Information Market v. Infrastructure
The ePSIplus Thematic Network held its final thematic meeting in Paris on the 3 February 2009. One of the objectives of the meet meeting (reference the meeting agenda) was to develop an Action plan with a time frame and to allocate priorities. To assist this process during the meeting three sessions were organised to develop an action plans for the three key information re-use sectors:
- Geographic information – led by Roger Longhorn, IDRA Limited
- Meteorological information – led by Harry Otten, MeteoGroup
- Legal, business information: Michael Fanning, Online Consultants International GmbH
During the introduction and discussions that followed during the geographic information session reference was made to the European Union Directive INSPIRE 2007/2/EC that is due to come into force in all Member States on the 15 Mary 2009. The meeting considered whether the INSPIRE Directive would assist bring forward within the environmental information sector facilities that would support the implementation of the PSI re-use Directive 2003/98/EC. If so what could be emulated and placed in the action plan. To support the meeting Roger Longhorn produced a paper titled: Information Market v. Infrastructure that makes the comparison between the PSI re-use (2003 and INSPIRE (2007) Directive. The paper has been published along with the presentations for the Paris thematic meeting. Within the introduction of the paper it states:
“Since both Directives include implementation and impact monitoring and reporting requirements, we are interested in identifying any lessons to be learned, or best practice to be shared, in the future implementation of INSPIRE and continued implementation of PSI re-use, especially in view of modifications that have been requested to PSI re-use following its first major implementation review report, now being considered by the European Commission.”The paper deals with the comparison under a number of headings which include amongst others:
- Access versus Use (Re-use) in PSI re-use
- Access and re-use according to prior Directives
- Access and re-use according to INSPIRE
- Measures weakening the application of both Directives
- Implementation – overly prescriptive v. no direction
- Monitoring and Reporting
The final paragraph of the conclusion states:
“In the meantime, it would certainly not hurt the situation if some more detailed monitoring and reporting requirements were specified for Member States in regard to PSI re-use, although it is unlikely that they would be – or would need to be – as prescriptive as those adopted for INSPIRE.”
The objective of the Paris meeting was to produce an action plan and then consider the monitoring process with the intention of helping further the implementation of the PSI re-use Directive within Europe and also the OECD PSI Policy principles in countries outside of Europe.
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