the european psi directive (2003/98/ec) - homer project psi directive is undergoing a reviewing...

2 HOMER SOCIO - ECONOMIC IMPACT STUDY HOMER SOCIO - ECONOMIC IMPACT STUDY 3

ContentseXeCUtIVe sUMMARY 3tHe DIsCUssIon In A nUtsHeLL 4tHe LeGAL FRAMeWoRK 5 Current Scenario 5 The European PSI Directive (2003/98/EC) 5 Possible Future Scenario 6 The European PSI Directive Review 6PsI-ReLAteD IssUes 9 Rights Clearance: IP 9 Open Data Back-Office: Personal Data Protection 13 License Interoperability 15 The Pricing of Public Sector Information 21 Pricing as a strategic decision 21RoADMAP 25 An Open (Government) Data Roadmap 25 Best PRACtICes eXAMPLes 27 The Case of Piedmont 27 “Clarity” (Transparency Project) 28 Geodata.Gov.Gr 28 OKXE-INSPIRE 29 Open taxation Data 29AnneX I 30 Licensing State of the Art 30AnneX II 34 Open Data Legal Recommendations 34

eXeCUtIVe sUMMARYThis document intends to:

» Summarize the core issues discussed during the presentations of the HOMER Workshop held in Bologna, November 27th – 29th 2012.

» Examine the essential threads involved in the process of collecting, publishing and making Public Sector Information available and re-usable.

A preliminary section describes the current European Legal Framework regulating the re-use of Public Sector Information (Directive 2003/98/CE, commonly referred to as the “PSI Directive”) and modifications which are likely to be implemented as a result of the ongoing PSI Directive reviewing process.

Following that, the document focus on the main legal and economic aspects that the owner of a database should take into account when she is going to make her data available for re-use: investigating the existence of Intellectual Property rights on the data and the ownership of such rights; considering whether privacy issues may result from the publication of information contained within the dataset; choosing a default license for the database without preventing the legal possibility to merge the contents of the database with contents coming from other databases; pondering the pricing criteria not only in order to comply with the PSI Directive charging principle but also to make an effective choice from the economic standpoint.

A Roadmap provides some suggestions to help public administrations approaching the various steps required to make PSI available and re-usable, a Best Practice Example is also featured to better illustrate this.

Annex I defines the state of the art as to the datasets held by the HOMER participants and the licenses chosen to make them available.

Annex II contains some Legal recommendations with regard to the major aspects of making PSI available, such as building an ‘Open Data’ team; identifying a dataset; clearing the rights on the dataset; choosing the proper license to publish the dataset.


tHe DIsCUssIon In A nUtsHeLLAs illustrated below, four main issues should be tackled in order to make public data available in a freely re-usable fashion:

» Legal clearance – Q: Do I own all the Intellectual Property rights necessary to publish my dataset? What happens if any other subject have IP rights on the contents of my dataset? A: Public sector bodies must trace the story of the datasets they want to open, together with any sector specific relevant laws and regulations which may affect their publishing efforts.

» Personal data – Q: Does my dataset contain any personal data? How do I deal with the privacy and data protection rules? A: Both public sector bodies and PSI re-users must protect personal data in their circulation according to the Data Protection principles.

» Licensing – Q: Should I apply any condition or restriction to the re-use of my dataset? Could the license I want to apply make the mixing of contents from my dataset with contents from different datasets difficult or impossible? A: Since the goal is to create a broad framework, using CC0/CC BY would ensure interoperability.

» Pricing – Q: How much can I charge for the re-use of the contents of my dataset, according to the Public Sector Information Directive? Is it suitable to charge for re-use? A: No charges at all helps avoiding useless barriers for re-users. Should this be impossible, only marginal costs should be covered.

In addition to that, further suggestions by W3C could be also taken into account (but they are not to be handled before the basic steps):

» Be demand driven: evaluating and considering communities’ needs and specific demands;

» Put data in context: providing clear information about the data published, including links to projects already using it;

» support conversation about data: enabling users comment the datasets published and the strategy itself;

» Build capacity, skills and networks, also through ‘hands-on’ activities, ‘hackathons’ and the like;

» Collaborate on data as a common resource: promoting all kinds of public-private partnerships.

tHe LeGAL FRAMeWoRKCurrent Scenario

The European PSI Directive (2003/98/EC)

Directive 2003/98/EC (hereinafter, the “PSI Directive”) is the main EU legislative reference about Public Sector Information and its re-use.

The PSI Directive introduces a common legislative framework regulating how public sector bodies should make their information available for reuse in order to remove barriers such as discriminatory practices, monopoly markets and a lack of transparency.

The Directive, which is already adopted by the Member States, it is currently under review (revision is to be expected in 2013).

The full English text is available here: http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2003:345:0090:0096:EN:PDF

As portrayed in its Recital #25, the PSI Directive main objectives are: “(...) to facilitate the creation of Community-wide information products and services based on public sector documents, to enhance an effective cross-border use of public sector documents by private companies for added-value information products and services and to limit distortions of competition on the Community market (...)”.

The PSI Directive does not currently apply to:

» documents held by broadcasters for public service remits, LMAs, and other cultural and educational institutions;

» documents produced outside the scope of the public task of the public sector body;

» documents protected by the intellectual property rights of third parties;

» documents that are excluded under a Member State’s law, for reasons such as national security and commercial confidentiality.

In addition, the PSI Directive explicitly states its compliance with the EU legislation on data protection [Art. 1 (4)].

Along with other few key-definitions, the PSI Directive provides a description of its main recipient (i.e., Public sector Bodies) and subject-matter (i.e., Re-use):

» Public sector body: the State, regional or local authorities, bodies governed by public law and associations formed by one or several such authorities or one or several such bodies governed by public law. [Art. 2 (1; 2)]

» Re-use: “the use by persons or legal entities of documents held by public sector bodies, for commercial or non-commercial purposes other than the initial purpose within the public task for which the documents were produced”. [Art. 2 (4)]

http://coropinions.cor.europa.eu/coropiniondocument.aspx?language=EN&docnr=626&year=2012


The following core articles enucleate the basic principles of the PSI publishing and availability regime:

» Where documents held by public sector bodies are made accessible, those documents must be reusable either for commercial or non- commercial purposes [Art. 3, General Principle];

» When an application for PSI is made the Public sector body shall comply within 20 working days (other 20 working days are granted in case of extensive or complex requests) [Art. 4, Requests for reuse];

» Documents must be made available in their pre-existing format or language through electronic means when possible (this is not implying an obligation, though) [Art. 5, Formats];

» Where charges are made, the total income should not exceed the total costs of collecting, producing, reproducing and disseminating documents, also including a reasonable rate of return of the investment [Art. 6, Charging principles];

» On request, the public sector body shall indicate the calculation basis for the published charge (also for atypical cases) [Art. 7, Transparency];

» The adopted terms of re-use should not restrict competition; standard digital licenses are encouraged [Art. 8, Licenses];

» Practical arrangements to facilitate the search for documents available for reuse (e.g. open Data repositories) are encouraged [Art. 9, Practical arrangements];

» non-discriminatory conditions for comparable categories of re-use must be ensured (this applies also to PAs if re-use is commercial and outside the public task) [Art. 10, Non-discrimination];

» PSI holders avoid exclusive agreements between themselves and private partners to the greatest extent possible (except where a service of public interest could not be provided otherwise) [Art. 11, Prohibition of exclusive arrangements].

PossIBLe FUtURe sCenARIo

The European PSI Directive Review

The PSI Directive is undergoing a reviewing process and it is currently being discussed by the Union legislator composed of the European Parliament and the Council.

Timeline:

» By the end of 2011 the European Commission delivered its proposal for a review of the PSI Directive;

» In March 2012 the Danish Presidency of the Council prepared a new compromise;

» The plenary voting of the European Parliament is expected in the early 2013;

» Member states will have to implement the Directive by 18 months from the final approval.

The following modifications are likely to be implemented in the reviewed version of the Directive:

Artt. 1 & 3: (New) General principleA stronger link between accessibility & re-use is established: the Directive applies to “generally accessible documents”. This category of documents is explicitly defined in the Danish Presidency compromise (i.e. access does not require the demonstration of any specific individual interest) and these documents shall be re-usable for commercial or non-commercial purposes

(whereas the current [former] principle basically says: “if it is re-usable, it has to be re-usable under the Directive conditions”)

Art. 1: Scope: Libraries Museums ArchivesThe Directive would apply to documents held by libraries, museums and archives while these categories of public sector bodies still benefit from much more flexible rules.A weaker link between access and re-use is established: “where the re-use of documents is allowed, these documents shall be re-usable”Also, more freedom in pricing is guaranteed (see infra, Art. 6)

Art. 4: PSI (independent) authorityAs the proposed article says: “The means of redress shall include the possibility of review by an independent authority that is vested with specific regulatory powers regarding the re-use of public sector information and whose decisions are binding upon the public sector body concerned”.A possible compromise may be to consider the adoption of an “impartial body”, rather than a (new) “independent authority”

Art. 5: Digital → Machine-readableInstead of just encouraging the making available of PSI “through electronic means”, where possible and appropriate, documents will be made available “in machine-readable format and together with their metadata”. (‘machine-readable’ means that digital documents are sufficiently structured for software applications to identify reliably individual statements of fact and their internal structure)

Art. 6: ChargesCharges will be limited to the marginal cost of reproduction and dissemination. In exceptional cases, “where public sector bodies generate a substantial part of their operating costs from the exploitation of data”, a higher price is allowed [an alternative proposal defines the exception when public sector bodies “are required to generate revenue to cover a substantial part of their costs”]. Those categories are allowed to charge more, provided that this is in the public interest and subject to the approval of the independent authority.Libraries, museums and archives, instead, may charge over and above the marginal costs (without further approval).In any case, no monopolistic profits are permitted (just like the current [former] rule). The burden of proof that charges comply with Article 6 shall lie with the public sector body which is charging for re-use.

Art. 9: Practical arrangements: SearchAs the proposed article says: “Member States shall ensure that practical arrangements facilitating the cross-lingual search for documents available for re-use are in place, such as asset lists of main documents with relevant metadata, accessible preferably online and in machine-readable format, and portal sites that are linked to decentralised asset lists”

Article 11: Prohibition of exclusive arrangementsThe Danish Presidency compromise (which seems to gather significant support in this domain) provides that: “where an exclusive right relates to preferential commercial exploitation necessary to digitise cultural resources, the period of such preferential exploitation shall not exceed in principle 7 years and need not be subject to review”;“the exclusive arrangements established after the entry into force of this Directive shall be transparent and made public”.


Further readings:Critical survey from the Open Rights Group:http://www.openrightsgroup.org/ourwork/reports/analysis-of-proposed-changes-to-the-eu-psi-directive

About the state of the review process within the European Parliament:http://epsiplatform.eu/content/128-amendments-psi-directive-european-parliament

Opinion of the Committee of the Regions:http://coropinions.cor.europa.eu/coropiniondocument.aspx?language=EN&docnr=626&year=2012

PSI Directive Review procedural file:http://www.europarl.europa.eu/oeil/popups/ficheprocedure.do?reference=2011/0430(COD)&lg=en

PsI-ReLAteD IssUesRights Clearance: IPPossible constraints may arise due to pre-existing rights held by third parties or other legal restriction on the data you want to publish. Those rights and restrictions includes:

» IPRs;• Copyright;• Database sui generis right;

» Other statutory constraints;• Privacy and secrecy restrictions.

The legal protection of databases is established by the EC Directive 1996/9. This Directive protects collections of works, data or other materials. More precisely, protection is given to texts, sound, images, numbers, facts, and data (Recital #17) which are:

» independent the ones from the others;

» methodologically arranged;

» individually accessible.

Copyright protection:Copyright protection is granted to “databases which, by reason of the selection or arrangement of their contents, constitute the author’s own intellectual creation”.Copyright protection “shall not extend to their contents and shall be without prejudice to any rights subsisting in those contents themselves”.the structure/architecture of the database is protected from unauthorised reproduction, distribution, communication, alteration.

Sui generis right protection:Sui generis right protection is granted to the maker of a database which shows that there has been qualitatively and/or quantitatively a substantial investment in either the obtaining, verification or presentation of the data.The protection is on the content of the database and covers the extraction and/or re-utilization of the whole or of a substantial part, evaluated qualitatively and/or quantitatively.The maker is the natural or legal person who organised, coordinated, and financed the technical and scientific contributions.

The sui generis right is conferred for 15 years from:

» the completion;

» or the making available to the public;

» or any alteration or substantial change requiring a substantial investment.

http://www.openrightsgroup.org/ourwork/reports/analysis-of-proposed-changes-to-the-eu-psi-directive

http://epsiplatform.eu/content/128-amendments-psi-directive-european-parliament

http://coropinions.cor.europa.eu/coropiniondocument.aspx?language=EN&docnr=626&year=2012

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/oeil/popups/ficheprocedure.do?reference=2011/0430(COD)&lg=en


Who is the right holder? Copyright: the physical person creating a work is the author (even if she/he is an employee). Usually, economic rights go to the employer/commissioner by employment or other contract. Written form is required to prove the transfer of rights.

Database sui generis right: the maker is the natural or legal person sustaining the substantial investment.

Collecting relevant information on the data which are going to be released is crucial in order to avoid, to the greatest extent possible, any infringement of third parties’ rights on such data. Ideally, one should interact with the data holders to gather the story and the genesis of the datasets that have been selected to be opened together with any sector specific relevant laws and regulations which may affect hers publishing efforts.

To find who the right-holders is, one may need to:

» examine relevant contracts and/or agreements;

» contact third parties and/or employees.

OKFN view on Open (Gov.) Data

What does “Open” mean?

Incidentally, what do we mean by “Open”? A definition is provided by the Open Definition(http://opendefinition.org/okd/):Open data is data that can be freely used, reused and redistributed by anyone - subject only, at most, to the requirement to attribute and share-alike

Access alone is not enough!Re-use just for some purposes is not enough;Re-use just for some categories of people is not enough.

Traditional view on personal data (No Open Data/Personal data interpenetration)

The actual scenario (Open Data/Personal data interpenetration)

asdaSDExample: VoglioIlRuolo------------------------------------>

http://opendefinition.org/okd/


VoglioIlRuolo: “intelligence” on your ranking to become a “tenured” high school teacher

VoglioIlRuolo provides the example of a PSI-based service which is located in the very intersection that lies between the Open Data, Personal Data and PSI areas (see above; the actual scenario).

Data protection

Special care should be taken in detecting the presence of personal data within the dataset, thus assessing the basis for their collection and treatment (laws and regulations; privacy notices).

When PSI involves personal data, the critical point typically consists in the tension between serendipitous re-use of PSI on the one side and compatibility with the original purpose of data collection on the other.

Open Data Back-Office: Personal Data Protection

Many datasets from PSI include personal data, e.g. commercial registers, vehicles registrations, land registers, case law data bases, European patent office, socioeconomic data, etc...

» Personal Data: is any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person [Directive 95/46/EC, Art. 2 ( a)]

» Sensitive Data: are data revealing racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade-union membership, and processing of data concerning health or sex life [Directive 95/46/EC, Art. 8] → No Open Data allowed.

» Open Personal Data: are personal data that could be reused for purposes others to the original ones, but in a way that respect data protection laws → Directive 2003/98/EC + Directive 95/46/EC.

Data Protection Principles:

Both the public body who is the first data controller and the re-user (who become the new controller) should respect the data protection principles (Directive 95/46/EC, Art. 6):

» Finality;

» Proportionality,

» Data quality;

» Necessity.

Data Protection Rules – Rights & Duties:

Both of them should also respect the obligations for the processing:

» Legitimacy of personal data processing: consent, performance of a contract, compliance with a legal obligation of the controller, vital interest of the data subject, performance of a task carried out in the public interest, legitimate interests pursued by the controller (Directive 95/46/EC, Art. 7);

» Duty to adopt technical and organizational measures for confidentiality and security of processing;

» Prior notification to the DPA (Directive 95/46/EC, Art. 18);

» Respect of the data subjects’ rights: information, access, rectification, erasure, blocking, right to object.


Recommendations on personal data treatment:

» Case by case Approach: Working Party Art. 29 recommended to adopt a case by case approach which implies different solutions for different kinds of data and for different purposes (Opinion 7/2003, wp 83);

» Proactive Approach: EDPS stated that “it is crucial that public sector bodies take a proactive approach when making personal data available with the explicit purpose of reuse, subject to specific conditions and safeguards in compliance with data protection rules”. This “requires that the scope for a public disclosure of personal data is analysed proactively and at the earliest stage, and that the persons involved are informed accordingly so as to allow them to exercise their rights” (EDPS Opinion on the Open Data Package, 18 April 2012).

Anonymisation by default:

» Art. 29 Working Party recommends the use of anonymisation techniques for the re-use of personal data collected by public bodies (Opinion 7/2003 wp83);

» EDPS recommends anonymisation as a default rule; different levels of anonymisation (with respect to the context: nature of the data, the purpose of the processing and the potential risks for individuals); the possibility for PSBs to be compensated for costs of anonymisation (EDPS Opinion on the Open Data Package).

Recommended Tools:Guidelines & Codes of conduct for opening personal data from PSI, with particular attention to the nature of the data and the purpose of the re-use processing (both for public sector bodies and re-users);Privacy by Design & PETs measures: both public sector bodies and re-users have to adopt technical and organizational measures for confidentiality and security of processing (Directive 95/46/EC, Art. 17)Privacy Impact Assessment: the PIA must ensure adequate legal basis under national laws; the re-use is available only for a compatible purpose; re-users are required to comply with all data protection laws; other additional safeguards (anonymisation, security measures, etc..) (EDPS, Opinion on the Open Data Package)

In conclusion:

» Open personal data have to be protected in their circulation according to Data Protection Legislation and Principles, both from public sector bodies and PSI re-users;

» DPAs Recommendations include the adoption of: • a proactive approach by the Data Providers and a case by case approach related to the nature of data;• technological tools and soft law measures

License Interoperability

ForewordAs long as a public sector body makes its (relevant) data available online in machine readable format and with a license allowing for commercial re-use, it should have the blessing of reasonable open data re-users(but you can always do better!)

Legal interoperability:It could be described as the possibility of (legally) mixing data coming from different sources (e.g. government data, UGC, corporate data) and using them within a broad range of projects and business (and community) models.The ultimate goal is to mix data, re-use them in unexpected ways, be able to experiment and be quick and (legally) certain.Legal interoperability is not just a matter of theoretical possibilities: people (and software developers in particular) need to be sure about legal interoperability without asking their lawyers (and, ideally, without reading too many licenses – and, ideally, almost without reading any license, because search engines and pieces of software can assist them).Since we don’t want people to read many licenses, someone may ask whether no-license-at-all could be a good license...

The Legal Background:The current “copyright” default rule states “all rights reserved” (“copyright” being adopted here in a broad sense: ≈ droit d’auteur & including sui generis database right, etc.). Therefore, without a clear statement the result is: locked data or legal uncertainty.Open data do require an open “license” (including dedications, waivers or notices – e.g., CC0 or the PublicDomainMark).So, to avoid prohibitive transaction costs, we have to deal with “copyright licenses”:

» “copyright”: copyright-like rights

» “license”: statements/notices with legal meaning

The EC Commission continues to argue that no license is a potentially good option;Theoretically, it may be the case (in certain countries or for certain PSB), but we want a clear perception of perfect legal interoperability, so this is not helping. Anyway, if you want to go this way, do as the US did with Federal PSI: put it in the public domain by law! (but this may not be an option at the local level)


(Data) Licensing Landscape:

» (FLOSS licenses used for data)

» Creative Commons Licenses• standard general purpose CC licenses

* BY; (SA); [NC]; {ND}* 3.0 EU licenses (waiving sui generis database right)* CC0 waiver (with fallback clauses → broad license)* Public Domain Mark (notice of PD status)

used by/ (developed with Europeana)

» Open Data Commons Licenses• for (open) data only

* PD dedication (with license fallback), BY or SA (first to be produced, targeting communities)

» National (open government) data licenses:• UK: OGL (BY +)• France: License Ouverte (BY +)• Italy: IODL (beta version: BY-SA-NC +; 1.0: BY-SA +; 2.0: BY +)• ...

The “+”s – National Licenses & Standard Worries:UK OGL, Italian Open Data License (IODL), etc. share the following requirements:

» ensure [or “take all reasonable steps so”] that you do not use the Information in a way that suggests any official status...

» ensure that you do not mislead others or misrepresent the Information or its source...

» ensure that your use of the Information does not breach the Data Protection Act...No Derivatives? No way!In the context of PSI re-use is does not make sense to use a No Derivatives clause.If you are worried about misrepresentation/misuse or the like, several (permissive) national licenses include specific clauses addressing these issues. Also, standard public licenses include attribution clauses that may alleviate this problem including express disclaimers which must be retained because of the attribution clause (e.g., a licensor may specify in the disclaimer that the original, unmodified version of the data is available at [URI]).Non-Commercial Reminder:(luckily) this is an “endangered clause” in the PSI domain. Yet, the NC debate characterizes the first phases of most “re-use friendly” initiatives. De facto, the NC licenses are only compatible with other NC licenses.Always remind (to your institution) some basic things:

» Non-Commercial implies no (standard) business models;

» Non-Commercial also leads to no (open) communities (re-using data licensed under a NC clause it is impossible for non-profit groups, including Wikimedia/Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, etc.);

Oversimplifying: Non-Commercial → NO Wikipedia (Dbpedia) & NO Open Street MapA view on license interoperability complexity:Preliminary attempt:

» given the original license (on the lines)

» can I use a given standard license (on the columns) for a “derivative” work/database?

Zooming on license interoperability complexity


» Universal donors:

» Creative Commons Zero (CC0);

» Public Domain Dedication or License (PDDL);

» Tagging of public domain content with the PDMark.

Do we have universal receivers?Strictly speaking, no (rectius: keeping the data within your firm’s secret datacenter).Amongst open licenses, CC BY-SA is arguably the best candidate: it could safely be used to publish derivative works of any Public Domain or Attribution waiver/license and considering the amount of available data is the first candidate for any “interoperability clause” in other SA licenses (GNU FDL (temporary) interoperabilty; IODL 1.0)The forthcoming 4.0 version of CC license should address open issues such as the suitability of CC licenses to manage the sui generis database right.

Share Alike: Handle with care!Share Alike (or “viral” or “copyleft”) clauses create chains of derivative works/DB which are only compatible with themselves. This is like a licensing black hole: it could work - as the GNU GPL is doing in the open source software domain - but you would need “one license to rule them all”. In this sense, the most widespread SA license could become a “universal receiver”: e.g., Italian IODL 1.0 is compatible “toward” CC BY-SA and ODC ODbL, but this is a “one way” road (e.g. from IODL 1.0 to CC BY-SA but not vice versa).

Various approaches to interoperability as adopted in some Open Licenses:OGL FAQs: “information can be mixed and re-purposed easily with other license models requiring attribution in that the terms of the Open Government License should not present any barriers”;LO: interoperability clause in the main text;IODL 1.0 (SA): interoperability clause in the main text;IODL 2.0 (BY): OGL-like solution (FAQs).

Two best practices:The New Zealand Government Open Access and Licensing (NZGOAL) framework states: “NZGOAL seeks to standardise the licensing of government copyright works for re-use using Creative Commons [Attribution] New Zealand law licenses and recommends the use of ‘no-known rights’ statements for non-copyright material”.The French LO adopts an interesting solution about several national “standard worries”: the section “About the Open License” at the end of the document provides a description of relevant “facts” (instead of clauses). That “re-use is subject to compliance with French privacy protection legislation” is one of these facts.This would be a perfect solution, if only the list of facts was clearly outside of the copyright license (and within a broader framework).

Missed opportunities:The internal market is witnessing more and more Member States creating their own national license: this may cause (small) attrition in the re-use mechanism, especially for cross-border re-use.The UK led by example (maybe in the wrong direction?) by accident, since they wanted to use CC licenses but they did not find an answer for some “European” needs (e.g. licensing the sui generis database right).

Some implications: » Beware of license vanity: think twice before creating your own license!

» Work to merge share-alike licenses (or make them compatible): don’t create new ones!

» You may facilitate copyright interoperability if you address non-copyright worries with other tools:• standard copyright licenses do not cover non-copyright aspects (e.g., privacy, publicity, trademarks, cultural heritage protection laws)

* notices or non-copyright licenses satisfying any taste (e.g., privacy notices);* soft law could substitute several disclaimers

» If you advise a (public sector) information holder:• don’t produce a custom license, but a custom licensing framework;

* one page making reference to a standard copyright license (e.g., reproducing the CC Commons Deed) may be enough.

Conclusion (just to be sure):Those who really want to create their own “local” copyright license, should at least make sure to use a simple “Attribution” license, with a “Reasonable Attribution” clause avoiding the “stacking” issue (and maybe explicit statements of compatibility with most standard public licenses).

Laurence Millar’ RecipeYou can succeed with 3 out of the 4 following factors:

» Leadership:• also/mainly political;

» Crisis:• financial/budget crisis as “internal” pressure;

» Heroes (within the government/administration):• people betting their reputation on this process;

» Pressure from civil society.


Legal Interoperability in one slide:

tHe PRICInG oF PUBLIC seCtoR InFoRMAtIonEconomic nature of PSI:Three assumptions, to begin with:

» PSI holds recurrent features of digital information goods (also encompassing further characteristics);

» the inherent features of a good should be kept separated from the attributes of its supply (licensing, pricing, etc.);

» Ultimately, the decision agent is the Government (or the PSI holder itself).PSI in the digital environment is non-rival in consumption (both in the access and re-use phases) and hardly excludable (and with ex-ante and ex-post costs).

In some cases, it may be an experience good.PSI could be conceived as (potentially) an impure public good. What matters is whether and how PSI is made available for reuse.

Currently, PSI is made available as: a public good (Open Data platforms); a club good (Firm registries; only a few players corresponding a fee can actually re-use PSI de jure); ‘something in between’ (e.g., see the case of Denmark addresses, explained afterwards).

Demand-side, strong network effects have been noticed: the value of a dataset increases the more it is linked or combined with other datasets (think of Linked Open Data).

Also, PSI behaves as ‘basic input’, as centralized knowledge to be combined with local knowledge (e.g., the ‘Apps4Italy’ contest: around 50 of the ideas that applied for the contest could not be implemented without PSI).

Example #1:Danish enterprise and Construction Authority (DECA)The DECA is responsible for road names and addresses in Denmark (key input for essential services). It switched to a free-of-charge policy in 2002, thanks to an agreement with local agencies.

The cost of the agreement was estimated in 2 million EUR (including revenues foregone); the measured benefits (less duplication, savings for re-users): were estimated in more or less 62 million EUR (again, not considering positive externalities downstream).

Pricing as a strategic decisionWhat can a PSI holder do? [from the Law perspective]The PSI Directive states: “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” [Art. 6].Which means, more or less, “anything”; this is why the proposal of amendment explicitly adopted marginal cost as the default rule.What can a PSI holder do? [from the economics perspective]Three main strategies can be adopted:

» Marginal cost pricing (more or less 0, in case of digital goods);

» Recouping average costs;

» Extracting a profit


Marginal cost pricing (or even zero charge) is socially optimal if: a) the positive externalities given by ‘zero’ charges make the increase in consumers’ welfare overcome government funding (the latter being then justified); b) the available financial resources actually allow government funding; c) lower (‘zero’) charges foster an increase in the demand volume.

Financial autonomy ↓

» Marginal cost pricing (more or less 0, in case of digital goods);

» Recouping average costs;

» Extracting a profit

↑ Social value

Marginal cost pricing

Main supporting arguments

Maximization of the dissemination level of PSI, with related (upstream and downstream) positive externalities.Increased allocative efficiency (benchmark: perfectly competitive markets, where marginal revenues equal marginal costs).Determining the market value of single PSI sets is frequently difficult, especially considering that the value is increased where several sources of information are mixed.

Critical pointsNeed of a public subsidy in order to sustain the process.In case of non ‘sole-source’ repositories, marginal cost pricing by the public holder can be considered as predatory/anticompetitive.

Current fields of adoption open Government Data initiatives by local/national governments.

Recouping average costs (+ markup)

Main supporting arguments

Selection mechanisms allowing to identify third parties with higher expected returns from PSI reuse (therefore with higher willingness to pay).

Increased financial autonomy for the PSI holder.

Incentives in defining appropriate and sustainable terms of service.

Critical points

Being part (or incidental to) the public task, creation and maintaining of PSI datasets are already funded through general taxation.Applying charges above marginal costs may entail the exclusion of re-users holding low willingness to pay, even with socially valuable prospects of reuse (e.g., in the case of not-for-profit reuse aimed at increased transparency of the public sector).Incentives for PSI holders to over-invest in PSI management and production.Double-marginalization on end-users.

Current fields of adoption National registries managed by public organisms with the task to maintain them by generating revenue flows (e.g. business registries).

Example #2:spanish Cadastral AgencyActivity dimensions: 32 million urban properties, 42 million rural parcels and 23,5 cadastral owners. It switched to a free-of-charge policy in 2010 (plus an open approach also towards commercial re-use).Again, free of charge regime entailed net savings (not considering positive externalities from re-use).Further benefits: feedbacks from re-users.Upstream features (costs)Peculiar cost structure: not only marginal costs of reproduction tend to zero but, more importantly, fixed costs (collection, management, etc.) are already covered. Therefore, we do not have to find an efficient way to fund the creation of PSI as ancillary/incidental good and PSI is – almost – available for reuse.

Usual (first) steps by a PSIH to make PSI available for reuse

Activity Main cost item

1) Setting the stageInternal coordinationInternal educationDefinition of guidelines

2) Opening a few datasets Small technical costs (usually datasets that do not require any manipulation)

3) Opening more 'critical' datasets Anonymisation (where needed)Meaningful metadatation (where needed)

Open + free: main tasks and costs

task Internal resources Direct costsCoordination

FTE Allocation (men-months)

Internal training (External assignements)Definition / adoption of terms of use and licensing schemes (legal clearance)

(External assignements)

Extraction of datasets from legacy databases and manipulation

(External assignements)

Web publishing and management(External assignements)(Software licences)(Cloud Services)

Foregone revenues

Cost structure:Fixed costs are to be taken for granted.To make PSI actually available for reuse: empirically, internal coordination costs represent the most relevant item (this is the ‘fixed part’ of the supply costs); strong economies of scale emerge; efficiency curve effects.


A possible (welfare) approach (cfr. Houghton)

Pricing of PSI Study (EC, 2011)In the cases where PSBs moved to marginal and zero cost charging or cost-recovery that is limited to re-use facilitation costs only, the number of re-users increased by between 1,000% and 10,000% (http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/policy/psi/docs/pdfs/report/11_2012/summary.pdf)

Example #3:Geographic Information System - Regione PiemontePeriodically updating its datasets entails significant costs. Prior to the approval of new Guidelines (2010), geographic data were charged according to a price list: the annual revenues (more or less 30k EUR; low demand) were higher than the costs to actually perform the transaction; i.e., 1 FTE + billing costs (more or less 50k EUR).Free of charge regime entailed net savings (not considering more efficient internal allocation)

Final remarks:(answers for which a free-of-charge policy is socially optimal; otherwise, other options are to be explored)

» Have you been extracting direct profits (or partially funding your activities) through PSI so far? [n]

» Is the economic value of your datasets (as stand-alone pieces of information) significant? [n]

» Is the overall value of your datasets (if mixed with others) potentially significant? [Y]

» Are transaction costs higher than expected revenues? [Y]

» Does the publication of Open Data entail relevant costs? [n]

RoADMAPAn Open (Government) Data RoadmapThis section aims at providing some basic information supporting public sector bodies in the process of releasing their datasets as open data.

The legal framework:The European legal framework summarized in this document (together with its national implementation) should be a sufficient starting point to publish (most of) the data of your institutions as open data. That said, having some guidelines or regulations within your own public sector body may be useful (but this could also be done at a later stage, taking advantage of the first pilot cases, in which you opened the data just on the basis of the standard European and national laws).In any case, a first fundamental step consists in understanding who is entitled to license the data. Typically the local government and/or some high ranking public managers can do (or delegate) that licensing activity. In case of doubt, it is appropriate to start the process with some kind of bylaw from the local government identifying the public official who can take licensing decisions.

How? (and how much does it cost?):In principle, you can start opening up the data without a dedicated budget; of course you need from the very beginning is possessing the proper skills to build a team or cooperate with the civil society.More ambitious/faster projects are frequently related with the process of digitization and/or ICT improvement of the PA: funded European projects are a good occasion to sustain the creation of a dedicated platform or the cost of setting up complex processes for some databases (e.g., databases also including personal data).

The Open Team:First you should identify the various tasks and skills involved in the process; secondly you should identify the appropriate resources (people, offices) who can take care of each tasks thanks to their skills. You need somebody with

» leadership: either political leadership or leadership within the bureaucracy. Since technical expertise is mandatory for the process as a whole, the ICT division frequently acts as the leading unit or the coordinator (e.g., see Italian experience);

» knowledge about the data: this particular expertise usually belongs to those subjects who manages the data and/or liaise with and keep the various contacts within the administration;

» legal skills (IP; Data Protection; Administrative Law): due to the legal nature of (most of) the issues involved, this specific skill is also mandatory. The legal unit within the P.A. or the legal specialist of the project is obviously the resource who should possess such skills;

» technical skills or contacts: maybe you can exploit some already existing ‘in house’ resources, otherwise you will have to get in touch with some external experts. Either way technical skills are necessary to put the Open Data process into practice (as explained above);

» communication skills and contacts outside of the administration: you may want to rely on someone able to disseminate your achievements and tell people about your initiatives. Also involving somebody capable to interact with developers, firms, communities and civil society could be really useful.

As you can see, because of the multi-faceted tasks and skills required to cover the various threads involved with the process of opening the datasets, several different people may actually be needed.

http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/policy/psi/docs/pdfs/report/11_2012/summary.pdf


Atentative roadmap: » Identify a specific database:

• it is crucial to start any attempt to open up data from a specific database: talking about classes of data in abstract terms leaves too many degrees of freedom; starting from a concrete case helps figuring out the correct questions and their potential answers;• if you are kick-starting an open data process, you should probably start from “easy” cases:

* you may start from data which are already available online and simply make them mere accessible (e.g., for download in machine-readable formats) and associate them to an open license;* you may start from databases managed by people who are already sympathetic with the open data approach;

» Identify existing rights and clear them:• copyright and/or database sui generis right may limit you freedom to open the data: be sure that the right-holder is your own public administration or be sure to acquire all the rights needed to re-license the dataset as you see fit;• if it is too difficult or costly, start with another database;

» Apply an open license;• despite what you may think, this is the easy part, assuming that your public sector body is the right-holder:

* the Homer partners decided that their definition of see “Open Data” should be in line with the Open Knowledge Definition (http://opendefinition.org/): “A piece of data or content is open if anyone is free to use, reuse, and redistribute it — subject only, at most, to the requirement to attribute and/or share- alike.”

♦ unless you strongly feel differently (and are ready to justify your choice), choose a standard open data license, without imposing unnecessary constraints (e.g., share-alike) and without using local or national license, if an international one can achieve the same goals: e.g., Creative Commons Zero (CC0) or Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 2.5 or 3.0);

* if this is the first time you publish some data as open data, you may need to identify the public official who is entitled to formally choose and apply a license to the data (and the kind of formal document which should be used to ratify such decision);

» Make data available online:• APIs and web services are nice, but only as long as the bulk download is available: in fact, may people like to be able to tinker with the data on their own machine;

» Make data discoverable:• using standard tools/APIs/metadata helps;• the federation of portals can help.

Best practices: » Keep things simple (at least at the beginning):

• don’t care too much about who could care (at the beginning);

» Give frequent releases/updates:• learn by doing and keep people interested;• try to share some expected milestones (with deadlines);

» Get people involved:• both within and outside of the administration;• most of the time, “reluctant” people are just people you did not involve early enough in the process;

» Lead by example:• start opening up the data of your own division/directorate.

BEST PRACTICES EXAMPLES

The Case of PiedmontThe Open Data Ecosystem in Piedmont:Piedmont built its experience in the field of Open Data around three major factors, which are connected each other:

» Good control of PSI;

» Multidisciplinary competences;

» Links with firms and innovators.

Good control on PSI (both from the technical & legal point of view): CSI Piemonte (http://www.csipiemonte.it/en/) manages lots of the regional and local open datasets in Piedmont. Being in charge of processing most of the information makes it easier to deal with certain problems (e.g., interoperability and standardization matters; establishing contacts with the various data owners); such intermediary position, plus its expertise both in the technical and legal field, helps creating a solid and steady control over the PSI assets.

Multidisciplinary competences: The Nexa Center for Internet & Society (www.nexa.polito.it) studies Open Data from a multidisciplinary angle which includes law, economic and technical perspectives; thanks to its expertise, the Center helped supporting some open data initiatives in Piedmont, as the Open Data Portal (http://www.dati.piemonte.it/) and the draft of the regional Open data Law and Guidelines. Research centers may be useful partners also because of their contacts with other academic institutions and stakeholders which may bring additional competences with them. For instance, Nexa coordinates the group of work of Creative Commons Italy (http://www.creativecommons.it/); it also coordinated the LAPSI Thematic Network on legal aspects of PSI (www.lapsi-project.eu: the network put together twenty international partners among academics and stakeholders) and took part in the EVPSI Research Project on PSI (www.evpsi.org: whose other partners were the University of Turin, the University of Eastern Piedmont and Fondazione Rosselli, a private research foundation).

Links with firms and innovators: another important actor of the Open Data Ecosystem is represented by firms and innovators. Not only these subjects can play an active role in the definition and implementation of Open Data initiatives (for instance, acting as consultants or external experts), but they also very often represent the forefront of PSI re-users. Among such players, Top-IX (http://www.top-ix.org/en/) and CSP (http://www.csp.it/chi-siamo/?lang=en) specifically devote part of their activities supporting the Piedmontese Open Data framework.

To Accompany this Open Data ‘ecosystem’, Piedmont provided itself with specific Open Data norms and Guidelines

http://opendefinition.org/

http://www.csipiemonte.it/en/

http://www.csipiemonte.it/en/

http://www.nexa.polito.it/

http://www.dati.piemonte.it/

http://www.creativecommons.it/

http://www.creativecommons.it/

http://www.lapsi-project.eu/

http://www.lapsi-project.eu/

http://www.evpsi.org/

http://www.evpsi.org/

http://www.top-ix.org/en/

http://www.csp.it/chi-siamo/?lang=en

http://www.csp.it/chi-siamo/?lang=en


Open Data Guidelines:To better specify the norms contained within the Regional Open Data Law, specific Guidelines were developed (Deliberazione della Giunta Regionale 8 ottobre 2012, n. 22-4687). Particularly, those guidelines describe the licensing process and the redress procedure; among their key-points on licensing:

» CC0 should be adopted as the default solution: direct application of CC0 to all datasets already available online;

» Anyway, opt for flexible guidelines:• if you deviate from the default rule, they just ask you to explain why;

* CC BY as only applied exception (1.5 years): e.g., when effort in making dataset was significant.

(New) Open Data Law:The Piedmontese Regional Open Data Law (Legge regionale 23 dicembre 2011, n. 24) establishes a set of legal provisions regarding the publication and re-use of the regional administration documents and public data:

» Conceiving Open Data as “right of citizens” instead of “gift from the administration”;

» Implementing most of the (expected) forthcoming PSI Directive review;

» Establishing a formal procedure to request new data (e.g., identifying responsibility and timing; lodging a complaint);

» Stimulating the ongoing process of taking into account open data in the variable salary of public managers.

“Cl@rity” (Transparency Project)

Beginning October 1st 2010, all Ministries are obliged to upload their decisions on the Internet, through the «Cl@rity» program. Cl@rity is one of the major transparency initiatives of the Ministry of the Interior, Decentralization and e-Government. Henceforth, the decisions of the public entities can not be implemented if they are not uploaded on the Clarity websites, each document is digitally signed and assigned a transaction unique number automatically by the system.

The transparency project in Greece provides also an open data infrastructure (API, http://opendata.diavgeia.gov.gr/?lang=en ). This API grants access to all decisions and decrees issued by the Greek public authorities according to the Transparency law. All data is available under a Creative Commons - Attribution license. Τhe API uses RESTful-like calls and returns the data in XML format, according to the published XSD.

List of applications that are implemented by the community and use transparency open data api https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hGcZS_XFZeR8NcSgpygzIFC1ltiYdVwRLs11hzuByLM/edit?hl=en_US&pli=1

Geodata.Gov.Gr

Geodata.gov.gr (http://www.geodata.gov.gr/geodata/) is one of the Greek Government’s open government initiatives in the framework of the Open Government Partnership. Further, its operation is included in the Road Map to support the enforcement of Law 3979/2011 for eGovernment, as a best practice example for the application of Information & Communication Technologies (ICT) in the public administration, and as an open data repository for the provision of geospatial information. Finally, geodata.gov.gr provides technical support to the National Spatial Data Infrastructure, in accordance to the National Strategy for ICT and eGovernment. Geodata.gov.gr offers datasets from Ministries, Local Administration, and NGOs for a plethora of thematic areas: general urban

plans, protected areas, shoreline and beach boundaries, even the public funds subsiding sports clubs across the country, for the past 20 years. Geodata.gov.gr has received more than 330.000 unique visitors, from 109 countries all over the world. Every day, more than 1.000 citizens, civil servants, engineers, researchers and students, use geodata.gov.gr to discover, download, reuse and view open geospatial data and interactive maps.

OKXE – INSPIRE

In the link below, you can download the National List of geospatial resources Public Administration. There are more than 2000 sets of geospatial data and more than 90 geospatial services. For these sets are available metadata according to the standards of the Directive INSPIRE, and other useful information relating to the conditions and on access to these data. http://www.inspire.okxe.gr/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=96&Itemid=109

Open Taxation Data

The Open Taxation Data initiative aims to improve the accountability, reduce the bureaucracy and increase the transparency of Greece’s taxation system. As part of the initiative, the General Secretary of Information Systems of Ministry of Finance, has published extensive statistical data from the year 2000 onward. In addition it has made available on a daily basis each regional tax office’s outstanding and has handled cross-checking cases.(ogp.opengov.gr)

http://www.regione.piemonte.it/governo/bollettino/abbonati/2012/45/attach/dgr_04687_815_08102012.pdf

http://www.regione.piemonte.it/governo/bollettino/abbonati/2011/corrente/siste/00000260.htm

http://www.ypes.gr/el/















http://diavgeia.gov.gr/ada






http://opendata.diavgeia.gov.gr/?lang=en













http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/





http://opendata.diavgeia.gov.gr/api/diavgeia-decision-model-0.1.xsd



https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hGcZS_XFZeR8NcSgpygzIFC1ltiYdVwRLs11hzuByLM/edit?hl=en_US&pli=1

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hGcZS_XFZeR8NcSgpygzIFC1ltiYdVwRLs11hzuByLM/edit?hl=en_US&pli=1

http://www.geodata.gov.gr/geodata/

http://www.inspire.okxe.gr/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=96&Itemid=109




























http://ogp.opengov.gr/


AnneX I

Licensing State of the Art

The following table has been filled-in on the basis of the discussion during the Legal Workshop in Bologna.

Homer Member Institution

At least 1 dataset identified in each category (or at least clear process to identify and clear them)? [FN0]

Licensing choices?Public domain/simple attribution as ideal default choice. Please, justify Share-Alike.

OK for intermediate check? about datasets // about licenses

Conseil Régional de Provence Alpes Côte d’Azur

Yes (please specify the name/link of one representative dataset for each domain)

LO (as default choice) [FN1] + ODbL (in case of constraints from partners)

Yes // Yes

Regione Piemonte

possibly Yes (ongoing check for some domains) CC0 / CC BY likely // Yes

Regione Emilia Romagna possibly Yes (ongoing check for

some domains)CC0 / CC BY likely // Yes

Regione Venetopossibly Yes (ongoing check for some domains)

IODL 2.0 [FN2] or CC BYlikely // Yes

Collectivité Territoriale de Corse- Service du Développement Technologique

tbdODbL (PLEASE EXPLAIN WHY/IN WHICH CASES) + LO [FN1]

To be confirmed // To be confirmed





Slovenia own geodata (↔ Tourism) + data from Environmental Agency

tbd, planning to apply CCO/CC BY licenses for all the GI datasets within HOMER. For the datasets of other public bodies: trying to get their approval for licensing of their data with CC0/CC BY data with CC0/CC BY

[FN3]

MaltaY, but many data owned by national statistical office

tbd, most likely own, ad hoc license


Sardiniaactivity ongoing: several INSPIRE compliant datasets are available + other tbd

tbd (in the past used some CC licenses for content, maybe BY or BY-SA)


Montenegro

may need more guidance, but there is political commitment and there are ongoing contacts with all data holders

tbd, but owners may be ready to apply a proposed license: suggestion to use CC BY 3.0 Unported, with a statement similar to the one of the Piedmont Region [FN4]


Creteongoin work on a CKAN portal that should include all relevant data Public Domain (PD) ikely // Yes






Cyprus will open data for the environment category ONLY as follows: 1. Number of sewerage connections: Clients connected per Municipality, Establishments or Households, Streets, Type of building i.e. hotels, building blocks, public buildings, restaurants and other similar establishments, commercial and industrial establishments.2. Operational data (monthly data): Chemical analyses results (inlet –outlet), Quality/quantity of wastewater received, Quality/quantity of wastewater treated, Usage of treated wastewater (% per type of usage).3. Graphical representation of: Sewerage network (current and future), Boundaries of SBLA, Blue flag positions (coordinates) and chemical analyses info, Pumping station positions (coordinates), Position of sewers.4. Storm water: Graphical representation of drainage network in operation, Studies for catchment areas, Drainage system location

Public Domain (PD) Yes // Yes

Andalusia Yes (please specify the name/link of one representative dataset for each domain)

CC BY 3.0 Yes // Yes

Key: CC = Creative Commons; BY = Attribution; SA = Share Alike; LO = License Ouverte; ODbL = Open Data Commons Open Database License; tbd = to be defined/completed[FN0] Notice that some partners committed to cover just some domains (instead of the 5 of them), as per description of work, § 1.6.

[FN1] French national license, compatible with CC BY/ODC BY.

[FN2] Italian national license, compatible with CC BY/ODC BY.

[FN3] Not being itself a public administration, the Slovenian partner is not required to open up any data, but they plan to do so nevertheless.

[FN4] Draft translation/adaptation of the licensing statement of Regione Piemonte:

<Optional note=“by themselves, the licenses include broad disclaimers of responsibility, so be careful before adding such a binding statement... your re-users may like it, but it’s a broad additional warranty of title”>The full and exclusive ownership of the following database “[DATABASE NAME/DESCRIPTION]” is of LICENSING INSTITUTION NAME (the Licensor), according to the NATIONAL Copyright Act.</Optional> LICensInG InstItUtIon nAMe (the Licensor) authorizes the free consultation, extraction, reproduction and modification/re-use of the data included in the aforementioned database in favor of whoever (Licensee) may be interest for any purpose, as long as this use respects the terms and conditions of the license Creative Commons – Attribution 3.0 Unported (full text available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode).

For the avoidance of doubt, the Licensor states explicitly that the terms of this license also cover the right disciplined by [ReFeRenCe to ReLeVAnt nAtIonAL LAW ABoUt LeGAL PRoteCtIon oF DAtABAses, oR: “Directive 96/9/eC of the european Parliament and of the Council of 11 March 1996 on the legal protection of databases , art. 7 and ff.”] (so called sui generis database right of the maker of a database). therefore, the Licensor authorizes the Licensee to extract and/or re-utilize the whole or a substantial part of the licensed database, under the same terms and conditions stated in the aforementioned Creative Commons - Attribution 3.0 Unported license.

<Optional note=“this part is also optional, but it may be prudent to insert it, so that you can manage the reference to your datasets and guarantee the existence of a link to the original/official/trusted data”>The Attribution requirement disciplined in the license should take place in the following form:[INSERT NOTE, e.g. Derivative works/dataset must include a copyright notice stating that “This work/dataset includes data from NAME OF THE DATASET, VERSION, made by INSTITUTION, available online at LINK. Please refer to the aforementioned link to obtain the original unmodified public data.”]</Optional>

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode

34 HOMER SOCIO - ECONOMIC IMPACT STUDY 35 HOMER SOCIO - ECONOMIC IMPACT STUDY

AnneX II

Open Data Legal Recommendations

TT1 x

TT2 x

TT3 x

TT4 x

DI1 x

DI2 x

DI3 x

DI4 x

DI5 x

Recommendation Code Title of recommendation Must Should May Comments

The Team

Include (in your Open Data Team) a member keeping track of goals and deadlines

Ideally, this is the project manager of the open data project; at the very least, this role can be played by a secretary of the team, keeping track of decisions (through minutes) and reminding them to people

Include a member with information technology background (and/or links with other people with such skills and competences within the PA)

In short, you need a guy able to say “this is technically inappropriate (or better)”; your work will be safer and quicker if some technical skills are embedded in the team, instead of simply available upon requests...

Include a member with legal background (and/or links with other people with such skills and competences within the PA)

In short, you need a guy able to say “this is legally inappropriate (or better)”; your work will be safer and quicker if some legal skills are embedded in the team, instead of simply available upon requests...

Include a member in contact with high ranking bureaucrats (and possibly policymakers)

A member of the team should be able to easily connect with the rest of the administration (or the open data team will remain an island and will be easily stalled)

Dataset Identification

Identify a specific dataset

The process to open data should start from the analysis of the requirements concerning a specific set of data. Talking about classes of data in abstract terms leaves too many degrees of freedom; starting from a concrete case helps figuring out the correct questions and their potential answers. Looking at some successful examples from other Public Administrations could be inspiring (also considering that they have undertaken the same process you are about to start).

Identify the person(s) in charge of the maintenance of such dataset (identified at DI1)

You are likely going to need this information later on (but it's possible that you can reasonably determine in other ways that the Public Administration is the right-holder). The information concerning the physical person in charge may, of course, be used just for internal purposes; later on in the process, a contact person or responsible office (depending on the rules of each administration) should be identified in the meta data for each dataset.

Identify the person(s) knowing the history (i.e., how it was created/acquired) of such dataset (identified at DI1)

You are likely going to need this information later on (but it's possible that you can reasonably determine in other ways that the Public Administration is the right-holder). As above, this information is likely needed to manage the internal process: the name of these physical persons need not to be published (it may even be illegal to do so, in some jurisdictions).

Avoid dataset including obviously sensitive data: e.g., data that may compromise citizen privacy, or national security

It may be that there are laws mandating or allowing for the publication of such data, but it's definitely not a good idea to start your open data experience dealing with sensitive data... In any case, data protection law should be carefully considered and respected.

Consider publishing as open data some data which were already available online (but without a clearly specified license)

This is a good training to start with (and adding an explicit license to these data is likely going to be useful for some re-users, e.g., commercial ones)

RC3 x

RC4 x

RC5 x

RC6 x

RC7 x

LF1 x

LF2 x

LF3 x

If you answered “yes” to RC1 or RC2, find the right-holder(s)if the dataset has been created with the money of the Public Administration (PA) and by people hired by the PA (or on the basis of a contract clearly transferring the rights to the PA), then you may assume that the right-holder is the PA

If the right-holder (identified in RC3) is a third party, clear the rights (i.e., obtain all the rights on the datasets or a written authorization to do whatever you want with the datasets, including publishing them under one or more clearly specified open licenses) or start again with another dataset (back to DI1)

In the first phases of an open data process, you should probably avoid investing too much effort in the right clearance process (consistently with the idea to start from simple things), therefore, in this context, the right clearance step is optional, in the sense that you may safely and reasonably give up in trying to open-up data those rights are owned by third parties; obviously, within a mature open data project, you may want to clear the rights, with the assistance of your legal specialist and using the information provided by the person(s) identified at DI2 and DI3

Consider other statutory or contractual constraints: mainly privacy and secrecy restrictions

Publish potentially sensitive data if and only if a law explicitly mandates their publication; don't forget to check with your legal department if the publication of a certain dataset may be prevented by some national or internal regulations/guidelines. To clear this aspect you should ask the person(s) identified at points DI2 and DI3 (maybe with the help of your legal specialist)

Privacy: if you decide to publish personal data, identify the legal background allowing (or even requiring) you to do that

To clear this aspect you should ask the person(s) identified at points DI2 and DI3 (maybe with the help of your legal specialist). You need to know that also to add the notice recommended in LC5

Privacy: consider using anonymisation techniques (aggregation is sub-optimal, but it may be an option or your only option to publish...)

To clear this aspect you should ask the person(s) identified at points DI2 and DI3 (maybe with the help of your legal specialist) and probably seek the advice of a professional, since proper anonymisation techniques require specialized skills

Legal Framework

European Directives and their national implementations should offer a sufficient legal framework to start your open data project

Note that the most relevant Directive on this subject (2003/98/EC) is currently under a review process; an amended version of this Directive is expected to be approved by the European Parliament by July 2013

Consider adopting local regulations/laws, such as regional open data guidelines

Check whether there are some national guidelines, which may provide a template (and some constraints) for your local guidelines

In any case, you must identify the authority entitled to license your data

Typically the local government and/or some high ranking public managers can do (or delegate) that licensing activity. In case of doubt, it is appropriate to start the process with some kind of bylaw from the local government (see LF2) identifying the public official who can take licensing decisions

36 HOMER SOCIO - ECONOMIC IMPACT STUDY

LC1 x

LC2 x

LC3 x

LC4 x

LC5 x

LC6 x

LC7 x

LC8 x

Recommendation Code Title of recommendation Must Should May CommentsLicense Choice

Choose a license compliant with the Open Knowledge Definition (e.g. CC0, CC BY, ODC PDD, ODC BY, ODC OdbL)

To choice a license compliant with international standards, see http://opendefinition.org/: “A piece of data or content is open if anyone is free to use, reuse, and redistribute it — subject only, at most, to the requirement to attribute and/or share-alike.”

Choose a standard open data license, without imposing unnecessary constraints and without using local or national license, if an international one can achieve the same goals: e.g., Creative Commons Zero (CC0) or Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 2.5 or 3.0)

CC0 and CC BY should be the standard license adopted, as discussed during the Bologna meeting; share-alike licenses, such as CC BY-SA or ODC OdbL are acceptable, but they impose additional constraints on the re-users, therefore share-alike licenses should be adopted if and only if a certain administration is fully aware of the implications of such a choice

Take into account sector-specific regulations (e.g., in Italy, cultural heritage law imposes some non-copyright related restrictions on the licensing of the reproductions of ancient artifacts)

This is a “should” instead of a “must” just because CC0 and CC BY are so open that almost no sector-specific legislation should mandate something more permissive than these licenses

Apply demanding sector-specific regulations even outside their mandated scope (e.g. INSPIRE related standards to non-INSPIRE datasets)

In domains such as the use of meta-data, sector specific regulations, such as INSPIRE, may be very demanding and the adoption of similar standards may be a best practice

Add appropriate notices/metadata: e.g., if a dataset includes personal data, make reference to the law regulating their collection and publication

In order to use standard licenses, it is not a good idea to include privacy/data protection related statements within your licenses, but it is a best practice to add notices dealing with privacy issues, including the laws backing your decision to publish personal data

Viral (i.e., share-alike or copyleft) clauses: avoid them, if possible

Viral clauses limit some kind of re-uses (e.g., some business models) and may create legal interoperability issues (i.e., prevent somebody from mixing some datasets): they should be avoided, unless the licensor is aware of these side-effects and evaluates that a share-alike license is needed to support its public task

Viral (i.e., share-alike or copyleft) clauses: justify them, if adoptedThe Homer partners agreed that – in some situations – viral clauses may be justified, but the should remain an exception and their justification should be explicit (so that it may also be questioned)

Non-commercial clauses: avoid them (at least for Homer datasets) This is implied by LC1, but it is repeated here, just to be sure......go to the Technical part, with particular attention to: