The European Commission (EC) will adopt an Open Data Strategy on November 29, consisting of a package of measures including regulatory measures. This would include a modification of the existing directive on the reuse of public sector information and deployment measures such as the creation of open data portals at a European level. The Strategy had been proposed in November 2010.
It has been observed that the information published by government organisations across Europe has a significant - currently untapped - potential for reuse in new products and services. For this reason, the EC sought to revise and strengthen its public data strategy. Additionally, in 2010, the market for products and services based on public sector information was estimated to be worth around €32 billion across the EU, according to a recent study. The same study indicated that further opening up of public sector information by allowing easier access would generate overall economic gains of around €40 billion a year for the EU.
The 2003 Directive (2003/98/EC) on the reuse of public sector information has led to some harmonisation and progress across the EU, but significant differences in national rules - for example on licensing and pricing - as well as different practices still exist. According to the EC, it results in the fragmentation of a single market for data based products and services. Moreover, the lack of interoperability between the information resources, and insufficient availability of the information in a machine readable format, make it impossible to reap the full benefits from the new opportunities of government data in the digital age.
The communication that will be the form chosen by the EC to present the Open Data Strategy will be accompanied by a proposal for modifying the directive on the reuse of public sector information (the main element of the regulatory framework for reuse) and a revised decision on the reuse of the EC's information.
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