Helsinki, 3 March 2011,

The Finnish government today in a press release announced a PSI policy decision. The Finnish Prime Minister last summer made mention of stimulating PSI re-use in the government agenda, and in January a draft decision was published (see the document in Google docs).

The (machine translation from Finnish into English) press statement by the Ministry for Transport and Communication reads:

"Ministry of Transport and Communications 3.3.2011 13.55Policy decision on the availability of public sector information

The government has made a policy decision regarding the availability of public digital data. Public information resources should be openly available for re-use on consistent, transparent and equal terms. The information must be generally free of charge.

The decision applies primarily to the public data sets that can be provided for re-use as they are and there are no legal limitations to processing the data.

The public sector bodies must always ensure that privacy, trade secrets, intellectual property, national security, or other similar principles and rights are not compromised while opening up the information resources.

The decision states that legislation related to public sector information and its re-use needs to be clarified. The technical structures that enable re-use of information should be harmonized. In addition, provision of services and applications that make use of public data sets must be supported and promoted.

The government states that the re-use terms and licences must not hinder diverse commercial and non-commercial re-use of the public sector information. The information resources should be available for re-use as widely as possible without further consultation and approval procedures.

More information

Communications Council Asta Virtaniemi, tel +358 9 160 2862 6 or +358 40 519 6762"

Related Links:

Topic Report: state of play in Finland