31 Oct 2018

PSI directive: Input from the digital industry

Key Messages

DIGITALEUROPE’s Members value the importance of the PSI directive and ask for improvements to make it work better in practice.
Harmonisation of PSI data access rules between Member States should be sought.
The ICT industry acknowledges the costs of making data available for re-use and believes that charging marginal costs may be an acceptable solution in certain cases.
Data should be accessible in easily readable formats and documents explaining how to use the data should be provided.
Real-time data should be made available. When such dynamic data is not available, updated data should be accessible soon after being collected.
Several sectors such as energy or transport are key to the development of data-based services and should be covered by the Directive.
Public undertakings operating in a competitive environment may be exempted.
Open access to research data should be voluntary and on a case-by-case basis.

Sources of this input

DIGITALEUROPE represents over 60 ICT companies and about 40 National Trade Associations (NTAs), representing the European digital sector, notably thousands of SMEs. We estimate that we represent in total over 35,000 ICT companies. For more details, see the last page of this document.

In order to compile this input, we have discussed the PSI directive recast with our Members and received information and comments from several of them, including both NTAs and corporate Members.

Our Members are interested in the PSI directive for two main reasons:

Direct interest: for both SMEs as well as larger industry, use of the public data to create/expand/improve their services.
Indirect interest: offer of data-related services (cloud, data management) to other companies as well as public institutions.

All our Members express strong support to the principle of facilitating the re-use of public sector data. However, they believe that the functioning in practice could be improved. Find below our comments.

Table of content
1. Uneven implementation
2. Charging costs
3. Format and documentation
4. Availability
5. Data of interest for business and society
6. Research data