved data management technologies in 2011-2013.
The Commission believes that these measures will promote the flourishing activity of transforming raw data into material needed by hundreds of millions of users of information and communication technologies (ICT), from smartphone applications such as cards, to real-time information on traffic or weather, price comparison tools, etc.
Basically, Commission is proposing to update the 2003 directive on the re-use of public sector information by: - making it a general rule that all documents made accessible by public bodies can be reused for commercial or non-commercial purposes, unless they are protected by a third-party copyright; - bringing in the principle that public bodies should not be able to charge more than cost generated by the request for data (marginal cost); in practice, this means that most of the data will be made available free of charge or very nearly, unless the price charged can be justified; - bringing in an obligation to provide data in a commonly-used and machine-readable format, in order to guarantee that the data can indeed be re-used; - bringing in regulatory surveillance to ensure that these principles are adhered to; - considerably extending the scope of application of the directive, to include libraries, museums and archives for the first time; the 2003 rules will apply to the data owned by these institutions.
Additionally, the Commission will make its own data available to the public by means of a new portal, for which it has just awarded a contract. The portal is currently in its development and testing phase and is set to be launched in spring 2012. It will serve as the single point of access to the re-usable data of all bodies, institutions and agencies of the EU and all national authorities. (OL/transl.fl)