Luxembourg, 25 March 2011

(by Ton Zijlstra)

In the last months of 2010 an online consultation took place about the PSI Directive, its impact and the type of amendments the various stakeholders think are needed. The final report on this consultation is now available. With almost 600 responses to the consultation, or 15 times more than the 2008 consultation it is clear that PSI re-use is a topic that is getting a lot of attention. Responses came from 37 states, the majority from 11 EU member states (with Germany forming the largest group of responses). Five Member States entered official responses: Belgium, France, Denmark, UK, Netherlands.

Earlier we already reported on the publication of all the reactions received.

The final report on the online consultation is embedded below in full (and can be downloaded here, as well as from the EC DG Information Society PSI website in PDF).

Some quotes from the management summary:

"An overwhelming majority of respondents signalled that PSI re-use has not reached its full potential and supports further action to stimulate re-use and to promote cross-border provision of PSI based products and services"

"Respondents across all categories, with strongest support from re-users, academics and "others", called for amending the general principle to establish a right to re-use (with a notable exception of Belgium,which expressly pleaded for maintaining the current discretion)."

"...respondents across all sectors generally called for support and deployment measures topromote PSI re-use, including across borders. These measures range from guidance on many topics(licensing, charging, public task, data quality) to support for the development of national data portals and for a European single access point to data.

"...responses to this consultation demonstrate that although compared with the previous review, the culture of re-use has made its way in many Member States (in particular the UK, France,Denmark), much remains to be done to maximise the potential of PSI re-use and to fully exploit the rules established by the 2003 PSI Directive, several provisions of which require amendments or clarification."