PSI request refused
The Climate Audit blog topic titled: UK Met Office Refuses to Disclose Station Data Once Again that was published on the 23 July 2009 has attracted over 100 responses from interested parties. The topic has raised a number of issues related to the access to public sector information and the re-use of public sector information held by the UK Met Office and other public institutions in the UK.
The Signs of the Times (Sott.net) news blog has also picked up on the Climate Audit blogs postings and calls upon all UK Citizens to sign the petition placed on the UK Prime Minister’s Petition web site.
The UK Prime Ministers Office responded on 10 June 2009 to a similar petition titled: Climate data that attracted over 200 signatures.
The petition stated:
“We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to make state-owned information related to climate, climate change and the adaptation to climate change freely available to all.”
The Prime Ministers Office response stated:
“The Government does not have a policy to deliberately restrict access to information relevant to understanding climate and adapting to climate change. On the contrary the Government is strongly committed to the principles of freedom of information. Specifically, the Environmental Information Regulations 2004 (EIRs) implement our international obligations over access to environmental information.
This legislation also places a duty on government and other public bodies to publish information proactively and to make information progressively available to the public by electronic means. Large quantities of climate and meteorological information are freely available for academic and personal use, for example through the UK Climate Impacts Programme and the British Atmospheric Data Centre.
However the EIRs also allow for a reasonable charge for the supply of information. This includes the levy of a market based charge for information where data is collected and published on a commercial basis in order to ensure its continued supply, as is the case for Government Trading Fund Agencies like the Met Office, the UK Hydrographic Office and Ordnance Survey.
In the Budget 2009, the Government announced the findings of the Trading Funds Assessment. The Assessment examined how to ensure that information produced by bodies including these Trading Fund Agencies is available as widely as possible, whilst balancing the cost of provision of high-quality information in the long-term. It identified key principles of good practice relating to information produced including:
- information easily available – where possible at low or marginal cost;
- clear and transparent pricing structures for the information,
- simple and transparent licences to facilitate the re-use of information for purposes other than that for which it was originally created.
The Office of Public Sector Information will provide enhanced oversight and governance to ensure application of these principles across the Trading Funds.”
The Prime Minister’s Office response clearly sets out the important role that the UK Office of Public Sector Information (OPSI) has in ensuring the UK Government policy on public sector information is implemented and adhered to correctly.
Other requests for UK Met Office data maybe browsed on the WhatDoTheyKnow blog.
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