Brussels, 22 September 2011

(by Ton Zijlstra)

At the Open Forum European Summit in Brussels, mr. Séverin Naudet, director of Etalab, gave a key note explaining the French open data policy.

Key elements in the speech on what to expect from the French national data portal data.gouv.fr, to be launched in the first week of December, follow from these choice quotes (the full text is embedded below):

On charging:

"We have adopted a principle for public sector information reuse: broad access and free reuse, aswidely as possible. The Prime Minister sent an executive order to that effect on May 26. A decree, which he released on the same day, now strictly restricts the possibility of creating any newcharging scheme for data reuse. While still possible, it is now dependent on the Prime Minister’sagreeing to its creation due to exceptional circumstances. All charging schemes that exist to date willbe listed and published transparently online. In a few months’ time, everyone will be able to knowprecisely the amount and the object for these charging schemes"

On formats and standards:

"We focus our efforts and those of the administrations on raw, machine-readable, numerical orstructured data. Free and open formats will make it easily reusable, to encourage new applications."

On the choice of data sets:

"Publishing data online by default, to the largest extent possible, is crucial, for it is through comparisonand combination that researchers can gain knowledge and developers invent new applications"

On licensing:

"We have made a point to establish a licence that is compatible with the United Kingdom’s OpenGovernment Licence, and the Open Data Commons “By” licence.It will encourage all types of public data reuse, commercial and non-commercial alike. It will provide re-users with all the rights and the reassurances needed to spark their innovation and creativity."