Encouraging PSI Re-use Business By Gerhard K. Wagner ePSIplus Project Analyst Kick-off meeting, Praha, funded by eContentPlus

TOC Content of work package 4 Barriers and misunderstandings –From the PSI-dataholders point of view –From the private re-users point of view Best practices and case studies

A. Content of Work-package 4 Encouraging PSI re-use business will provide a powerful driver toward the creation of mechanisms for concerted action in the private sector such as the creation of a European Industry Action Group for PSI.

Goals of Workpackage 4: The role of European Associations in raising awareness of PSI re-use market potential + pan-European forum –Which of your national companies/institutions is member of such European or international institutions? Factors underlying demand for and creation pan- European products –Currently most pan-European services are run by US-companies

Goals of WP 4 Inter-sector learning and analysis: what makes some sectors more successful in PSI re-use business? What business models work? –Cross-sector roundtables proved to be very successful –Often: business model results from lack of expertise in terms of calculating and pricing  Effective training, knowledge transfer and support mechanisms for entrepreneurs, role of organisations such as Chambers of Commerce.  Introductory seminars + individual consultancy  Consultants available already in some countries  Private associations more effective than Chambers of C.

B. Barriers and Misunderstandings Wording of EC-Directive is partly misleading (e.g. document): even two statistical offices asked ePSIplusfor for proper interpretation USAGE and SALE of PSI are well-known. Each national egov-strategy contains a chapter on making available PSI for use by citizens. The unknown animal: RE-USE (this concept is not clear for government: they see themselves at the END of the PSI-value chain but not on the beginning for the next one)

Barriers and Misunderstandings Public sector fears misuse by unknown clients worldwide Due to lack of competition the skills and skilled labourforce to calculate and price PSI are not available Resale versus Re-use: PSI-reuse might decrease the revenue stream achieved by reselling (authentic) public databases Monodirectional approach: public sector does not see the benefit provided by private re-use products (US: public sector sells public raw-data and buys private re- use products)

Barriers and Misunderstandings No direct financial incentive for the public dataholder: the revenue of PSI-licencing goes in 99 percent of the cases to the Ministry of Finance. – Global budgeting for government department is at the very beginning (two examples in Austria). Intercultural barriers: Why shall the private sector make profit out of something which is said to be a public good? Frustrated private sector: for 20 years private sector has addressed the public for PSI-licenses. No results. Why shall the PSI-Directive be helpful?

Barriers and Misunderstandings PSI is a good business for low-level corruption: officially the public dataholder does not grant licences, but inofficially he sells it under the counter to some re-users PSI is essential for additional income of civil servants (similar to the drug-business run by the police in some CEEC)

Interim results (arising from these misunderstandings) Private PSI-resellers fight against PSI-reusers and fear that their revenue-stream will be dangered by this “unfair” competition Private PSI-resellers even argue that the PSI-Directive was drafted to support PSI-Resale, not PSI-Reuse

C. Best Practices and Case-Studies shall encourage both sides to go into the PSI- reuse business Some successful PPP-models are in place –Digitisation of assets of the Austrian National Library. Risk- sharing with one private publishing house: the private digitizes, adds metadata and publishes the product partly on its own risk. The Library supports the marketing worldwide –Latvia: private company LURSOFt establishes for the government THE official legal database –BUT: this is an exclusive relationship not in lince with PSI-DIR Case-studies can be drawn from following areas of PSI: legal info, weather info, GIS, traffic info

Conclusions: PSI-reuse is not FOI and not PSI-sale Without addressing the barriers and misunderstandings we will not encourage both the public and private PSI- community PSI-Directive does NOT help the frustrated private re- users since the main casus cnactus does remain to national law: ACCESS at all Some public dataholders publish PSI for free on the web, but prohibit re-use

Some thoughts for encouraging PSI-reuse Upgrading PSI from a minor-side issues (which even does not appear in egov-action plans) to a higher level National meetings might contain a special meeting of a closed group of ministers, state secretaries and 2 PSI- companies ( h) Analogue to national competence centers on PPP we require such also for PSI No success without individual consulting: software, methodology and experts are available

Best practice: Austrian traffic information agency collects data on congestion –They lack information on their target groups (USE + RE-USE) and optimum price –They did a survey with potential customers –Then a newly developed software gives you the optimum position of the product, marketing title and optimum price for the different target groups (price for users + price for re-users) –Whole consulting fee amounted to 25,000 EUR

Unvail hidden PSI-reuse: Each enterprise or even citizen uses on a daily basis some private products which are based on PSI-reuse Simply identify them and make them public Label those products: “This products is based on the re-use of PSI”

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