Nueva Directiva Europea de Reutilización de la Información del Sector Público

Recientemente el Comité de Representantes de los países miembro de la Unión Europea ha dado su visto bueno a la actualización de la Directiva de Reutilización de la Información del Sector Público. Aunque todavía habrá que esperar al trámite de su aprobación por el Parlamento Europeo en Junio, es de esperar que no se produzcan cambios ni retrasos significativos.

En general la nueva Directiva supone un avance respecto a la directiva anterior del 2003 y un nuevo paso adelante en la estrategia Open Data de la Unión Europea, destacando la intención general de la actualización:

“Una vez implementada la nueva Directiva establecerá un derecho legítimo sobre la reutilización de la información pública que no estaba presente en la Directiva del 2003” – Neelie Kroes, Vicepresidenta de la Unión Europea.

No obstante, tras un primer análisis inicial por parte de la comunidad parece que sigue también habiendo algunos puntos mejorables, por ejemplo:

  • Existe la posibilidad de cargar costes marginales en el tratamiento de los datos y mantener otros modelos adicionales de ingresos mediante tasas cuando sean de aplicación en casos concretos con normativas propias.
  • En general se permite la aplicación de cualquier tipo de tasas, siempre que se justifique y se aplique de forma transparente, ignorando los efectos negativos que la aplicación de tasas tiene sobre la reutilización o los beneficios indirectos adicionales que una mayor apertura de los datos puede proporcionar.
  • Los formatos abiertos y legibles por máquinas serán obligatorios, pero siempre que sea posible y apropiado. Un matiz que sin duda dará lugar a distintas interpretaciones que permitan saltarse la regla general.
  • Se mantienen los acuerdos exclusivos de explotación de los datos siempre que sean por el bien del interés público. Lo que en la práctica supone la posibilidad de perpetuar estos acuerdos.

En cualquier caso, también existen puntos muy positivos, como la garantía de que los documentos afectados por las libertad de información deben ser no únicamente accesibles, sino también reutilizables, las mejoras sustanciales en los mecanismos de reclamación para garantizar su independencia, la promoción de licencias únicas, automatizables y estándar para todos los organismos dentro de un mismo estado miembro o la ampliación de la directiva al ámbito cultural.

Por tanto, y aunque tengamos todavía un par de años de transposición por delante una vez aprobada por el Parlamento, en general la Directiva supone un nuevo avance del Open Data en la Agenda Digital Europea, y por tanto bienvenida sea. Estaremos pendientes también de cómo se lleva a cabo la transposición de la Directiva en el caso de España y el impacto que tendrá sobre la actual Ley de Reutilización del Sector Público.

The European Commission steps forward on Open Data and PSI re-use

As so often repeated these days, data is the new fuel for the digital age. Considering the wide spectrum of opportunities Open Data may bring, it is no surprise that the EC plans how to keep shaking up the way public authorities share data. The following lines aim to be an overview of the EC developments so far on Open Data and Public Sector Information, as well as a review of future planned actions.

Logo European Commission

A Landmark Event: Data Workshop at the Digital Agenda Assembly 2011

The EC organized the first Digital Agenda Assembly in June 2011 to discuss advances with regards to the Digital Agenda objectives for Europe. With that aim, twenty-four thematic workshops and two plenary sessions were conducted. One of those events was the Open data and Re-use of Public Sector Information workshop, where different types of stakeholders congregated to collaborate with the Commission on developing its strategy for Open Data in the EU.

Khalil Rouhana (DG Information Society and Media Content & Cognitive Systems of the European Commission) made several key announcements in relation to Open Data policies in the EU during that workshop. We will focus briefly on these in the forthcoming sections.

The role of European Open Data portals

Open Data portals are aimed to be a key referral of the digital infrastructure bound for facilitating access to and re-use of Public Sector Information. Open Data portals have been -and are being- created around many EU Member States at all governmental levels. Given that the quantity of data published so far is relatively limited as compared to that potentially available for publication, the EC plans to publish two new central Open Data portals to facilitate access to European Open Data:

data.gov.eu screenshoot

  • The European Commission Open Data portal data.gov.eu, a portal easing the search for Commission data, as well as other EU institutions, bodies and agencies to citizens and industry. The portal, currently under developement, is expected to be released soon in 2012.
  • Pan-European Open Data portal, to make data from EU, national, regional and local administrations more easily available and re-usable. A prototype is expected to be released in 2013.

Review of the Directive on the Re-use of Public Sector Information

First adopted on November 17, 2003 and by now completely transposed to all member States, this original PSI Directive provided a minimal harmonisation of rules and procedures across the EU in order to facilitate cross-border re-use of the PSI. A proposal for a revision of the Directive, which is currently being discussed by the Union legislator, was presented in December 2011 to further open up the market for services based on PSI by:

  • Including new bodies in the scope of application of the Directive such as libraries, museums and archives.
  • Determining limits on the fees that can be charged by the public authorities at marginal costs.
  • Introducing independent oversight re-use rules in the Member States.
  • Making standard machine-readable formats for information held by public authorities.

Other Meaningful Previous Steps

That first Open Data and PSI workshop was a landmark event both in Open Data and PSI policies in the EU as well as in the way that the EC communicates these policies and interacts with the different stakeholders. Nevertheless, several steps forward were also made by the EC on the Open Data and PSI matters before this first Digital Agenda Workshop, such as:

December 2011: The Communication on Open Data

Following the first Digital Agenda workshop, the Commission adopted a Communication on Open Data by December 2011. In this Communication, the Commission proposes several actions to accomplish the objectives previously announced in the aforementioned DAE workshop:

  • To create a portal site for Commission-held information aiming at an expansion to other EU institutions, bodies and agencies at a later stage.
  • To work with the Member States on data formats and interoperability between existing sites.
  • To create a Pan-European umbrella site linking information held by EU institutions, bodies and agencies and by Member States.

First Update: New Data Workshop at the Digital Agenda Assembly 2012

In June 2012, the Digital Agenda Assembly 2012 housed a new Data Workshop where the European Commission Open Data and PSI roadmap was presented again, mainly:

It is also remarkable to recall the European overall bet for data handling, Open Data and Open Access, not only by Open Data policies and a regulatory strand (PSI Directive), but also by means of research, innovation and ICT deployment pilots and portals implemented through financial support instruments such as the FP7 and CIP-ICT-PSP 2011-13 R&D&I multiple programmes, that are currently almost gone but will have continuity with the new Horizon 2020 programme.

Horizon 2020 logoSome of the questions that lead this Workshop where:

European Data license

There is a strong need to investigate requirements for an European Data License, given that if we want to encourage use and reuse of data across European borders, there may be the need for a single cross-border license. Several questions then arise: Will one of the existing licenses do the job, or do we need a new one? If we do need a license, is there an obvious choice, or is something new required?

Release of Core Data

A first-priority task will be to identify and evangelise Open release of Core Reference Data, given that European Member States have already huge quantities of valuable data. Some of this data is now becoming freely available in certain Member States, but too much of it remains locked up behind odd rules and unsustainable cost-recovery models. It is also difficult to compare data between Member States.

Future Steps

In addition to all the work in progress that has been previously mentioned, and as announced by the Vice President of the Commission Mme Neelie Kroes, the EC also plans to continue developing their European strategy for the publication and reuse of public sector data from European institutions and the Member States, as established with Commission’s commitment to turn public data into business included in action 3 of the Digital Agenda for Europe Communication.

Some highlights of the future planned distributed actions include:

Services for publication, access and reuse of EU Open Public Data

A series of services will be purchased aimed at supporting the EU-wide availability of PSI and Open Data from public bodies at different governmental levels. These services will include:

  • The provision of data preparation, transformation and publication services, with a commitment to publish at least 15.000 new data sets from all EU Member States in machine readable formats, including Linked Open Data technologies.
  • Training services in the area of Open Data, in particular to favour the uptake of Linked Open Data technologies by public bodies within the European Union.
  • Provision of an IT advisory and consultancy service in the area of Open Data, and in particular on Linked Open Data technologies, including specific software development tasks.

The Open Data Reuse Incubator

Financial support instruments will continue to support several Open Data developments, notably, the FP7-ICT Work programme 2013 will help Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) to develop innovative applications in structured and unstructured digital content management and, particularly, in the reuse of open data through an Open Data Incubator.

This Incubator will establish an environment to:

  • Solicit open data reuse ideas from the general public and conduct a European wide open data reuse information campaign.
  • Publish and manage regularly scheduled calls for SMEs to submit mini-proposals to be funded for a period between six and twelve months.
  • Create a computing infrastructure where the winning mini-proposals will find accurate and up-to-date versions of the data they need for their services.
  • Establish a mechanism for connecting open data demand and supply by systematically contacting European public bodies for their open data and assisting them in the efficient and sustainable publication of such data.

Harmonization of Open Data initiatives

In response to the increasing clamour in search of harmonising Open Data initiatives, the European Union is financing projects such as “Harmonising Open Data in the Mediterranean through better access and Reuse of Public Sector Information – Homer”, which aims mainly to set up an effective strategy able to harmonise Open data policy and portals across the Mediterranean area, supporting regional and local governments.Homer Logo

New paths for growth

As important as political, structural and educational efforts, uncovering new paths for growth, in which Open Data possibilities about a given topic are explored, is also critical in order for Open Data and PSI re-use to advance. Some Open Data and PSI topics that are currently being explored by the European Commission are:

  • Cultural Data: The EU’s digital libraries initiative sets out to make all Europe’s cultural and scientific resources accessible to all, and preserve them for future generations. In this area it should be pointed out that recent Europeana’s move to CC0 is a step change in open data access, given that releasing data from across EU country sets an important new international precedent and a decisive move away from the world of closed and controlled data.