From 1 February 2012, all data from the Dutch 'key register' of addresses and buildings (BAG) will be available for re-use without additional conditions. This includes commercial re-use and publication. Most importantly this also applies to the postcodes contained in the data.

This is the result of a court verdict, in a case where PostNL, a private mail company, demanded that the postcodes would not be available for commercial re-use, as PostNL itself already commercially provides postcodes for that purpose.

The Ministry for Infrastructure and Environment found the court on its side on all points. In a press release (Dutch) the ministry states that the verdict fits well with the national policy and the recent European Commission proposals to provide more government held information for re-use.

The BAG is one of 13 key registers that have been established to decrease costs and administrative workloads for public sector bodies in the Netherlands. A key register is the only acceptable source of certain data for government tasks. For the citizen it means not having to provide the same data repeatedly: if data has been provided to a key register once, all public sector bodies then must use it.
The BAG contains all addresses with postcodes, coordinates, type of usage, size and construction year of every building in the Netherlands, as well as unique keys which allow combination with other (key) registers.

The use by public sector bodies of the BAG has been mandatory since July 2011. Until now all data in the BAG registry, except the postcodes were available for re-use, commercial and otherwise, as well as for re-publication.

Based on the court's verdict this will now change per 1 February 2011, as the exception for re-use of postcodes has been lifted. The postcodes ranked high on the wish list of the open data community for years.

The Ministry for Infrastructure and Environment welcomes the release of the postcodes as a source of opportunity for companies and service providers. At the start of 2011 the Ministry already had announced it wanted to open up postcodes for re-use, and that negotiations with PostNL (then TNT) had failed. The court case now forces the issue, in favor of releasing the postcodes for all types of re-use.

When the court's verdict has been published we will post an impact analysis in our Legal Cases section.