European Commission consultation on Public Sector Information

How to improve the accessibility and re-use of public and publicly funded data, and how to stimulate re-use of privately held data of public interest? The European Commission announced a public consultation to evaluate these questions as part of the Public Sector Information (PSI) Directive implementation.

The consultation consists of three parts:

1. The evaluation of the implementation and functioning of the current EU legislative framework on the re-use of government data;
2. Possible improvements of this framework for the future;
3. Reflections on the possibility to allow public sector bodies to access and use privately held data, whenever this would be justified by public interest considerations.

Importantly, the broader consultation on Public Sector Information underlies future directions of the European Data Portal. Extended provision of publicly available data could add value to the national datasets and data from the different European Union institutions currently available on the European Data Portal. Moreover, broader re-use of privately held data of public interest could unleash entirely new possibilities to re-use and link data.

The Commission consults a broad audience, ranging from governments, public sector data holders and users, commercial and non-commercial re-users, to experts, academics and citizens. Interested in sharing your view? Responses can be submitted via the EU consultation portal in any of the EU official languages until 12 December 2017.