DIRECTIVE 2003/98/EC OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE

COUNCILof 17 November 2003

on the re-use of public sector information

(PSI directive)

Theory and practice

Zsolt Ződi, Chief Publishing officer, Complex Kiadó, Wolters Kluwer

The goal of the directive

• Public sector information is an important primary material for digital content products and services

• Wider possibilities of re-using public sector information should inter alia allow European companies to exploit its potential and contribute to economic growth and job creation.

The scope of directive I – branches of information

• The public sector collects, produces, reproduces and disseminates a wide range of information in many areas of activity, such as social, economic, geographical, weather, tourist, business, patent and educational information. (4)

• The information types that has the greatest importance: – legal (including official registers) – geographical – weather – statistical

The scope of directive II - the scope of obligation of the public

bodies• The Directive does not contain an

obligation to allow re-use of documents. • The Directive should apply to documents that

are made accessible for re-use when public sector bodies license, sell, disseminate, exchange or give out information.

• This means, that if they do so, they should follow the minimum standards

• This rule is so strict, that they should follow the rules, even if they themselves re-use them when not acting as a public body. („To avoid cross-subsidies, re-use should include further use of documents within the organisation itself for activities falling outside the scope of its public tasks”.)

The scope of directive III - Definition of document

• Very wide definition: covers any representation of acts, facts or information — and any compilation of such acts, facts or information — whatever its medium

• Can be database, picture, etc.

Anything, which is ‘CONTENT’

The scope of the directive IV Definition of public sector

• Established for general interest, not for profit making

• Having legal personality • Financed

– for the most part by the State, – or regional or local authorities, – or other bodies governed by public law;

• Subject to management supervision by those bodies; – or having an administrative, managerial or supervisory

board, more than half of whose members are appointed by the State, regional or local authorities or by other bodies governed by public law;

Exceptions (what is not falling under the directive’s scope)

• Computer programmes• If citizen should prove particular interest for the

access under the existing regulation• Personal data• Copyright protected info (Including protected

databases)• Info protected by National security • Statistical or commercial confidentiality • Documents that are generated via non public

activity • Documents held by public service broadcasters• Documents held by educational and research

institute’s, museums libraries, archives, theaters, etc.

Main rules of the Directive I• ‘General rule’: ‘the re-use of documents held by public sector bodies is

allowed, these documents shall be re-usable for commercial or non-commercial purposes’

• ‘Speed rule’: access should be given in reasonable time some information’s value

is depending on the ‘freshness’ (20 days) • ‘Format rule’ sw independent if possible, and extracts (14) – and (23) member

states should ensure and help re-users that they can find the document’

• ‘Cost-based charging rule’ Where charges are made, the total income should not exceed the

total costs of collecting, producing, reproducing and disseminating documents, together with a reasonable return on investment, having due regard to the self-financing requirements of the public sector body concerned, where applicable. – most problematic rule of the directive

Main rules of the Directive II

• ‘Published conditions rule’ publicly available rules and conditions are necessary • ‘Fair conditions rule’ in some cases there are conditions, like non alteration

or indication of source. This should be fair. • ‘Equal treatment rule’ homogeneous groups should be treated equally - see

also if the public body uses it for non public purposes (!)

• ‘No exclusivity rule’ only in exceptional cases (if there are no re-users and

the re-use is a public interest)

Problems in implementation• Public bodies extensively perform commercial activity They apply different rules to their own internal activity than to others• Revenues generated by this activity is built into their budget They ‘forced’ to go on, or even grow on this, sometimes on below cost price

prices. • Costs of the commercial activity is not fairly defined Cost calculation in business sense is not existing at public bodies. • Commercial use is different than ‘normal’ (i.e. compared with the

information request of a journalist), because – it is regular (what if legal rules are changing, and the body has to adjust

respectively the data) – aiming to big quantities – requiring specific, predefined, non-changing formats (see also point 1.) – Specific quality requirements

• Cultural issues ‘it is not fair that a private company is making money out of our information’• Corruption This endangers the ‘extra revenue’ of some civil servants• What if the number of requests is too high, or one is too difficult? • Clash with existing data protection and freedom of information regulations(i.e. in HU according to the Data Protection Act every public information is free

of charge. This is theoretically a favourable regulation than the PSI describes, but nobody takes it seriously.)