In September 2000 the UK Government announced new plans to boost the knowledge economy by overhauling the way government information could be acquired and reused. At that time the HMSO was charged with implementing the plans. Following a public consultation during 2001 the HMSO announced the Information Fair Trader Scheme and the IFTS brand in the summer of 2002. The 2002 announcement coincided with the European Commission publishing the proposed text of what was to become the European Union Directive 2003/98/EC on the re-use of Public Sector Information. The Directive came into force in all European Member States on the 1 July 2005. The implementation and administration of the IFTS is a regulatory function that has a legal base. The IFTS regulatory function operates in parallel with that of the regulatory function within Statutory Instrument 2005 No. 1515 that transposes the EU Directive 2003/98/EC into the UK legal framework.

This paper reviews the IFTS brand and the Information Fair Trader Scheme that has been in operation for seven years and how it relates to the implementation of the EU legal framework that governs the re-use of public sector information in the UK.