Copenhagen: 7 July 2010

Since 2002, Denmark has had the Danish Free of Charge Agreement making official Danish address data free of charge.

This policy was discussed during the ePSIplus Network Danish national meeting held in Copenhagen (27 November 2008) and the commentary about the policy in the meeting report states:

“The example clearly demonstrated the principles behind the European Union Directive on the re-use of PSI in that the Address register is open for all to use and where financial charges are made these are the cost of distribution. A major benefit was that the quality of the register improved with the increase in use and that all of society were using the same reference and as a result all sectors of the community benefited when exchanging information that contained an address or address reference. (page 12)”

During the spring 2010, the Danish Enterprise and Construction Authority (DECA) with responsibility for Danish road names and addresses commissioned a study to analyse the benefits of the Danish 2002 free-of-charge agreement.

Morten Lind (@mortlin) has just tweeted about the availability of the study report in Danish and English languages.

• Just published: Value assessment of PSI re-use DK address data (Da): http://bit.ly/9Wwltn (En): http://bit.ly/brJkuG #psi_policy #OpenData

Morten Lind, DECA, is named as the special Advisor on the study report. She also gave also gave an insightful and useful presentation, ‘Open Access to Public Data 2002-2010', covering the Danish Free of Charge Agreement (English or Danish) at: Danish ODIS Conference (Open Data Play Conference), 4 February 2010.

The results of the study on the Danish free-of-charge agreement have been published in a report entitled: “The value of Danish address data: social benefits from the 2002 agreement on procuring address data etc free of charge” (7 July 2010) (English or Danish).

The summary to the study notes the following finding, amongst others.

• “The conclusion of this study is that the direct financial benefits from the agreement for society during the period 2005 – 2009 amount to around EUR 62 million (~ DKK 471 million). Until 2009 the total costs of the agreement has been around EUR 2 million. In 2010 it is estimated that the social benefits from the agreement will be about EUR 14 million, while costs will total about 0.2 million. About 30% of benefits will be in the public sector and around 70% in the private sector.”

The study also reports difficulties experienced by enterprises and the public in that new addresses often only reach the users of the data with great delay. Some examples noted were delays in addresses showing up in GPS systems for citizens or public services such as the police, ambulances or private companies. And, when important businesses or public services can’t find their way, there can be serious consequences.

It is noted that the challenges and problems identified in the study will be addressed by DECA during 2010 – 2011 with an action plan to underpin addresses as an element of the Danish infrastructure.

Some noteworthy points from the report include the following.

• “To illustrate the overall market for address data, according to Statistics Denmark, today 46% of families have a GPS navigation system. This corresponds to about 1.3 million GPS systems each with a copy of all Danish Addresses.” Page 6/8
• “As mentioned, the study only estimates benefits in the first and second link of distribution. The financial benefits linked to reuse of free address data in the third, fourth, fifth and subsequent links, as ... have not been included in the value assessment, however they are likewise expected to be of considerable size.” Page 6/8

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