EU Committee Endorses Opening Up of Publicly-Funded Data
UPDATE: Here is an Official Statement from the EC (Includes Links to Additional Information)
When fully implemented, proposed new rules would:
- Create a genuine right to re-use public information, not present in the original 2003 Directive;
- [Our emphasis] Expand the reach of the Directive to include libraries, museums and archives;
- Establish that public sector bodies can charge at maximum the marginal cost for reproduction, provision and dissemination of the information. In exceptional cases, full cost recovery (plus a reasonable return on investment) will remain possible;
- Oblige public sector bodies to be more transparent about charging rules;
- Encourage the availability of data in open machine-readable formats
From an Article on Gigaom.com:
Member states of the European Union have endorsed new rules for opening up publicly-funded data to developers, businesses and citizens.
The 27 countries agreed on the rule change on Wednesday, according to the European Commission, which is behind the proposed revision of a 2003 directive on public sector information. If the European Parliament adds its stamp of approval, national governments will then transpose the changes into their laws sometime in the next 18 months or so.
Read the Complete Article
The European Commission is also hoping to extend the reach of the Directive to include libraries, museums and archives, so information from these institutions can be accessed for the first time.
But a civil liberties protection group warned that these plans come with dangers.
Nick Pickles, director of privacy and civil liberties campaign group Big Brother Watch, said: “Open data has huge potential, but it can equally have serious and wide-ranging unintended consequences. Whether it is used to re-identify supposedly anonymous data or added to existing datasets to better profile people, every dataset released needs to be properly scrutinised to ensure these risks are addressed.
Filed under: Archives and Special Collections, Data Files, Libraries, News
About Gary Price
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area. He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit. Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com. Gary is also the co-founder of infoDJ an innovation research consultancy supporting corporate product and business model teams with just-in-time fact and insight finding.
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