European Commission to Adopt Open Data Strategy

From the Open Knowledge Foundation Blog:

News in from the European Commission, which has announced that they will be adopting a new Open Data Strategy from the 29th November. The aims of the strategy are to increase government transparency, and hopefully generate overall economic gains of around €40 billion a year for the EU.
The strategy, first proposed in November 2010, will involve a modification of the existing Directive on the re-use of public sector information, and the deployment of measures such as a creation of open data portals at European level. Currently, the release of public sector information in the EU is governed by the 2003 Directive (2003/98/EC) on the re-use of public sector information. The Directive has undoubtedly helped improve harmonization across Europe, but there is much more work to be done in standardising rules around issues such as licensing and pricing, as well as promoting better practices across the Union. The persistent lack of interoperability, aned failure to make information available in machine-readable formats, are preventing the social and economic potential of public sector data from being realised, and according to the Commission fragmenting the markets for data-based products and services across the Union.

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