(Revised) PSI Directive Theme: Reuse

The benefit of data appears when it is used, simply making data available to the public isn’t enough. When government encourages data re-use actively, the likelihood of useful end user services increase and ultimately provide value for society as a whole. Commercial re-use necessitates knowledge of which data that can be re-used, low barriers to entry (e.g. clear terms of re-use) and a supporting legal framework. While many public sector bodies in Europe now make public data available the results in pan-european services and re-use by commercial vendors has likely not reached its full potential.

The (Revised) PSI directive says:

Open data policies which encourage the wide availability and re-use of public sector information for private or commercial purposes, with minimal or no legal technical or financial constraints, and which promote the circulation of information not only for economic operators but also for the public, can play an important role in kick-starting the development of new services based on novel ways to combine and make use of such information, stimulate economic growth and promote social engagement.

Best practices in this area aim to lower the barriers for re-use.

• Open Data Business Models & Value Disciplines
• Cite the Original Publication
• Make data available through an API
• Establish an Open Data Ecosystem
• (Re)use federated tools
• Standards for Geospatial Data
• Provide data license information
• Follow Licensing Terms
• Provide locale parameters metadata
• Provide structural metadata
• Use persistent URIs as identifiers of datasets
• Use persistent URIs as identifiers within datasets
• Provide Complementary Presentations
• Provide data provenance information
• Provide real-time access
• Support Open Data Start Ups
• Provide Subsets for Large Datasets
• Provide version history
• Provide a version indicator