PSI Directive review: how does it feel to be invited into high level round-table discussion on Public Sector Information re-use
We are all willing to improve, can we make a change in open data community across Europeanian Union?
18th January 2018, our CEO Arek Hajduk had a pleasure to represent ourtech company Transparent Data and participate in a workshop organized by European Commission and Deloitte EU Strategy and Policy Services in Brussels.
The topic of the meeting was a high level discussion on Public Sector Information re-use under the PSI Directive which is under review. For those of You who doesn’t recognize Directive 2013/37/EU and have no idea what does it means for all data providers across Europe, further details you can find HERE.
It all started from freezing cold in Brussels and the warm feeling that Arek was actualy the only person invited to the heart of European Commission from Poland.
Keeping in mind that open data status in Poland is ranking our country of origin on a +- 40 position across the world, he was both ready to hear that in other countries data providers have a little bit easier life than the one our company bears, like to hear that everywhere there are still so called “closed doors”.
The workshop participants represented many different entities from all corners of PSI environment like the Open Data Institute, the Transport for London, large utility companies (Enel from Italy and Elering from Estonia), cities and provinces (City of Helsinki from Finland and Region Piemonte from Italy) and businesses (Seapilot from Sweden, OpenDataSoft from France, Compass Group from Austria and Transparent Data from Poland), but the experiences shared were very similar. It actualy surprised us more than we expected.
The discussion was focused on technical and non-technical barriers that are present in daily activities of data providers and data re-users (like Transparent Data).
The technical barriers identified include data quality and continuity challenges, chaos in terms of datasets formats and standards. However the consensus was that the technical barriers are easier to overcome than non technical ones.
The latter include prohibitive cost of data (interesting caveat: all present data providers expressed view that PSI should be free to all interested parties — we wish to meet more people like them), low availability of datasets due to many various reasons (including the cultural challenges and differences), mess in terms of data licensing and exclusive agreements preventing fair data availability.
Although all the participants pointed out areas for improvement in the current PSI, the workshop finished on the positive note: one of PSI Directive creators reminded that few years ago there was a lot less interest in the subject and there was no mention of free and open data. In short: we are heading in the right direction, it just takes long time.
As a CEO of a technology company focused on business information, many of which originates in Public Sector, we were very glad to participate in the discussions that will eventually shape our future, hopefully brighter with more Transparent Data in it.
What is worth to mention, all conclusions are going to be depicted in Deloitte study report with which we’re going to share here for sure.
