Public Sector Information in Europe
Jinfo Blog

12th August 2008

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Next month sees the end of the review of the European Directive on Public Sector Information (PSI) Re-use, whose consultation period ends mid-September. We’ve been aware for some time that such an initiative was underway in the UK, and it is helpful to see how the work is being pulled together at the European level under the auspices of ePSIplus http://www.epsiplus.net/. This organisation is a Thematic Network and is funded by the eContentplus programme http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/econtentplus/index_en.htm, which was founded in 2005 by the European Parliament and Council as ‘a multiannual Community programme to make digital content in Europe more accessible, usable and exploitable’. Digging beneath the Euro-speak, ePSIplus exists to provide a single point of access to knowledge about public sector information across the EU Member States. It also provides an opportunity for interested parties to debate the key issues. The type of information that is available on PSI re-use includes news, reports, legal cases, good practices and benchmarking on the legislative progress by means of a country scorecard. The ePSIplus network is made up of organisations and individuals from each of the European countries, from both the public and private sector. The UK is represented by the Digital Content Forum http://www.dcf.org.uk/ under the guidance of David Worlock, Chief Research Fellow, Outsell Inc http://www.outsellinc.com/. Other countries are represented by their Chambers of Commerce, Universities, civic associations, government ministries, publishers’ associations, and consultancies. A full list of country representatives can be found here: http://www.epsiplus.net/contacts/epsiplus_network_national_representatives. The scorecard mentioned above assesses the impact of the EU Directive 2003/98/EC (the European Directive on Public Sector Information Re-use). The UK, as a good corporate citizen, has scored 15 in the Legal Framework section. Our nearest rival for the crown is Ireland on 8, with the remainder of the European countries hovering around the 3 to 5 mark. The UK Office of Public Sector Information http://www.opsi.gov.uk/, has published the UK Government’s official response to the consultation, and includes the recently published Report on Re-use of Public Sector Information 2008, which we wrote about in last month’s VIP.

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