GEO-case in re-use of public sector information (PSI)

Re-use of public sector information: the GEO-CASE (presented at seminar Juritic 15/5/2009 Namur, Belgium) by Tanguy De Lestré

Agenda
0/ Setting the scene
1/ Government decisions matter
2/ Practical cases
3/ Feedback GEO-community
4/ Food for thought
5/ Conclusion

SETTING THE SCENE
Degradation of GPS signal set up for security reasons during the First Persian Gulf War (1991)

1/ Government decisions matter
On May 1, 2000, US President Clinton orders the discontinuation of the degradation of the GPS accuracy; the signal accuracy moves from 100m to 20m for civilian use
This Government decision widely seen as start of commercial use of GPS in portable navigation devices
Ends 10 years of degradation of GPS signal.

1/ EU Commission Communication Review of PSI Directive 2003/98/EC ( COM 2009 212 of 7/5/9):
"Despite its economic value, estimated at € 27 billion, much of Europe's public sector information is not re-used. »
EU Recommendation : make it easier to get a license to re-use public sector information (= lack of standardised conditions for re-use)
Example Geographic data : cadastral or environmental maps have been downloaded exponentially on public web sites; personal navigation systems from 30 million units to 60 million units in 2012
EU Communication mentions following problems:
complex licensing policies;
lack of awareness on what public sector information is available.
EU Assessment:
PSI in the digital age is driver of innovation and growth.
PSI directive has strongest impact on the Geographic Information market.

2/ Practical cases 1: IBGE thermography
Thermography of buildings could be used commercially; other flight resolutions used for other purposes,…

2/ Practical case: use curve
Data has a typical utility curve: very important in first short term, than less interesting.
After a few time this ‘old’ data gets again important.
By having huge image servers and huge data capacity, private sector can bring back to live this old data and add value to it. Eg. World expo 58 map.

2/ Practical cases 3: administrative limits statistical sectors
Used for geo-marketing; (source SPF economy): no price or distribution existed, and this was discussed and introduced a in model contract between Ministry and private company

3/ Feedback from the GEO-ICT private sector in Belgium:
Urgency to set a juridical scheme for re-use as administration not informing exactly on the access rules to its data;
Need to open up the public data to private companies;
Innovation cycle is going so fast that one does not need to wait too long;
Clarity on re-use licensing scheme is top priority;
Very much unknown on the public data available;
Quality assurance of public data (metadata missing,…) issue so that sometimes data needs to re-collected
Ownership: less and less of the topographic data is owned by the authorities; what is owned is a layer of exclusive information that is linked to the GIS database
Eg Cadastral limits. Geographic datasets linked to banque carrefour.

3/ Feedback from the GEO-ICT private sector in Belgium: A practical example: Walloon Region
Multiple Data Sources, Organizations and approaches
Using different Semantics, Data Models and Formats
Having invested (Licences, Training, Bespokes) in different Software Suites
Need to Manage
Data Redundancy
Data Interoperability until semantic level
Seamless access to public data
The missing link: A real « Hub » federating the heterogeneous sources
Each organization can preserve his own investment in Data, Software and Know-how
All organization can cross-exchange data
Central administration
Relay for external use

4/ Licensing some food for thought
Licensing issue
Priority clarity
« 1996 US Freedom of information act »
Public data has been paid once by the taxpayer (= citizen and business) so re-use conditions no more than cost of dissemination and without any restrictions on use
Consequence US: higher growth 10% estimated yearly, O,18% of GDP compared to 0,11% EU estimation year 2005.
« Cambridge study »: charging no or marginal costs for PSI result in social and economic benefits that outweigh the immediate financial benefits attained by cost recovering strategies
Example: Austrian national mapping agency created transparent conditions and order went up 7000% for orthophotos.

4/ Public task description clarity : food for thought
Borderline between public and non public sector activities of public sector
If public sector goes producing mainstream, leaves little room for private actors
Cross-subsidising where a public sector would use its raw information to develop further value added services under more favorable market conditions
Alignmnent needed between information publicly available and need of private users.

4/ INSPIRE: food for thought
INSPIRE directive (2007/2//EC) mentions:
The provision goes to help raise awareness and increase visibility of all initiatives promoting the use and re-use of data. Article 11 and 15 of the directive require direct access to data sets and services.

5/ Conclusion
INSPIRE= what needs to be done
Various initiatives without clear vision= what is actually done
Enhance economic activity through availability of public sector data = what should be done
Need of plateforms that combine efficiently dynamic and heterogenous information= what technolgy is capable to do
Find solution for juridical uncertainties = what can be done

Contact
Tanguy De Lestré
Project Manager
AGORIA Diamant Building Bd. A. Reyers ln, 80 1030 BRUSSEL
Tel : 02 706 79 92
Fax : 02 706 80 09
E-mail : tanguy.delestre @ agoria.be
Web: http://www.agoria.be/geotic

GEO-case in re-use of public sector information (PSI)

by Tanguy De Lestré

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