Open Data
From OpenEGov
State managed data varies from geographical data (eg. Ordnance Survey material) to meteorological data to food composition data to census data. The range is extremely large.
Different governments have taken very different views on public right of access to state managed data, with the US and Denmark at one extreme and the UK at the other (most restrictive) extreme. The Guardian has a good introduction to the topic (though without emphasis on the specific issues raised for free software).
The standard reference for the economic issues involved is the PIRA Study, Commercial Exploitation of Europe's Public Sector Information from 2000. A recent summary shows that more recent surveys confirm the results of the PIRA study. The study demonstrated that pricing publicly managed data above marginal distribution costs dramatically reduces usage of the data, while income from the data in large part comes from other government departments shuffling money between one another. The tax revenue lost by discouraging use of the data dramatically exceeds the revenue gained through the charges.
The PIRA study led to the Directive on the re-use of public sector information. This stated
Member states should encourage public sector bodies to make documents available at charges which do not exceed the marginal cost for reproducing and disseminating the documents
However, the UK government has consistently taken the most restrictive interpretations of the EU directive, so that data is generally only available for a fee, which may be quite considerable. Current regulations are given in The Re-use of Public Sector Information Regulations 2005. This is in spite of a 2005 RIA which praises the PIRA study.
In particular, free software which depends on this data is generally impossible under current practice, as is any other use purely for the public good. This has so far caused most problems with map-related data, postcode tables etc, but there are many other areas where the current position is against the public interest. Food composition tables, for example, which are freely available to the public and can be used to create free software for nutritional advice, logging software for carbohydrate consumption for diabetics, etc, are freely available to US citizens or Danes but not to UK citizens (we can use the other countries tables of course but they don't reflect the UK diet).
There is an ongoing study by the Office of Fair Trading which is accepting written submissions; results are due out summer 2006. Responses to a 2005 public consultation, including responses from the OFT, are available for comparison.
A campaign specifically over geographical data is being run by the Open Knowledge Foundation. There is further information on their wiki, and the campaign can also be supported via Pledgebank.
Examples of people having to recreate publicly held data which is not available to the public include:
General campaigns and information sources around this issue:
- Re-use of Public Sector Information - Martin de Saulles blog
- Free Our Data.org - campaign launched by the Guardian article linked above
