London: 15 May 2009

The UK Office of Public Sector Information (OPSI) has announced that three new principles have been added to the Information Fair Trader Scheme (IFTS).

The announcement states:

“The Information Fair Trader Scheme (IFTS) has been successful in raising standards in information trading across the public sector. Building on this success, OPSI has introduced three new IFTS principles:

• Maximisation – this changes the emphasis of IFTS so that information can be re-used unless there are strong reasons not to.
• Simplicity – facilitating re-use through simple processes, policies and licence terms;
• Innovation – where public sector organisations actively remove obstacles to re-use and introduce initiatives that encourage re-use.

These principles will sit alongside existing IFTS principles of:

• Transparency – being clear and up front about the terms of re-use;
• Fairness – applying terms fairly without any discrimination;
• Challenge – ensuring that re-use is underpinned by a robust complaints process.

OPSI is currently analysing stakeholder feedback on the new principles and a new performance management framework that will rigorously test these principles. This framework is being piloted with a prospective IFTS member.”