EN    EN  
 EUROPEAN COMMISSION 
Brussels, 12.12.2011 
SEC(2011) 1552 final 
  
COMMISSION STAFF WORKING PAPER 
IMPACT ASSESSMENT 
Accompanying the document 
Proposal for a  
DIRECTIVE OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND THE COUNCIL amending 
European Parliament and Council Directive 2 003/98/EC on the re-use  of public sector 
information 
{COM(2011) 877 final} 
{SEC(2011) 1551 final}  
 
EN 2   EN TABLE OF CONTENTS 
1. Procedural issues and consultation............................................................................... 5 
1.1. Background ................................................................................................................ .. 5 
1.2. Implementation of the Directive .................................................................................. 6 1.3. Public consultation....................................................................................................... 7 
1.4. Expertise................................................................................................................. ...... 7 
1.5. Commission Inter-Service Group ................................................................................ 8 1.6. Impact Assessment Board............................................................................................ 8 2. Problem definition........................................................................................................ 8 2.1. Definition of public sector information........................................................................ 9 2.2. Who is affected .......................................................................................................... 1 1 
2.3. Analysis of the current PSI market ............................................................................ 11 2.4. Assessment of the impact of the current Directive .................................................... 12 2.5. Estimated market developments ................................................................................ 13 2.6. Remaining problems .................................................................................................. 15 2.6.1. Insufficient clarity and transparency.......................................................................... 15 2.6.2. Locked resources........................................................................................................ 16 
2.6.3. Excessive charging and lack of a level playing field ................................................. 17 
2.6.4. Insufficient enforcement of re-use provisions............................................................ 18 2.6.5. Incoherent approach across the Member States......................................................... 19 2.7. Subsidiarity assessment.............................................................................................. 19 2.7.1. Necessity of action at the EU level ............................................................................ 19 2.7.2. EU added value .......................................................................................................... 20 
2.7.3. International obligations............................................................................................. 21  
2.8. Conclusions on the problem....................................................................................... 21 3. Objectives.................................................................................................................. . 22 
3.1. General objectives...................................................................................................... 22  
3.2. Specific objectives ..................................................................................................... 23  
3.3. Operational objectives................................................................................................ 24 3.4. Consistency of PSI policy objectiv es with other EU policies.................................... 25 
 
EN 3   EN 3.4.1. PSI policy and EU objectives of a horizontal  nature such as th e Europe 2020 Strategy 
and promoting democratic principles......................................................................... 25 
3.4.2. PSI policy and the EU rules competition rules .......................................................... 25 3.4.3. PSI policy and open data policy................................................................................. 25 3.4.4. PSI policy and environmental policy ......................................................................... 26 3.4.4.1. The PSI Directive and the Directive on pub lic access to environmental information26 
3.4.4.2. The PSI Directive and the INSPIRE Directive .......................................................... 26 3.4.5. PSI policy and the integrated maritime policy........................................................... 26 3.4.6. PSI policy and the common transport policy ............................................................. 26 3.4.7. PSI policy and the initiative on open access to scientific information ...................... 27 
3.4.8. PSI policy and the policy on digiti sation and cultural heritage ................................. 27 
3.4.9. PSI policy and the long-term sustainabili ty of public finances for a recovering 
economy ..................................................................................................................... 28 
4. Alternative policy options.......................................................................................... 28 4.1. Option 1: No policy change: no chan ges to the Directive (baseline)......................... 28 
4.2. Option 2: Discontinuing existing EU actio n: repeal of the PSI Directive ................. 29 
4.3. Option 3: Soft law measures ...................................................................................... 29 
4.3.1. Guidelines on licensing.............................................................................................. 29 
4.3.2. Guidelines on cost calculation for allowable charges................................................ 30 4.3.3. Guidance on data formats........................................................................................... 30 4.4. Option 4: Legislative amendments............................................................................. 31 4.4.1. Obligation to define the scope of public tasks by legislation..................................... 31 
4.4.2. Obligation to deliver data in machin e-readable formats where possible and 
appropriate.................................................................................................................. 32  
4.4.3. Extending the scope of the Directive ......................................................................... 32 4.4.3.1. Extending the scope to public service broadcasters................................................... 32 4.4.3.2. Extending the scope to the educational and research sector ...................................... 33 4.4.3.3. Extending the scope to the cultural sector.................................................................. 34 4.4.4. Amending the general principle................................................................................. 37 4.4.5. Amending the principles governing charging............................................................ 39 4.4.5.1. Principle of charging based on marginal costs........................................................... 40 4.4.5.2. Reversal of the burden of proof ................................................................................. 43 
 
EN 4   EN 4.4.6. Requirement to establish an effective re dress system and to designate independent 
PSI regulators............................................................................................................. 43 
4.5. Option 5: Packaged solution ...................................................................................... 44 5. Assessment of policy options..................................................................................... 44 5.1. Option 1: No changes to the Directive (baseline) ...................................................... 44 5.2. Option 2: Discontinuing existing EU ac tion (repeal of the PSI Directive)................ 46 
5.3. Option 3: Soft law measures ...................................................................................... 47 5.4. Option 4: Legislative amendments............................................................................. 48 5.5. Option 5: Packaged solution ...................................................................................... 53 5.6. Implementation costs ................................................................................................. 54 5.6.1. Option 1: No changes to the Directive (baseline) ...................................................... 54 5.6.2. Option 2: Discontinuing existing EU ac tion (repeal of the PSI Directive)................ 54 
5.6.3. Option 3: Soft law measures ...................................................................................... 54 5.6.4. Option 4: Legislative amendments............................................................................. 54 5.6.5. Option 5: Packaged solution ...................................................................................... 56 5.7. Comparison of options ............................................................................................... 56 5.8. Conclusion................................................................................................................ .. 61 
6. Monitoring and evaluation ......................................................................................... 61 
7. Annexes..................................................................................................................... . 62 
Annex 1: Implementation of the Directive............................................................................... 63 Annex 2: Overview of the result s of the public consultation................................................... 65 
Annex 3: Key findings of the studies....................................................................................... 70 Annex 4: Examples of difficulties in acces sing PSI for re-use (pricing and licensing 
conditions).................................................................................................................... ............ 75 
Annex 5: Charging policies in the cultural sector .................................................................... 77 Annex 6: Overview of charging tend encies by public sector bodies ....................................... 79 
Annex 7: Machine-readable formats ........................................................................................ 83 
 
EN 5   EN 1. PROCEDURAL ISSUES AND CONSULTATION  
1.1. Background  
Directive 2003/98/EC of the Eu ropean Parliament and the C ouncil on the re-use of public 
sector information (‘the PSI Directive’ or ‘t he Directive’) was adopted on 17 November 2003. 
The Directive aimed to facilitate the re-use  of PSI throughout the EU by harmonising the 
basic re-use conditions and removing major barri ers to re-use in the internal market. The 
Directive contains provisions on non-disc rimination, charging, exclusive arrangements, 
transparency, licensing and practic al tools to facilitate the di scovery and re-use of public 
documents.   
The Directive is not a freedom of information act . It does not affect national rules on access to 
information, but builds on them. Public sector  information cannot be -reused unless it is 
accessible or has been publicly disseminated. Ho wever, not all accessible documents are re-
usable, e.g. those containing personal data or material protected by intellectual property 
rights. 
The Directive is a building block of the Digi tal Agenda and of the Europe 2020 Strategy for 
achieving smart, sustainable and inclusive growth1. The legal framework established by the 
Directive aims to unlock the economic potential of government -owned data by making these 
resources available for commercial or non-commer cial re-use on permissive terms so as to 
stimulate innovation. The economic importance of open data resources, of which government 
data are a component, is now wi dely recognised. For instance,  according to a 2010 report by 
The Economist, data have become ‘an economic raw input almost  on par with capital and 
labour’2, while the Digital Britain Fi nal Report recognises data as ‘an innovation currency … 
the lifeblood of the knowledge economy’3. However, beyond fuelling innovation and creativity 
that stimulate economic growth, open public data also make governments transparent, 
accountable and more efficient.  
In order to fully unlock the potential of governme nt data, the EU needs to act according to a 
coherent approach based on: (1) creating the be st legal framework in favour of re-use of 
public data; (2) coordinating measures undertaken  at Member State and EU level to help 
public sector bodies embrace the open data concept and (3) mobilising available financing instruments to support R&D a nd innovation in tools for open data and tools based on open 
data.  
The first challenge is to provide the market with the optimal legal framework that will 
facilitate and stimulate actua l commercial and non-commercial re-use of public open data. 
Ultimately, therefore, the Directive and its revisi on are aimed at catalysing a change of culture 
in the public sector, creating a favourable envi ronment for value-added activities resulting 
from the re-use of public information resources. 
Article 13 of the Directive mandated a review of  the application of th e Directive by 1 July 
2008. The review was carried out by the Commission and published as Communication 
                                                
 
1 http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/digital-agenda/index_en.htm   
2 http://www.economist .com/node/15557443 . 
3 http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/in teractive.bis.gov.uk/digitalbritain/report/ . 
 
EN 6   EN COM(2009) 2124. It found that despite the progress made a number of barrier s still persisted, 
namely attempts by public sector bodies to maximise cost recovery, as opposed to benefits for the wider economy; competition between the public  and the private sector; practical issues 
hindering re-use, such as the lack of informa tion on available PSI; and the mindset of public 
sector bodies failing to real ise the economic potential. 
The Commission concluded that a further revi ew should be carried out by 2012 when more 
evidence on the impact, effects and application of the Direc tive would be available.  
This impact assessment (IA) report examines possible options for dealing with problems and 
challenges identified during the second review  of the Directive announced in the 2009 
Communication. This review of th e PSI Directive is a key action of the Digital Agenda for 
Europe (key action 1c). Under the Roadmap set for the Digital Agenda, the review of the PSI 
Directive would be concluded by 2012 in accord ance with the conclusion s of the 2009 review 
Communication. However, in view of in view of the large economic potential of unlocking 
public sector data and its cont ribution to the 2020 Agenda, the current review was frontloaded 
to 2011. 
In particular, the report examin es whether it is necessary to ex tend the scope of application of 
the Directive, amend the general principle or amend the charging,  licensing and other 
provisions of the Directive with a view to maki ng the internal market for the re-use of PSI 
function more efficiently and stimulating the development of the Eur opean content industry. 
1.2. Implementation of the Directive  
All Member States have implemented the PSI Directive, although only f our of them met the 
deadline of 1 July 2005 (for methods of implementation, pl ease refer to Annex 1).  
The Commission opened 17 infringement cases
5 for failure to notify national measures 
transposing the Directive. The C ourt of Justice of the EU (ECJ ) delivered four judgments for 
failure to notify6. 
In addition, the Commission opened a further five  cases, this time for incorrect transposition 
of the Directive. Two of those cases (against Italy and Sweden) were successfully closed in 
September 2010 after new national legislati on was adopted correc tly transposing the 
Directive, two other cases (again st Estonia and Slovakia) are at early stages of the procedure 
and one case (against Poland) is cu rrently pending before the ECJ. 
The less than perfect implemen tation of the Directiv e was mainly due to  the novelty of the 
topic of re-use of public sector information at the time the instrument was adopted and the 
initial confusion between the c oncepts of re-use of information and access to information.  
In line with the Commission Communication on better monito ring of the application of 
Community law (COM(2002) 725), the Comm ission has been closely monitoring the 
                                                 
4 http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexU riServ.do?uri=COM:2009:0212:FIN:EN:PDF. 
5 Non-communication of implementation measures initially concerned BE, CZ, DE, GR, ES, IT, CY, LV, 
LT, LU, MT, NL, AT, PT and HU, and non-conformity of national implementing measures with the 
Directive concerned IT, PL and SE. 
6 For non-communication of implementation measures regarding BE, ES, DE and AT. 
 
EN 7   EN implementation process and providing technical assistance. It has also pursued intensive 
administrative cooperation with Member States.  
In addition, the Commission has undertaken several actions to support the proper application 
and implementation of the PSI Di rective (list in Annex 1).  
1.3. Public consultation  
A wide-ranging public consultation on the review of the Directive was held in accordance 
with established Commission standards. Th e consultation was open from 9 September 2010 
until 30 November 2010. All interest ed parties, includ ing governments, public sector content 
holders (including from curre ntly excluded sectors), comme rcial and non-commercial re-
users, experts and academics as well as ci tizens, were invited to contribute.  
The consultation yielded 598 replies, whic h were published on the Commission’s PSI 
website. They reflect the different actors presen t in the PSI value chain: PSI content holders 
(8 %), other public authoritie s not holding any PSI (4  %), PSI re-users (13  %), academics and 
experts (23  %), citizens (48  %) and respondents identified as ‘other’ (4  %). 
In summary, responses to this consultation demonstrate that althoug h compared with the 
previous review the culture of re-use has made headway in many Member States (in particular 
the UK, France, Denmark), much remains to be done to maximise the potential of PSI re-use 
and to fully exploit the rules established by the 2003 PSI Directive, several provisions of 
which require amendment or clarification. 
Public sector bodies and re-users alike called for clarification of and guidance on the charging 
and licensing principles and on data formats. A higher rate of responding re-users than PSI 
holders were in favour of ame nding the Directive, in particul ar on the issue of changing the 
general principle (to make accessible information re-usable) and of adopting additional measures (towards opening up public data resources  and practical measures facilitating re-use 
such as asset lists of available documents, simplified or no licensing conditions, marginal 
costs, etc.) although the rates ar e not very representative as many PSI holders did not answer 
many of the individual questions. An overview of  results of the consultation is attached in 
Annex 2
7. 
1.4. Expertise  
The Commission has conducted the following studies to assess the different aspects of the PSI 
re-use market, including its economic value: MEPSIR, Study on Exclusive Agreements, Economic Indicators and Case St udies on PSI pricing models, Study on pricing models for 
PSI, Study on market value of PSI, St udy on re-use of cultural material
8. Key findings of the 
studies are reproduced in Annex 3. 
In addition, the LAPSI9 (Legal Aspects of Public Sector  Information) thematic network 
looked into some specific legal issues durin g the first quarter of 2011. These included 
questions on (1) possible exceptions to a defau lt rule of charging marginal costs, (2) public 
                                                 
7 A full report is available at http://tinyurl.com/PSIconsultation . 
8 A full report is available at http://tinyurl.com/culturePSI . 
9 http://www.lapsi-project.eu/ . 
 
EN 8   EN tasks and non-discrimination, (3) whether or not public undertaki ngs should be covered by the 
PSI Directive, and (4) licensing.  
Finally, further data have been gathered through networking, coope ration, coordination and 
awareness-raising activities with  Member States and stakeholde rs. The ePSIplatform provides 
wide-ranging PSI data across the EU10.  
1.5. Commission Inter-Service Group  
An Inter-Service Steering Group was set up in  August 2010 to prepare the impact assessment 
for the review of the PSI Directive. The followi ng DGs and services were invited: the SG, the 
LS, COMP, DIGIT, EAC, ENTR, ENV, JUST, MARE, MARKT and RTD. The first meeting 
of the Steering Group took place on 4 August 2010 and subsequent  meetings were held on 4 
March, 8 June and 13 July 2011. The text of th e IA Report was submitted to the members of 
the IA Steering Group for a fina l round of comments on 19 July. 
The Steering Group contribu ted to major steps in  the preparation of the impact assessment 
and in particular to the questions for the publ ic online consultation on the review as well as 
the draft impact as sessment report. 
1.6. Impact Assessment Board 
The meeting of the Impact Assessment Board took place on 31st of August 2011. The Board 
issued a positive overall opinion stating that  the impact assessment report presents an 
adequate level of assessment. The Board al so indicated several recommendations for 
improvement. The present report takes into acco unt all the recommendations of the Board. In 
particular the context of the proposal was clar ified and definitions were improved. Also the 
presentation of policy options was enhanced an d the issue of expected costs for PSI holders 
and relations between the PSI and environmental policies were clarified. The present report 
also improved monitoring and evaluation arrangements.  
2. PROBLEM DEFINITION  
The following problems and barriers pers ist with respect to PSI re-use:  
(1) Insufficient clarity and transparen cy, including practical issues, 
(2) Licensing terms that are restrictive or unclear, or lacking altogether, 
(3) Lack of information on available data,  
(4) Lack of a robust complaints procedure,  
(5) Locked resources, 
(6) Excessive charging and lack of a level pl aying field, including attempts by public 
sector bodies to maximise cost recover y, as opposed to benefits for the wider 
economy,  
                                                 
10 http://www.epsiplatform.eu/. 
 
EN 9   EN (7) Unfair competition practices between  the public and the private sector, 
(8) Incoherent approach within and across the Member States,  
(9) Ineffective enforcement mechanisms. 
In this report, the Commission mu st assess whether, in the light of developments in the PSI 
re-use market and of experience with the applica tion of the current Directive, there is a need 
to amend its provisions. In consid ering this issue the Commission has to take into account the 
changes in the re-use markets brought about by the Directive and to assess whether barriers 
remain and, if so, what they are and how best they can be tackled.  
2.1. Definition of public sector information  
Public Sector Information (PSI) is publicly funded information produced or collected by the 
public sector. Data produced or collected by state owned companies operating under market 
conditions and subject to priv ate and commercial laws are not covered by this definition. 
Public bodies are the largest produ cers of information in Europe.11 PSI includes a plethora of 
data, listed in the table below. The list is indi cative and not exhaustive and individual domains 
are not exclusive, e.g. the category “Natural re source information” includes information that 
can be part of “Scientific information” and “Research data” or “Geographic information”.  
Cartographic information 
Land registry data 
Spatial data 
Topographical information Geographic information 
Geological information 
Oceanographic data 
Hydrographic data 
Environmental quality data Meteorological and 
environmental information 
Weather data 
Financial information 
Business register data 
Company information 
Economic and statistical data Economic and business 
information 
Industry and trade information 
Transport network information 
Traffic data Traffic and transport information 
Car registration data 
Case law 
Legislation 
Patent and trademark data Legal system information 
Crime Data/Statistics COMMERCIAL EXPLOITATION OF PSI 
Scientific information and research data – currently outside the scope of 
                                                 
11 Study on commercial exploitation of Europe's Public Sector Information, PIRA International, 2000: 
http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/policy/psi/ docs/pdfs/pira_study/commercial_final_report.pdf   
 
EN 10   EN the PSI Directive 
National proceedings of governments Political content 
Non-procedural data 
Museum material 
Gallery material 
Library resources Cultural content – currently 
outside the scope of the PSI 
Directive 
Archival content 
Non-PSI data is e.g. transact ional data of private companie s including information about 
customers, suppliers and operations.12  
Re-use of public sector information means any creative use of data by e.g. adding value to the 
data, combining data from different source s to produce a desired result and developing 
applications, for both commercial and non-co mmercial purposes. ‘R e-use’ centres on 
exploiting the economic value of public information where PSI se rves as ‘raw material’ to 
develop new products and services. Whereas public  bodies are the creators and suppliers of 
the original material, the private sector plays a major role as an intermediary and information 
processor between the source of the informa tion (public body) and the end users (figure 
below). Public bodies also integrate the value ch ain vertically and provide products directly to 
final users13.  
Public bodyPublic bodyPrivate 
companyPrivate 
companyEnd userEnd userCommercial re-use 
of public sector 
information
InformationPayment
Public bodyPublic body End userEnd userMaking available 
public sector 
content
ContentFree Access or 
Payment
Major / established flowMinor / possible flow
 
Source: Review of recent studies on PSI re- use and related market developments, G. 
Vickery 
Businesses use PSI in three main ways: for own business purposes; to produce products for 
consumers; as an input to produce products fo r industry. 'Own business use' include e.g. 
retailers with ordering systems, which allow th em to adapt rapidly to changes in demand for 
products where the key factor is the weather (e.g. sales of ice-cream, barbecues and other 
summer goods). These retailers use weather data  to predict short-term demand patterns. 
Suppliers of goods or services which appeal to particular populatio n groups, e.g. elderly 
people, may make use of population and social trend statistics to estimate long-term demand. 
                                                 
12 "Big Data: the next frontier for innovation, competition and productivity", Report of the McKinsey 
Global Institute, May 2011 
13 Review of recent studies on PSI re-use and related market developments, Graham Vickery, Information 
Economics, July 2011. 
 
EN 11   EN Businesses also use PSI as an i nput into products developed for i ndustry, use of maritime data 
from international hydrographic offices to produ ce a range of naval navigation products such 
as radars or autopilot systems fo r the commercial shipping industry.  
2.2. Who is affected 
Products and services based wholly or partly  on PSI (e.g. GPS, weather forecasts, financial 
and insurance services, ‘apps’) generate new bus inesses and jobs, increase consumer welfare 
and enhance citizens’ public engagement. Public sector content has an important role in the digital age as a driver of not only economic, but also civic activity. 
Key stakeholders comprise Member States, thei r national administrations and all their public 
sector bodies as they are the s ource of the data in question. Th ese institutions are affected to 
the extent that they must devise a structure to make the data they  produce and/or collect 
suitable for re-use and to pr ocess the re-use requests.  
Secondly, PSI re-users, both commercial and non-co mmercial, are affected in that their rights 
regarding the re-use of PSI are defined in the pr ovisions of the Directiv e. A reliable supply of 
quality data is furthermore a prerequisite for the development of markets for re-use of PSI. 
Thirdly, consumers and citizens at large are affect ed in at least two fundamental ways. On the 
one hand, re-use of PSI results in an improve d offer of attractive and useful products and 
services, which enhance consumer and busine ss welfare. Moreover, PSI re-use positively 
impacts governance by enhancing the ability of ci tizens to engage in th e political process and 
by requiring greater transparency  and governmental accountability. 
2.3. Analysis of the current PSI market
14  
Estimated on the basis of the latest availabl e studies, the narrowly defined EU27 direct PSI-
related market was worth around €28 billion in 2008. Taking 7% per year as a lower estimate, 
the EU27 PSI market could have grown to €32 billion by 2010, provided that PSI markets 
continued to be unaffected by the recession. With respect to individual Member States, 
estimates of the value of the PSI re-use market in the UK range from €750 million in 200515 
to €6 billion in 2010. 
In 2009, the Spanish Government analysed a sect or defined as ‘the set of companies that 
create applications, products and/or value-added services for third parties, using public sector 
information’, including business/economic, le gal, geographic/cartographic, meteorological 
data, social data/statistics and transport data. According to the results of the analysis, business turnover directly associated with these ac tivities is €
 550-650 million, 35-40  % of total activity 
amounting to €  1.6 billion, and the size of th e sector is similar to the video game software 
development industry and online advertising16.  
Although care needs to be taken with these estimates as they come from a wide range of 
sources using different methodologies, it is clear that even the narrow PSI-based market is 
                                                 
14 Op.cit. Graham Vickery, July 2011 
15 The commercial use of public information (CUPI), Report of  the UK OFT, December 2006, 
http://www.oft.gov.uk/shared_oft/re ports/consumer_protection/oft861.pdf  
16 Source: ‘Annual Report on Digital Contents in Spain 2010’, ONTSI. Data for 2009: total €  8.0 billion, 
video games (software) 8  % (€  640 million), online advertising 8.2  % (€  656 million): www.ontsi.red.es . 
 
EN 12   EN economically important and the direct economic ‘f ootprint’ is probably larger due to PSI use 
and re-use activities in other industries and in government.  
On the other hand, direct revenues to government s from PSI are relatively low and are much 
lower than the estimated first- and second -order benefits from access to PSI. Upper-end 
estimates calculated from the most comprehe nsive data available suggest that EU-27 
government revenues are of the order of €  1.4 billion based on revenues in the Netherlands, 
and even higher at around €  3.4 billion if based on the United Kingdom. These two countries 
have been relatively effective in collecting re venues, and revenues for the EU-27 are likely to 
be considerably lower. Despite the relatively lo w level of revenues, there are indirect effects 
of reduced access and pricing at more than ma rginal costs of distribution, including lower 
growth, reduced employment and reduced dynamism  of new information-based industries, in 
addition to foregone government taxation re venues from higher-growth industries.  
2.4. Assessment of the impact of the current Directive 
The PSI Directive has harmonised the basic legal framework for re-using PSI in the internal 
market in order to facilitate re-use of PSI across the EU, where the Member States used to 
apply markedly different rules and practices. 
New re-use friendly legislation has been introduced (BE, SE). FR has introduced the principle 
of marginal costs in its legi slation and individual public sect or bodies have moved towards a 
marginal cost regime, e.g. the Spanish land regist ry, or drastically reduc ed their prices, e.g. 
the Austrian Mapping Agency (BEV), which reduced its prices by up to 97  % for certain 
datasets. The decrease in prices has been offs et by the huge increase in demand (in some cases 
by 7  000  %) and BEV’s total turnove r has remained stable. 
Web portals on available PSI as a tool for fi nding, using and trading information are being 
created, e.g. in the UK, FR, SI, ES, FIN, IT.  
In the study evaluating the impact of the Directiv e in three main sectors of PSI — geographic, 
meteorological and legal/administrative informa tion — the different indicators monitored to 
measure PSI re-use highlight market growth and increased re-use in a ll of these sectors in 
recent years17. 
In the geographic sector, dow nload volumes of PSI in 2007 had grown by approximately 
350  % since 200218, and in Germany alone the market was estimated to be €  1.5 billion, a 50  % 
increase since 200019. National meteorological offices ha ve reported increases in download 
volumes of 70  % between 2002 and 200720, and the EU meteorological  market was estimated 
in 2006 to be worth €  530 million, a 60  % increase since 199821. In the legal and 
administrative  sector, the majority of content holders have made significant changes to their 
data policies in the last few years and offe r the information now for free on the internet. 
Content holders have reported 40  % growth in the market since 2002 and re-users also 
                                                 
17 Assessment of the Re-use of Public Sector Information (PSI) in the Geographical Information, 
Meteorological Information and Legal Information sectors, MICUS, 12/2008. 
18 Ditto. 
19 Study on ‘Prospects for Business Models of Ge rman Companies in the European and Global 
Geoinformation Market’, MICUS, Düsseldorf/ Berlin, May 2008. 
20 Op. cit., MICUS 12/2008 Study. 
21 Towards a stronger European market in applied meteorology , Dr R. E. W. Pettifer, Meteorological 
Applications, Volume 15, Issue 2, pp. 305-312. 
 
EN 13   EN confirm a steady increase in income22. In France, the legal inform ation sector is one of the 
most dynamic sectors in the professional dig ital information market , with strong market 
growth, 17  % in 2007, resulting from high value-adding23. 
In new sectors, satellite naviga tion has seen exponentia l growth during the past decade as it 
affects many economic sectors (e.g. road tr ansport). The worldwide annual market for 
positioning services and equipment climbe d from €1bn in 2000 to €20bn in 2005. Recently, 
the market has started to gather speed. For example, over 20 million personal navigation devices were sold in 2007 — a fivefold increase over 2005.  
In addition, although the main goal of the PSI Dir ective is of an economic  nature, re-use of 
public data is also increasingly perceived as ly ing at the heart of demo cratic engagement and 
offering potential for innovative ch anges in the delivery of public  services and for citizen 
empowerment.  
Nevertheless, despite these ach ievements, implementation of the Directive and progress in 
PSI re-use across the Member States has been  uneven and much of the potential of PSI 
remains untapped as many resources are locked  in, difficult to find or made available on 
prohibitive terms, thereby preventing developmen t of the national and EU PSI re-use markets 
(see Annex 1).  
2.5. Estimated market developments 
All studies show relatively rapid growth in PSI-related markets, no matter whether they are 
more or less open. Growth rates are es timated variously in the range of 6-11
 %24.  
A recent study estimates the total public sector information related market in 2008 at € 28 
billion across the EU.25 The same study indicates that th e overall economic gains from further 
opening up public sector information by allowing easy access are at arou nd € 40 billion a year 
for the EU27. The aggregate direct and indirect  economic impacts from PSI applications and 
use across the whole EU27 economy would be in the order of € 140 billion annually. 
Economic valuations also demonstrate that the dir ect market associated w ith the use of PSI is 
less important than related spillovers and new us es in a wide variety of goods and services 
industries. Thus future innovations associated wi th easier access to PSI can be expected to add 
further economic and social benefits to the EU-27 economy26. These estimates are based on 
an in-depth review and analysis of the most viable aggregate studies available of plausible 
values for the PSI market, the potential gain s from freeing up access and estimating the wider 
economic impacts that could accrue from using PSI across the economy.27 
Recently, an in-depth survey across the EU- 27 presented a picture of generally dynamic 
growth in the geographic information, meteor ological information and legal information 
sectors through 2008. Unmet market demand for more PSI is significant, and it was 
                                                 
22 Op. cit., MICUS 12/2008 Study. 
23 Groupement Français des Industries de l’Information (GFII), L’information électronique 
professionnelle en France: Le marché en 2007 et les tendances. 
24 Ditto. 
25 Review of recent studies on PSI re-use and related market developments, G. Vickery, August 2011. 
26 Ditto. 
27 Op.cit. Vickery 
 
EN 14   EN recommended that PSI holders focus on crucial issues of licensing and pricing and provide 
greater support for PSI re-use28. 
In the sub-area of environmental impact a ssessment studies the market was worth €  1 billion 
per year in 2009. Improved access to information, saving up to €  200 million per year, 
including sub-national assessments, could in crease market values by a factor of 1029. In the 
satellite navigation sector, by 2025 the mark et in Europe is predicted to reach €  135 billion 
and support many new jobs30. 
In the geospatial sector, benefits  could be increased by some 10-40  %, depending on the 
estimation method, by improving access and data standards. Better policies in the area of geospatial applications in local government  could help the productivity gains from 
applications almost double over the next five y ears. Large markets are also estimated in the 
financial, energy and construction sectors
31. 
PSI is an important raw input for the developm ent of applications. Even if North America 
remains the lead market, the Markets and Markets report (2011) estimates that the European mobile applications market is expected to  become the largest market by 2015, at US$ 8.4 
billion, and to grow at a compound a nnual rate of 33.6 percent during 2010-2015
32.  
A range of detailed national studies points to growing mark ets and new applications. For 
example in Denmark the energy sector indicated that better access to PSI could be of 
significant value, with the energy industry estim ating that in conjuncti on with the construction 
industry the potential national market for energy improvements drawing on various 
government data sources is €  0.54-2.7 billion. For the United Ki ngdom welfare gains to the 
whole economy of moving to marginal cost pr icing and easier access were estimated to be 
worth at the upper end €  5.1-6.7 billion per year, with middle range estimates of €  1.8-2.25 
billion. Although the UK PSI access and licensing system remains somewhat different from 
other EU-27 countries, UK estimates of the pos itive impacts of removing barriers to access 
are likely to be a realistic proxy across the EU-27, due to the general nature of disincentives to 
use, lack of information, poor interoperability etc. that have stifled easy use of PSI. At a 
different level there are quantifiable benefits in time saved in work and leisure activities from 
making information flows simpler and more effi cient. In Norway, for example, time savings 
of as little as 2 hours per person per year were  conservatively estimated to be worth around 
€ 32.5 million in 201033.  
Overall, exploiting the potential in the PSI mark et is seen to require lower pricing and less 
restrictive licensing ag reements. Countries including France and the United Kingdom have 
radically overhauled their PSI access system s, and other countries including Denmark, 
Norway and Spain have made access easier and le ss costly. A number of countries have also 
                                                 
28 Ditto. 
29 Craglia, M., L. Pavanello and R. S. Smith (2010), “The Use of Spa tial Data for the Preparation of 
Environmental Reports in Europe”, European Commission Joint Research Centre Institute for 
Environment and Sustainability, Ispra, Italy, available at: http://ies.jrc.ec.europa.eu/uploads/SDI/ 
publications/JRC_technical%20report_2009%20EIASEA%20survey.pdf  
30 Galileo Facts&Figures. 
31 Op. cit. Vickery. 
32 http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market- Reports/mobile-applications-228.html. 
33 Ditto. 
 
EN 15   EN stressed the international dimensions of PSI  access, both in accessing international data, and 
in developing international markets for national data34. 
2.6. Remaining problems  
In practice, a company seeking to develop a commercial online product  that draws on public 
data across all the EU Member States is likely to be confronted with the following obstacles:  
• Insufficient clarity and transparency 
• Locked resources  
• Excessive charging and lack  of level playing field 
• Insufficient enforcement of re-use provisions 
• Incoherent approach across the Member States 
Despite the provisions of the Direc tive, practical barriers to re-use  persist at different stages of 
re-use. The replies to the public  consultation were a key source of information about these 
barriers. The following ones were most frequently listed. 
2.6.1.  Insufficient clarity and transparency 
Although data portals have been developing, re-use  is still hindered by lack of information 
about what data are actually available. Fu rther down the line, re-u sers still encounter 
restrictive or unclear rules governing access an d conditions of re-use; discouraging, unclear 
and inconsistent pricing of information when re -use of information is chargeable and complex 
and lengthy licensing procedures or the impossibility to obtain licences.  
In this respect, re-users responding to the cons ultation frequently indica ted that inconsistency 
in licensing terms and standard s is one of the major obstacl es facing commercial re-users, 
particularly those crea ting pan-European services. In a UK survey, over a thir d of respondents 
reported problems with PSI holders and over two thirds of these said that they were serious35. 
Among the problems listed were the lack of kno wledge about what information PSI bodies 
hold, inability to obtain PSI in  a sufficiently unrefined form  and on appropriate licensing 
terms to make their products and services fi nancially viable (only more expensive and 
sophisticated products are available)36. 
Euroalert.net is a brand owned by Gateway SC S3, focused on delivering innovative and cost-
efficient information services designed to a dd value to public sector information generated 
within the framework of public contracts publis hed in EU Member States as well as the 
information generated by EU Institutions own activity. According to Euroalert.net it is not 
always possible to sign a license agreement as some data holders are not still aware about 
open data policies or are simply not willing to release data for commercial re-use. In many 
cases this has been iden tified as the most important barrier to re-use public sector information, 
once the technical issues have been solved. 
                                                 
34 Ditto 
35 Op. cit. OFT CUPI, p. 6 
36 Ditto 
 
EN 16   EN A specific problem arises with respect to the issu e of public tasks. The sc ope of application of 
the Directive is currently defined by reference to activities falling within the scope of the public task of the public sector  bodies concerned, as defined by law or by other binding rules 
in the Member State or, in the absence of su ch rules, as defined in line with common 
administrative practice in the Member State in  question. The reference to Member States’ 
administrative practice for the purpose of defining  what constitutes a public task has led some 
public sector bodies to refer to the concept of public task in order to restrict the scope of 
application of the Directive and escape provi sions prohibiting cross subsidies and other 
preferential treatments in regards of their ow n commercial activities. This situation of 
insecurity with respect to which data do fall within the Directive’s scope has negative impacts on re-use possibilities and reduces incentives for commercial re-use. 
Overall, the whole process of obt aining permission to re-use public  sector information is still 
often likely to be time-consuming and bureaucra tic. Indeed, as demonstrated by the findings 
of a study, small and medium-sized enterprises are likely to find the process too complex and 
shelve their product simply because they would not have the resources to follow the process 
through to conclusion
37.  
In the United States access to and re-use of federal government information is enhanced by a 
clear and simple legislative framework. Citi zens and businesses en joy a broad right to 
electronically access this information and have  extensive possibilities to re-use it for 
commercial purposes. There are no restricti ons on re-using public sector information 
generated by federal agencies. Fees for re-use  are limited to, at most, marginal costs for 
reproduction and dissemination. Since 2009, 389 730 ra w and geospatial datasets have been 
published and 1 019 government apps have been developed. 
2.6.2.  Locked resources 
The Directive exempts several types of data from  its scope of application: data protected by 
third-party intellectual property rights, data pr otected under accessibility regimes and privacy 
protection laws and data from three exclude d sectors of activity — public broadcasting, 
educational and research establishments and cultural institutions. Of these exemptions, the specific feature of the excluded sectors is th at they are indeed re-usable public sector 
information and are already to a varying extent  subject to re-use, albeit under unregulated 
conditions, in particular public  domain cultural material.  
There were several reasons for excluding the three sectors from th e scope of the Directive.  
Exclusion of cultural institutions resulted from th e fact that much of the cultural material 
remained outside the scope of the Directive due to third party IP rights. The remaining public domain material was predominantly in analogue formats, which in any case restricted re-use 
possibilities. In addition, at the time of nas cent re-use markets and related insecurities, 
cultural institutions were anxious about preserving their ability to control the way in which their collections were being used. In the m eantime, digitisation of cultural heritage has 
resulted in the availability of significant amounts of valuable digital cultural material that is 
either public domain or protected by institutions' own rights and which is increasingly re-used, including in commercial products such as smartphone applications. Also, cultural 
                                                
 
37 Op.cit. Deloitte 
 
EN 17   EN institutions have increasingly em braced the re-use market to raise extra funds and because re-
use contributes to the fulfilment of their ma in public task – dissemination of culture 
Exclusion of public service broadcasters (P SBs) was mandated by their special status 
guaranteed by the system of pub lic broadcasting, which grants  PSBs exclusive competence to 
organise the commercial exploi tation of their material, within the framework of the EU 
competition rules. In addition, third-party intell ectual property rights (e.g. music rights) form 
an integral part of virtually al l broadcast material so nearly all broadcast material held by 
PSBs that could potentially  be suitable for the re-use woul d be excluded. These considerations 
have not changed since the Directive was adopted in 2003. 
Finally, the research and educat ional sector was excluded par tly by virtue of intellectual 
property or other third-party rights covering mu ch of the material, but mainly because the 
research sector features its own dynamics and has a well established system for disseminating 
and exploiting research findings an d results. Access to research results and scientific journals 
has received much attention from scientis ts, publishers and policymakers and is being 
discussed within a separate channel, different from the generic discussion of availability of 
public data for re-use.  
2.6.3.  Excessive charging and lack of  a level playing field 
Despite some encouraging examples of individua l public sector bodies releasing their data for 
free or at marginal costs of distribution, in some markets re-users complain about charges 
being set at a level that effectively constitutes a barrier to re-use, in particular for SMEs.  
Small companies, particularly start-up compan ies, cannot flourish when PSI holders practice 
prohibitive charges. This criticism was for ex ample made by re-users in the meteorological 
sector (see Annex 4 for detail s). High prices may result in a stagnation of the sector, with 
negative consequences for national treasuries.  
Some public bodies apply a unit pric e that is reasonable for a singl e unit, but not for the entire 
database. As a consequence, the total price of the full data set is prohibitive. For instance, the full database of CENDOJ (in charge of th e Spanish legal database) would cost €3.4m, 
although one unit (i.e. a single sentence) woul d be perfectly affordable at €1.5. The same 
circumstance applied to the former charging re gime of the French land registry, where the 
entire digital map would have cost a re-user €5.7m (the pric e of a single map was €9.5) and, 
therefore, despite interest on the part of re-users, was never bought
38. 
A study concluded that in those cases where cost-recovery regimes are still applied, the 
calculation basis for setting PSI re-use char ges appears to be weak. The public bodies 
concerned were mostly unable to  explain the basis for cost al location and, in some cases, the 
setting of charges seemed to be geared toward s filling budget gaps rather  than a cost-oriented 
tariff as is required under the Directive39. 
Many public sector bodies do not distinguish ad equately between the information for which 
they are the sole supplier (unrefined) and thei r information products and services to which 
they have added value (refined), which are or coul d also be provided by the private sector if it 
had access to the unrefined data on suitable terms.  This has a knock-on effect for pricing as 
                                                 
38 Op. cit. Deloitte. 
39 Pricing of Public Sector Information Study, Deloitte, July 2011. 
 
EN 18   EN public sector bodies fail to separate their unref ined and refined information operations, even 
at an accounting level. Costs are therefore not  always allocated between the unrefined and 
refined information operations of the public body, which cannot ensure th at the prices charged 
reflect the relevant costs of th eir provision. It also means that it is not possible to determine 
whether the prices of unrefined informati on, for businesses producing refined information 
products, are consistent with those charged in ternally within a PSI holder that produces 
refined information products.  
This specific problem arises when public sector bodies combin e the exercise of their public 
tasks (funded from the state budget)  with commercial revenue-rais ing activities, which are not 
in themselves prohibited by the PSI Directive.  There is evidence where the issue has been 
investigated at national level but re-users are unlikely to come forward for fear of negative 
consequences on their business relationship with the incumben t public bodies. The example 
below demonstrates the difficulties that re-use rs face in obtaining PSI for re-use in some 
markets. It also illustrates the reluctance to bring proceedings against public bodies that do not 
comply with the re-use provisions, for reasons  of reliance on the supply of data from the 
public body (a monopolist on the market) and insuffi cient or ineffective redress mechanisms. 
Problems were also identified in a UK 2006 Re port, which found that a PSI body had an 
explicit licensing exception policy that prevents  businesses from competing with the current 
value-added products of the PSI holder its elf or with any it intends to market.40 Also in the 
UK, businesses have been unable to gain licences of sufficient length to allow them to tender 
for a major government contract in competition with the PSIH from whom they need the licences.
41  
Problems with downstream access conditions and transparent wholesale pricing were also 
identified with regard to the Swedish national mapping agency (monopolist on several 
downstream markets) and the Swedish meteor ological and hydrologi cal institute. The 
Swedish Agency for Public Management (Statskontoret) found that private companies had difficulty entering the market for processe d geographic and meteorological information 
because of difficulties in accessing data from the two PSI bodies and of the lack of well-
defined boundaries between data production and data processing
42. 
While competing with the private sector on the markets for products and services based on the 
PSI that they produce and/or collect, these pub lic sector bodies tend to impose pricing and 
licensing conditions that prevent a level playin g field and ultimately prevent or eliminate 
competition on these markets. The missing or weak competition on many re-use markets 
ultimately has negative impacts on the economies at large.  
2.6.4.  Insufficient enforcement of re-use provisions 
The lack of an efficient and effective redress system was one of the major problems with the 
PSI re-use system identified by respondents to th e public consultation, in particular re-users, 
citizens and experts (see Annex 2).  
                                                 
40 Op. cit. OFT CUPI, p. 6 
41 Ditto 
42 Competition at the Public/Private  Interface, 2005 Report , Statskontortet (Swedi sh Agency for Public 
Management), available at http://www.statskontoret.se/upload/ Publikationer/2005/200519A.pdf   
 
EN 19   EN Although Member States have functioning genera l redress systems, only some have set up 
specific authorities to hear complaints against public bodies infringing the rules for re-use of 
PSI. While e.g. the Slovenian43 and French44 independent authorities are exemplary insofar as 
redress systems are concerned, re-users in mo st Member States face cumbersome and lengthy 
proceedings ill suited for dealing with their comp laints, which often require swift results. The 
lack of an effective redress mechanism in so me Member States (tim e to decision, effective 
competencies of bodies) prevents re-users from enforcing their rights against monopoly 
suppliers of PSI, leading to inefficiencies on so me markets, resulting in negative impacts on 
competition and innovation and ultimately on consumer welfare (see Annex 6 for examples on the market for meteorological information). 
In addition, due to the differences in the judi cial systems of individual Member States, the 
plaintiffs often face significan t costs and difficulties in id entifying competent courts or 
authorities and applicable rules of procedure, with negative imp acts on the internal market for 
re-use of PSI.  
2.6.5.  Incoherent approach across the Member States 
Implementation and application of the Directiv e and progress in PSI re-use across the EU 
Member States has been uneven, thereby preventi ng development of a true pan-EU PSI re-use 
market and leaving much of the potential of PSI untapped. The varying pace at which 
individual Member States are embracing the PSI  re-use policy risks further fragmenting the 
internal market to the detriment of busines ses, consumers and citizens. Examples of 
incoherencies abound, e.g. some Member States practise charging at ma rginal costs as a 
default principle; some have extended the prin ciple of re-usability to generally accessible 
material; effective and efficient redress systems are secured only in some Member States; discoverability of public data is very unequal fr om one Member State to another; some data 
are re-usable in one Member State but not in another (e.g. transport data).  
These inconsistencies and changing rules result in higher transaction costs for re-users 
engaging in cross-border activi ties, lowering the in centives to undertake them as companies 
cannot develop stable and sustai nable PSI-based business models
45. This fragmentation 
negatively impacts the ability to scale up of national businesses in the EU Member States. When constrained to operate within national bor ders or only a number of Member States, 
businesses fail to grow and the benefits of the internal market and its 500 million consumers remain illusionary. 
2.7. Subsidiarity assessment  
2.7.1.  Necessity of action at the EU level 
The PSI Directive was adopted on the basis of Article 114 TFEU (formerly Article 95 TEC). 
The revision will build on this legislation and the aim of the revising measure is to eliminate 
persisting and emerging differences between Me mber States on the exploitation of public 
sector information, which hamper the realisat ion of the full economic potential of this 
resource. Furthermore, the objectives of the revisi ng instrument are to facilitate the creation of 
EU-wide products and services based on PSI, to enhance an effective cross-border use of PSI 
                                                
 
43 Information Commissioner, http://www.ip-rs.si/?id=195 . 
44 Commission d’Accès aux Documents Administratifs, CADA, http://www.cada.fr/index.htm . 
45 Op. cit. Deloitte. 
 
EN 20   EN for value-added products and services, to limit distortions of competition on the EU market 
and to prevent the deepening of disparities amo ng Member States in dealing with re-use of 
PSI.  
The content of the revision corresponds to those aims. 
The economic importance of open da ta, and in particular of gove rnment data, as a basis for 
new information services and products is now more widely recognised than in 2002, when the 
Commission made its proposal for a Directive. While the basic framework rules for the re-use 
of public sector information have  been harmonised at EU leve l, several issues remain and 
some have emerged.  
As a result, the existing legal framework is  considered by stakeholders to no longer 
sufficiently provide conditions that can maximise the potential benefits of public data resources in Europe. With the development of  PSI-based activities, some of the current 
substantive rules hamper the de velopment of activitie s based on re-use of PSI and lead to a 
fragmented internal market as individual inte rested Member States adopt more advanced 
rules. It is thus clear that the objectives of the proposed ac tions cannot be achieved at the 
Member States' level. 
2.7.2.  EU added value  
The current charging regime, based on cost ma ximising allowed by the rules of the Directive 
is considered inadequate for incentivising activ ities based on re-use of public data. In fact, 
currently several Member States  have individually moved to the marginal costs charging 
regime while others have maintained the cost recovery regime (see Annex 1). Only action at 
EU level in the form of a bindi ng harmonising provision can ensu re that the default charging 
rule and exceptions are cohere nt across the EU in order to stimulate re-use activities. 
Moreover, in some Member States public bodies have discretion as to whether to permit re-
use
46. As a result, ‘ there is an obvious lack of harmoni sation amongst the Member States 
regarding re-use of public data, which may also appl y to (public) traffic data ’47. Action at EU 
level is necessary to guarantee e.g. that re-use is allowed for core valuable public sector data 
across Member States and that individual commercially active public bodies, such as 
meteorological or geographic institutes, do not hamper the development of innovative 
products and services.  
Also, difficulties with obtaining effective redress in several Member States when PSI re-use 
rules are infringed deter re-users  from engaging in ambitious re-use projects across the EU.  
Further harmonisation of the basi c principle, the charging regime, the scope or enforcement 
mechanisms in order to alleviate the fragmenta tion of the internal market and to stimulate 
cross-border PSI-based products a nd services cannot be achieved at Member State level alone.  
As regards the scope, the object of  the revision is not to regulate , directly or indirectly, the 
right of access to the public documents, which remains the sole and exclusive competence of 
                                                 
46 UK Re-use of Public Sector Information Regulations 2005, ‘A public sector body may permit re-use’ 
(regulation 7(1)). 
47 Study regarding guaranteed access to traffic and tr avel data and free provision of universal traffic 
information, Lyon, 11 October 2010. 
 
EN 21   EN Member States. The revised prov isions would apply to re-use of documents where these are 
generally accessible, includi ng under national access rules. 
Also, the object of the revision is not to regulate processing of personal data by public sector 
bodies or the status of intell ectual property rights, which are not affected  either in their 
existence, ownership or exercise beyond the bounda ries of the existing ru les of the Directive. 
This impact assessment demonstrates that w ithout targeted action at EU-level, regulatory 
activities at national level, which have already been initiated in a number of Member States, might result in even more significant differen ces that already exist. Those existing national 
provisions will in the absence of further harmonisation disturb the operation of the internal market. At the same time, the EU action is rest ricted to the elimination or prevention of the 
identified obstacles. 
2.7.3.  International obligations 
The PSI Directive sets conditions for re-use of PSI, some of which may be covered by 
intellectual property rights. By  doing so, the Directive imp acts the way, in which public 
bodies may exploit their intellectual property ri ghts but leaves intact the question of their 
existence and ownership. As a result, the rele vant provisions of the Directive must comply 
with the international obligations of the EU in  the area of intellectual property rights, and in 
particular with the applicab le provisions of the TRIPS Agreements and of the Berne 
Convention, which set the boundari es for exceptions or limita tions to intellectual property 
rights in national regimes. These exceptions and limitations may only apply if they do not 
impact the normal exploitation of a work and if they do not unduly prejudice the legitimate 
interests of rightsholders. 
The directive presently under review recogn ises, when setting boundary conditions of 
fairness, transparency, non-discrimination or prohibition of exclusive arrangements, that "The 
Directive does not affect the ex istence or ownership of intell ectual property rights of public 
sector bodies, nor does it limit the exercise of the rights  in any way beyond the boundaries 
set by this Directive"  [emphasis added]. This question has b een developed in further detail in 
section 4.4.4 below.  
2.8. Conclusions on the problem 
1. Although the overall PSI market is progr essing, opening up PSI  by allowing easy 
access at marginal cost can bring gains of around €
 40 billion for the EU-27, and 
aggregate direct and indirect economic impacts from PSI applications and use across the whole EU-27 economy  are of the order of  €
 140 billion, showing clearly that 
there are large economic benefits to be ga ined from easier access to and greater use 
of PSI.  
2. Lack of clarity and transparency as well as persisting restrictions prevent the EU 
from reaping all the benefits from the poten tial in re-use of PSI. Among the most 
important impediments are: the lack of a level playing field where public bodies 
compete with the private sector, excessive  pricing, restrictive licensing provisions, 
lack of information on available data  and insufficient redress mechanisms. 
3. The varying pace and extent to which individual Member States are embracing the 
PSI re-use policy and promoting a more ope n data culture risks further fragmenting 
 
EN 22   EN the internal market and hamper the business' s ability to scale up to the detriment of 
businesses, consumers and citizens.  
3. OBJECTIVES  
The following chart presents an overview of the general policy objectives, specific objectives 
and operational objectives. 
 
Stimulate 
standardisation of 
licensing conditions 
across Member 
States Ensure wide 
availability of PSI for 
re-use  
Strengthen redress 
and enforcement 
mechanisms 
General Objective 
Specific Objective 
Operational Objective 
Prevent distortions of 
competition on the 
EU market 
Strengthen 
transparency and 
non-discrimination in 
PSI delivery 
Limit anti-
competitive 
behaviour of 
"hybrid" PSI bodies 
Stimulate content 
market for PSI based 
products and services 
Reduce transaction 
costs for re-use of PSI 
Stimulate cross-
border exploitation of 
PSI 
Reduce discrepancies 
in treatment of same 
data across Member 
States 
Stimulate job 
creation/smart 
economic growth 
 
3.1. General objectives 
Public sector information is a key primary mate rial for digital content products and services 
with large hitherto unexploited potential. The general objective of this EU action is to 
contribute to economic growth and job cr eation by improving the conditions for the 
exploitation of PSI and facilitati ng the further development of th e internal market for products 
and services based on it s re-use. The policy of opening up PSI  for re-use has also a positive 
 
EN 23   EN effect on transparency, efficiency and account ability of governments and contributes to 
citizen empowerment. 
The general objective is fully in line with the EU’s horizontal strategies, in particular the 
Commission’s Europe 2020 Strategy launche d on 3 March 2010 with the aim of turning 
Europe into a  ‘smart, sustainable and inclusive eco nomy delivering high levels of 
employment, productivity  and social cohesion ’48. 
One of the building blocks of this new strategy is the new Digital Agenda for Europe 
(DAE)49, which defines a number of ‘Key Performa nce Targets’ for attaining the digital 
single market. The review of the PSI Directive is  one of the key actions of the Digital Agenda 
for Europe50 and has been flagged as one of the core  elements to unlock the potential of the 
single market51. On 4 February 2011, the European C ouncil invited the Commission to make 
rapid progress in key areas of th e digital economy to ensure the creation of the digital single 
market by 2015, including the availabili ty of public sector information52. 
3.2. Specific objectives 
The general objective of stimulating content market s based on PSI re-use leads to a number of 
specific objectives:  
(a) Prevent distortions of competition on the EU market 
In order to stimulate innovation and render PSI re -use attractive for businesses, re-users must 
be able to operate on a leve l playing field with incumben t ‘hybrid’ public sector bodies. 
Commercial re-users in partic ular must be guaranteed tran sparent and non-discriminatory 
treatment and generally face conditions conducive to innovation through unrestrained competition.  
This objective can be achieved by strengthenin g the transparency a nd non-discrimination in 
the delivery of PSI and by limiting the anti-c ompetitive behaviour of PSI bodies. These two 
operational objectives can be ach ieved by imposing stricter requ irements on PSI bodies with 
respect to the ways, in which PSI is made ava ilable for re-use. These requirements relate to 
the pricing structures and their application (indiscriminately to re-users and to own 
commercial activities), the burd en of proving compliance of th e pricing structure with the 
rules of the Directive in case of conflict with a re-user. These objectives will be reflected in 
the monitoring indicators discussed further in section 6.  
(b) Stimulate the digital content market for PSI based products and services 
The objective of stimulating economic growth a nd job creation through PSI re-use will not be 
attained unless several conditions  along the chain of exploitation of PSI, both commercial and 
non-commercial, are fulfilled. In particular, there must be data to re-use and the PSI Directive 
aims to unlock as much PSI as possible, incl uding, if appropriate, in the sectors hitherto 
                                                
 
48 See Communication from the Commission: Europe 2020 — A strategy for smart, sustainable and 
inclusive growth, COM(2010) 2020, 3.3.2010. 
49 See http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/digital-agenda/index_en.htm. 
50 Ditto. 
51 Letter from President Barroso to the Members of th e European Parliament, issued in parallel with the 
State of the European Union speech to the plen ary, MEMO/10/393, Brussels, 7 September 2010. 
52 Conclusions of the European Council (4 February 2011), EUCO 2/11, CO EUR 2, CONCL 1. 
 
EN 24   EN excluded from the scope of application of the Directive but where re-use is practised. Those 
data must then actually be discoverable and effectively available, so licensing terms and 
pricing conditions as well as data formats, where applicable, must allow and facilitate every type of re-use. In addition, for re-use to be advantageous for businesses and consumers alike, 
transaction costs, including financial (fees) and non-financia l costs (e.g. formats, licensing 
conditions), must remain as low as possible. Fi nally, in case of confli ct, re-users must be 
granted an efficient and effective redress mechan ism to be able to enforce the rights stemming 
from the PSI Directive. These objectives will be reflected in the monitoring indicators 
discussed further in section 6.  
(c) Stimulate cross-border exploitation of PSI 
A true and thriving internal market for PSI re-use will not emerge  unless regulatory and 
practical barriers to re-use across the EU are removed. This is particularly important in view of the fact that businesses in the EU face scal ability problems due in part to language barriers 
but mainly to regulatory divergen ces across Member States. In orde r to enable them to expand 
beyond national borders and compete at EU and global level, the barri ers to the internal 
market for re-use of PSI must be abolished.  
The ultimate aim is therefore to ensure that, where possible, the same types of commercially 
or non-commercially valuable data are not only av ailable, but are available on similar, if not 
the same, terms and conditions, thus significa ntly reducing transac tion costs and legal 
uncertainty and providing incentives for busine sses and consumers to invest and innovate 
across Member States, thereby removing the obstacl es to the full realisation of the internal 
market for re-use of PSI.  
3.3. Operational objectives 
For each of the specific objectiv es presented above, a number of operational objectives or 
‘measures’ can be identified.  
Specific objective Operational objectives  
Objective 1: Prevent 
distortions of competition on the EU market -Strengthen transparency and non-discrimination in PSI delivery 
-Limit anticompetitive behaviour of ‘hybrid’ public sector bodies 
Objective 2: Stimulate the 
digital content market for PSI-based products and 
services -Reduce transaction costs for re-use of PSI 
-Ensure wide re-usability of public sector material 
-Strengthen redress and enforcement mechanisms 
-Limit anticompetitive behaviour of ‘hybrid’ public sector bodies 
-Stimulate standardisation of licensing conditions 
-Reduce discrepancies in treatment of same type of data across 
Member States 
Objective 3: Stimulate cross--Reduce discrepancies in treatment of same type of data across 
 
EN 25   EN Specific objective Operational objectives  
border exploitation of PSI Member States 
-Stimulate standardisation of licensing conditions across Member 
States 
-Strengthen redress and enforcement mechanisms 
3.4. Consistency of PSI policy objectives with other EU policies  
The PSI Directive aims to promote the widest po ssible availability of PSI for commercial and 
non-commercial re-use to stimulate c ontent markets and create new jobs.  
The objectives of the PSI Directive are consistent with horizontal EU objectives, including the 
Europe 2020 Strategy, liberalisatio n of services of general in terest and the promotion of 
democratic principles. The PSI Directive is also  in line with other EU policies, not least in 
several specific areas such as environm ental policy, common transport policy and EU 
competition rules. It also aims at fostering th e European economy in times of crisis in line 
with the EU policy on long-term sustainability of public fina nces for a recovering economy. 
3.4.1.  PSI policy and EU objectives of a horiz ontal nature such as the Europe 2020 
Strategy and promoting democratic principles 
One of the objectives of the PSI  re-use policy is to  contribute to business and job creation by 
enabling new products and services to emerge  based on the exploitation of public sector 
resources on transparent, eff ective and non-discriminatory terms. In this way, the PSI policy 
contributes to the employment  and innovation objectives la id down in the Europe 2020 
Strategy.  
Making public all generally available documents held by public sector bodies is a 
fundamental instrument for enhancing partic ipatory democracy. Although the main objective 
of the PSI re-use policy is of an economic nature, the policy also promotes the widest possible access to information — a prerequisite for re-u se — and thus contributes to the wider EU 
policy of promoting democratic principles.  
3.4.2.  PSI policy and the EU rules competition rules 
One of the aims of the PSI Directive is to limit distortions of competition on the EU market 
and thus to create a level playing fi eld for all potential re-users of PSI. 
In this regard, particular provisions of the PSI Directive constitute a specific formulation of 
the more general EU rules on competition, namely  Article 10(2), which bans cross-subsidies, 
and Article 11, prohibiting (with exce ptions) exclusive agreements.  
3.4.3.  PSI policy and open data policy 
The Commission has been at the forefront of open data development through a series of 
initiatives, in particular the PSI Directive, bu t also our action on scientific information and the 
re-use of cultural material ( Europeana ). The goals of the Commission’s open data strategy are 
to (1) encourage the public sector across th e EU to embrace the open data concept, (2) 
increase transparency and administrative efficien cy by releasing public data for re-use, and (3) 
create optimal conditions for innovation a nd business development based on re-use.  
 
EN 26   EN The PSI Directive and its revision is the main regulatory cornerstone of the open data policy. 
3.4.4.  PSI policy and environmental policy 
The PSI Directive, together with Directiv e 2003/4/EC on public access to environmental 
information (the Aarhus Directive) and Direct ive 2007/2/EC establishing an Infrastructure for 
Spatial Information in the EU (INSPIRE), form a set of EU measures aimed at ensuring the 
widest possible dissemination of certain inform ation held by public bodies. These Directives, 
although not sharing common immediate objectives , complement one another and pursue the 
common objective of greater transparency  and availability of public data.  
3.4.4.1.  The PSI Directive and the Directive on public access to environmental information 
The Directive on public access to environmental in formation contributes to greater awareness 
of environmental matters, the free exchange of  views, more effective participation by the 
public in environmental decision-making, and, ultim ately, a better environment. It contributes 
to the Commission’s policy on the re-use of PSI as wide access to information is a precondition for its re-use and environmental da ta constitute a very important source of 
information for the creation of new products and services.  
3.4.4.2.  The PSI Directive and the INSPIRE Directive 
Concerning the sharing of data  between public authorities when they are performing their 
public tasks, the two measures are perfectly co mplementary since they cover similar subject 
matter but have distinct scopes of application.  
Concerning public access to  spatial information, the INSPIRE Di rective, in relation to the PSI 
Directive, plays a similar role to that of the Directive on public access to environmental 
information and contributes to re-use policy. 
The PSI Directive is of cruc ial importance for the much-need ed overall coherence of the 
forthcoming Shared Environmental Informati on System, of which the PSI Directive is a 
building block. 
3.4.5.  PSI policy and the inte grated maritime policy 
In September 2010 the Commission issued a Comm unication to the Europ ean Parliament and 
the Council — Marine Knowledge 2020 — aimed at unlocking the potential of Europe’s 
marine knowledge. The three-pronged approach, seeking to make it easier and less costly to 
use marine data, foster competitiveness among marine data users and enhance understanding 
of Europe’s seas and oceans, is consistent with  and reinforces the Commission’s policy for re-
use of PSI. 
3.4.6.  PSI policy and the common transport policy 
One of the 40 initiatives put forwar d in the new Transport White Paper
53 is creating the 
framework conditions to promote the develo pment and use of intelligent systems for 
interoperable and multimodal scheduling, inform ation, online reservation systems and smart 
                                                 
53 White Paper: Roadmap to a Single European Tran sport Area — Towards a competitive and resource 
efficient transport system, COM(2011) 144 final, 28.3.2011. 
 
EN 27   EN ticketing. This could include a legislative proposal to ensure that privat e service providers can 
access travel and real-time traffic information. 
This initiative is directly related to the Action Plan54 for the Deployment of Intelligent 
Transport Systems (ITS) for road transport and its interfaces with othe r modes, adopted by the 
Commission in December 2008, and to Directive 2010/40/EU55 of 7 July 2010 on the 
framework for the deployment of Intelligent Tran sport Systems in the field of road transport 
and for interfaces with other modes of transpor t. These two instruments aim to speed up and 
coordinate the deployment of ITS applicat ions, including EU-wide real-time traffic 
information services and EU-wide travel information services. 
Under Directive 2010/40/EU, the Commission will adopt binding sp ecifications inter alia for 
‘the provision of EU-wid e real-time traffic information servi ces’ and for ‘the provision of EU-
wide travel information services’ to address the provision of traffic regulation data by the 
transport authorities and guara nteed access for private companies to relevant public data. 
Such specifications, but also a possible follow-up legislative proposal to ensure access to and 
re-use of public tran sport information, could contribute  significantly to the Commission’s 
policy on the re-use of PSI, by extending the area in which citizens or companies would have the right to access specific transport inform ation (new sources of information for new 
products and services based on part icularly dynamic content related to e.g. road traffic data or 
public transport data)  and re-use it. This objective is in line with the objectives of 
Commission policy on re-use of PSI.  
3.4.7.  PSI policy and the initiative on open a ccess to scientific information 
The Commission’s objective in the area of scientific information is to maximise the benefits 
of information technologies (internet, supe rcomputing networks, data mining) for better 
access to and easier re-use of scientific knowle dge. ‘Open access’ policies pursue the goal of 
making scientific articles and research data freely accessible to the reader on the web. The 
Commission intends to take steps to promot e access to and preserva tion of scientific 
information, including publicati ons and data arising from res earch projects funded from the 
EU budget.  
The Commission’s objectives in th is area are very closely in line with those of the PSI 
Directive in the sense that both aim towa rds making public information more widely 
accessible and available in Europe for re-use. 
3.4.8.  PSI policy and the policy on digi tisation and cultural heritage 
The digitisation of cultural collections makes knowledge res ources from Europe’s cultural 
institutions — books, maps, audio, films, manusc ripts, museum objects, etc. — more easily 
accessible to all for work, study and leisure. At the same time digitisation turns these resources into a lasting asset for the di gital economy, creating hu ge opportunities for 
innovation. The real exploi tation of digital cultural assets is still embryonic, though. Business 
models are being explored and commercial activ ities are just starting. The goals of ensuring 
wide availability of public sector informati on (the PSI Directive) and of putting digitised 
                                                
 
54 COM(2008) 886 final/2 — Corrigendum of 20.3.2009. 
55 OJ L 207, 6.8.2010, p. 1. 
 
EN 28   EN cultural assets at the disposal of creative and innovative businesses (digitisation policy) are 
entirely consistent and mutually reinforcing.  
3.4.9.  PSI policy and the long-term sustainability  of public finances for a recovering 
economy 
The 2010 Commission's Communication on the long-term sustainabil ity of public finances for 
a recovering economy calls on the Member Sates to reduce their debt ratios by adjusting their 
policies to the Stockholm strategy. This strategy includes (i) deficit and debt reduction, (ii) 
increases in employment rates and (iii ) reforms of social protection systems.   
The PSI policy aims at fosterin g growth and innovation. Opening up of public sector data is 
an opportunity for business to create new products  and services. It promotes new technologies 
and entrepreneurial culture within the Europe an companies. The PSI policy also aims at 
reduction of administrative burden and in that regard at cutting administrative spending.  
In certain situations the PSI policy may ha ve consequences for national budgets, notably 
resulting from the revised charging policy of the PSI Directive. However, the medium-term 
gains from opening up of public data, including  higher tax-returns, outweigh any possible 
direct loss of revenue. Therefore the PSI policy is  fully in line with the EU financial policy for 
a recovering economy. 
4. ALTERNATIVE POLICY OPTIONS  
This section examines a range of options for ad dressing the problems highlighted in previous 
sections. Apart from repealing the Directive (a lso considered below) the options broadly fall 
into two categories, i.e. opti ons involving maintaining the cu rrent provisions and options 
involving changes ranging from simple technical  ‘tweaks’ to substant ial amendments. For the 
purposes of this impact assessment these options will be grouped as follows: 
(1) No policy change: maintaining the current  approach without changes (baseline) 
(2) Discontinuing existing EU action: repeal of the PSI Directive 
(3) Soft law measures in the form  of guidance/recommendations 
(4) Amendments to the PSI Directive 
(5) Packaged solution consisting of:  
(a) Soft law measures 
(b) Amendments to the PSI Directive. 
4.1. Option 1: No policy change: no ch anges to the Directive (baseline) 
In 2009, after the first review of  the Directive, the Commissi on concluded that the progress 
made and implementation of the Directive were  uneven and identified a number of remaining 
barriers. As evidence on the im pact, effects and application of the Directive was insufficient, 
the Commission decided to carry out another re view by 2012 to consider whether legislative 
 
EN 29   EN amendments are necessary, taking into consider ation the progress made in the meantime in 
the Member States. 
For the purposes of re-use of public sector information, this option of ‘no policy change’ 
would mean that the current pr ovisions of the Directive woul d remain applicable and their 
national transposition instrument s would have to be applied. 
4.2. Option 2: Discontinuing existing EU action: repeal of the PSI Directive 
The PSI Directive has set the basic conditions fo r PSI re-use throughout the EU and has led to 
a change in policies and legislation in the Me mber States. Without th e Directive, Member 
States would be free to repeal or amend nati onal implementing legislations on PSI re-use.  
This particular option would effectively result in the removal of all the regulatory obligations 
currently contained in  the Directive and the national  transposing instruments.  
4.3. Option 3: Soft law measures 
These instruments, e.g. Commission guide lines or recommendati ons, would provide 
additional information and/or inte rpretation of some of the provisi ons of the PSI Di rective, i.e. 
Article 5 on available formats (guidance on mach ine readable formats), Article 6 on charging 
(guidance on the cost calcul ations ) and Article 8 on li censes (guidance on recommended 
licensing conditions). Awareness raising actions are not considered under this option because 
the ongoing action (e.g. ePSI Platform) will conti nue to be deployed and perhaps new actions 
will be launched notwithstanding the result of th e current review of the legislative framework. 
Some 65% of respondents to th e consultation who answered th e question about the need for 
soft law measures were in favour.  
Respondents in all categories suggested that soft  law measures in the form of guidance or 
recommendations could be adopted for e.g. licensing models, techni cal formats, price 
calculations (including for calcul ating marginal costs). Responde nts also generally called for 
more awareness-raising actions , including exchange of best  practices, expertise, and 
experience to connect exemplary public sector b odies with those that have not yet made their 
data available. The following individual  soft law measures can be envisaged. 
4.3.1.  Guidelines on licensing  
Currently, the market indicates that licensing c onditions remain one of the main obstacles to 
PSI re-use. Indeed, not only re-users, but also PSI bodies indicated in the public consultation 
that they would welcome guidance on suitable licensing conditions as  overly restrictive 
licensing conditions traditionally practised by a large number of public bodies are one of the major barriers to the development of busine sses based on re-use of public information. 
However, imposing top-down binding legislativ e measures relating to  concrete licensing 
models is first of all objectionable from the viewpoint of the principle of subsidiarity and, 
secondly, unsuitable in this case as it is paramount to ensure that licensing regimes can adapt 
to the necessary evolution on the PSI market and to the diversity of data , the re-use of which 
may be subject to licensing. As a result, the Commission should give preference to indicating 
in the Directive that a set of guidelines on li censing conditions would be developed within a 
separate dedicated process, in collabor ation with all interested stakeholders. 
 
EN 30   EN The guidelines would not apply as default rule s; rather they would provide a frame of 
reference and PSI bodies would be encouraged to follow the guidelines, unless they have 
reasonable grounds for doing otherwise (‘comply or explain’ principl e). In addition, to 
increase their effectiveness, Member States should be advised to set up audit mechanisms, whereby the decisions by PSI bodies in the above areas would be monitored. 
Such guidance would therefore directly help to address the problem of a major practical 
barrier to re-use and contribute to achieving the objectives of stimulating development of the 
market for PSI re-use and the cross-border exploitation of PSI. 
4.3.2.  Guidelines on cost calcula tion for allowable charges  
Guidelines on cost calculations would define th e types of costs that ca n be taken into account 
for calculating fees for re-use based on marginal  costs and on cost reco very. In addition, a 
recommended definition of what  constitutes a reasonable retu rn on investment would be 
provided.  
PSI bodies in particular, but al so re-users and academics, fr equently listed guidance on cost 
calculation as necessary and important. In the absence of such guidance, many PSI bodies 
(even those with some re-use experience) face  uncertainties about how to comply with the 
charging provisions of the Dir ective. PSI re-users on the ot her hand relate that there are 
significant differences in pric ing structures of public bodies stemming from differing 
interpretations of e.g. marginal costs or reasona ble return on investment. According to the re-
users, theses differences have a negative imp act on re-use transactio ns and ultimately on 
incentives to undertake re-use ac tivities as re-users are unable to make informed business 
decisions. 
These guidelines would facilitate  application of the maximum allowable charging rules laid 
down by the Directive. They w ould enhance legal certainty fo r re-users and public bodies 
alike, increasing the incentives for the former to undertake re-use activ ities and for the latter 
to make their data available and enter into contractual agreements  for the supply of their data.  
Similarly to the envisaged guidance on licen sing conditions, the Commission should give 
preference to indicating in the Di rective that a set of guideline s on cost calculation would be 
developed within a separate dedicated proce ss, in collaboration with all interested 
stakeholders. The guidance woul d address an important issue signalled by stakeholders while 
at the same time respecting the principle of proportionality by preserving the flexibility of 
public sector bodies, which face many different c onstraints in terms of funding and structure. 
4.3.3.  Guidance on data formats 
One of the most frequently made suggestions  by all categories of  respondents during the 
consultation on the review of the Directive was a plea for a requirement to be introduced to 
make PSI available in machine-readable formats wherever possible. 
The current drafting of the provision on availabl e formats encourages public service bodies to 
make their documents available in any pre- existing format or language, through electronic 
means where possible and appropriate. 
The development of ICT technologies has vastly  contributed to the development of PSI re-
use. A lot of data is re-used for the purpose of  developing dematerial ised products, such as 
apps with public bodies collect ing and/or producing their data in a digital format (‘born 
 
EN 31   EN digital’ data). The utility and attractiveness of public data sign ificantly increa ses if it is 
supplied in re-use friendly formats, e.g. machine-readable. 
Guidance on formats would clarify the meani ng of electronic formats in the existing 
Directive, recommending the use of machine-read able as the most re-use friendly formats. 
Even though it would be less effective than impos ing the use of machine -readable formats in 
the Directive itself, such guidance, if applied,  would contribute to stimulating the digital 
content market by facilitating the re-use of supplied data.  
The above guidance can be issued  either in the form of guide lines or in the form of a 
recommendation. The choice of the most suitable instrument will be made at the time of the 
elaboration of the guidelines depending on the exact objectives of the instrument. 
4.4. Option 4: Legislative amendments 
This option involves amending the text of the Direc tive in a way that affects the substance, i.e. 
the rights and obligations established by its provi sions. Among such legislative options are: (i) 
extending the scope of the Directive to the currently excluded sectors (cultural, educational and research establishments as well as public service broadcasters); (ii) establishing a rule of charging based on marginal costs, possibly with exceptions; (iii) amending the general 
principle to make accessible documents re-usabl e; (iv) requiring data to be published in 
machine-readable formats; (v) requiring an in dependent regulator to be appointed and an 
effective and efficient redress mechanism to be set up; (vi) reversing the burden of proof of 
compliance with charging requirements; (vii) requ iring the scope of public  task to be defined 
by legislative means only. Individual measur es envisaged under this option are analysed 
below. 
Of the 70
 % of respondents to the consultation who ar e in favour of amending the Directive, 
some 79  % favour substantive amendments. The opti ons listed above were among the topics 
most frequently suggested by stakeholders for possible amendments or refer to the problems most frequently indicated by respondents. 
4.4.1.  Obligation to define the scope of  public tasks by legislation 
In a number of cases public bod ies collect information as a public task, operate as monopoly 
wholesale suppliers to commercial re-users of their information and often at the same time 
sell to the public products based on their inform ation (with possible added value), in direct 
competition with their commercial customers.  
Activities falling outside the public task are subj ect to the requirement s of the Directive, 
which also contains a rule intended to distingu ish public task activities from commercial ones. 
Practice shows that the rule, which leaves su ch delineation to either legislation or 
administrative practice, creates a great deal of  confusion and allows commercial activities of 
public sector bodies to escape the re-use conditions. It is generall y considered to be one of the 
main points of the Directive that need clarification. 
The organisation of public bodies and the scope of their activities vary widely in the Member 
States. It would be very  difficult to find a sing le all-embracing definiti on of public tasks that 
could deal satisfactoril y with this variety.  
Member States should therefore be required to defi ne the scope of the public task activities of 
their public sector bodies in a binding way and to  make this definition public. This could be 
 
EN 32   EN done in a variety of ways — as general le gislation or through decisions applying to a 
particular sector or type of pub lic body, or a series of individual  decisions, in accordance with 
the constitutional and other legal rules applying to the organisati on of the public sector in the 
Member State. The reference to ‘administrative practice’ as a way of de fining the scope of the 
public task is not precise or tr ansparent and should be removed.  
This requirement will facilitate the application of the Directive as the re-use conditions that it 
imposes relate to the supply of documents outsi de the fulfilment of a body’s public task. As 
such, it will increase legal certainty for operato rs - both public and private- engaged in re-use 
activities and will limit any practi ce of artificially inflating th e scope of a body’s public task 
and distorting the spirit of the Directive. This  approach is in line with the principle of 
subsidiarity.  
4.4.2.  Obligation to deliver data in machin e-readable formats where possible and 
appropriate 
One of the most frequently made suggestions  by all categories of  respondents during the 
consultation on the review of the Directive was a plea for introducing a requirement to make 
PSI available in machine-readable formats wherever possible. 
The current drafting of the provision on availabl e formats encourages public service bodies to 
make their documents available in any pre- existing format or language, through electronic 
means where possible and appropriate. 
Different types of PSI may need to be made available in diffe rent formats, depending on the 
type of information being provided, and te chnical developments may soon render any 
imposed format choice obsolete. A more genera l requirement should th erefore be introduced 
whereby public bodies have to provide data in machine-readable formats, wherever possible and appropriate. This amendment in fact clarifie s what is meant by electronic formats and it is 
particularly important in view of  the fact that most public mate rial is born digital. Such an 
amendment would not be without precedent in the Member States, e.g. in late 2010 the UK 
announced that the UK Freedom of Information Act would be amended so that all data released must be in a re-usabl e and machine-readable format.  
This amendment will help stimulate the digital c ontent market by facilitating re-use. It is an 
effective and efficient measure as it is likely to achieve the desired effect of facilitating the re-
use of PSI, significantly  lowering transaction costs without  at the same time exposing public 
sector bodies to recu rring costs. It is linked to the need for ‘s oft law’ measures to stimulate a 
European approach on what format to use. 
4.4.3.  Extending the scope of the Directive 
4.4.3.1.  Extending the scope to public service broadcasters 
Public service broadcasters (PSBs) enjoy special status defined exclusively by each Member 
State pursuant to the Amsterdam Protocol on the system of public broadcasting. The PSI 
Directive should not interf ere with the remit as defined in th e status thus gran ted to the PSBs. 
Applying the rules of the PSI Directive set ting the conditions under which PSBs would be 
required to grant access to thei r content for the purpose of re-u se would overlap not only with 
this remit, but also with their competence to  organise the commercial exploitation of the 
 
EN 33   EN remit, within the framework of the EU compe tition rules, including the rules on State aid and 
the 2009 Broadcasting Communication. 
Secondly, third-party inte llectual property rights (e.g. music ri ghts) form an integral part of 
virtually all broadcast material , i.e. not only of acquired or commissioned productions but also 
of programme material produced entirely by the PSB itself. Given that the PSI Directive does 
not apply to material covered by  third-party IPRs, this would effectively exclude nearly all 
broadcast material held by PSBs that could be potentially suitable for the re-use intended by 
the re-use provisions. Furthermore, allowing co mmercial re-use of broadcast material would 
require a transfer of rights from a large numbe r of rightholders who c ontributed to creating 
such material, and requiring broadcasters to ma ke available their materi al would cause serious 
difficulties and generate very high, if not prohibitive, costs56. 
The limited application of the rules of the Direct ive due to the exclusion of material protected 
by third-party IPRs and the special status of the PSBs would significantly reduce the expected 
benefits of extension. In fact, the measure would be ineffectiv e as extension would result in 
little material being subject to re-use provision s. Moreover, the option would be inefficient as 
the costs for rights clearance of the materi al held by PSBs would be significant.  
In view of the above, the baseline option of no changes to the Dire ctive is preferred and 
accordingly the scope of the Directive sh ould not be extended to public service 
broadcasters.  
4.4.3.2.  Extending the scope to the educational and research sector 
Data generated by public bodies in the re search and educational sector comprise  scientific 
data (observational, experimental data, da tabases); scientific publications; output of 
educational establishments such as theses, lectures, conference proceedings; patents as well as unpublished material or ‘grey literature’ (whi ch includes pre-prints and non-refereed 
publications). This sector also comprises collections of memory institutions such as university 
or other educational libraries. The digital age has presented the research sector with new 
opportunities and there is widespre ad recognition that data are a valuable long-term resource. 
Sharing them and making them publicly available is essential if the potential value associated 
with their re-use is to be realised. 
Much of the research and educational material is outside the scope of the PSI Directive by 
virtue of the exclusion of material covered by intellectual property or other third-party rights. 
In addition, although IPR protection does not extend as far as pure research data, which do not fulfil all the necessary protection criteria, ther e are often unclear boundaries between different 
types of data and the status of third-party rights to them. As a re sult, it is often unclear what 
data would fall within and what remain outside the scope of the PSI Directive. Also, there are 
considerable differences in researchers’ attit udes, patterns of behaviour and needs or in the 
existence and robustness of available infrastruc ture. As a result, the burden of clarifying the 
status of these data for the purpose of making th em available for re-use under the rules of the 
PSI Directive exceeds the expected benefits.  
Furthermore, the research sector features it s own dynamic and has a well established system 
for disseminating and exploiting research findings and results. Access to research results and 
                                                
 
56 Response of the EBU to the online consultation of stakeholders. 
 
EN 34   EN scientific journals is  receiving much attention from scie ntists, publishers and policymakers 
and is discussed within the Open Access deba te. That discussion channel is separate and 
different from the generic discussion of availa bility of public data for re-use and it takes 
account of all the specifi cities and limitations of  the sector in a way which is not possible 
under the generic PSI debate. 
In view of the specificities and limitations  of the research sector, the question of 
availability of research data is best addres sed through the ongoing parallel initiatives, 
and the scope of the PSI Directive should  not be extended to this sector.  
However, the above arguments do not apply to th e public domain collections of university and 
other educational institutions’ lib raries (excluding holdings of research data). Such collections 
in no way differ from those of other cultural institutions that are not part of larger research establishments. University libraries and other li braries alike are in fact memory institutions 
and there is no justification for not applying the rules of the Di rective to the same type of 
material irrespective of where it is stored. As a result, the non-research collections of 
university and other educational institutions’ libraries should be brought within the scope of the Directive in the same way as the co llections of other cultural institutions  
There also remains the problem of the boundaries of the exclusion of re search establishments 
from the scope of the Directive.  Some public sector bodies comb ine research activities with 
carrying out a public task (e.g. co llection of meteorological data  or statistics) and undertaking 
commercial activities on the downstream market of PSI-based  products and services. Some of 
these public bodies claim immunity from the rules of the PSI Directive based on their designation as research instituti ons in their statutes. It should not be possible to distort the 
spirit of the exclusion of the research sector by simply descri bing any type of public body as a 
research institute when, in fact, the data it produce s or collects are the type of data that the PSI 
Directive seeks to make available fo r re-use (e.g. meteorological data).  
Defining ‘research institutes’ at  EU level appears disproportiona te to the problem identified 
and would be unlikely to withstand scrutiny under  the subsidiarity principle. Moreover, it is 
most likely an impossible endea vour given the differences in tr aditions within the Member 
States. However, the PSI Directive should state that Me mber States may not use the mere 
term of research institute to artificially limit th e scope of applicatio n of the PSI Directive 
to data that are not excluded by virtue of  the exclusion of educational and research 
establishments.  
4.4.3.3.  Extending the scope to the cultural sector  
The cultural sector as defined in the Direct ive includes museums, libraries, archives, 
orchestras, operas, ballets and theatres. This is a non-exhaustive list of institutions and the 
exclusion applies to all public sector bodies that fulfil a missi on of a cultural nature. Cultural 
institutions hold vast amounts of material valuable for re-use unde r the terms of the Directive. 
In addition, cultural instituti ons are becoming increasingly invol ved in the creation of content 
associated with Web 2.0 and social networking ac tivities. There is also growing recognition of 
underexploited demand in the area of family history/genealogy.  
In the first review of  the Directive in 2009, the Commissi on concluded that its scope should 
not be extended at that moment  in time. This conclusion was based on the finding that the 
administrative burden of extension and the asso ciated costs would not be outweighed by the 
potential benefits as a large part of the mate rial held by these institutions was covered by 
 
EN 35   EN third-party intellectual property rights, and would therefore in  any case not fall within the 
scope of the Directive. This latter argum ent was backed by the results of a study57 which 
concluded that while ‘ PSI held by the cultural sector has a significant potential value for re-
users, the advantages of including cultural her itage institutions within the scope of the 
Directive are currently diffic ult to assess and require furt her investigation over time. ’ 
At the same time, the study also found that re-use was practised by the cultural institutions 
with ‘ 32 % of respondents charg[ing] for licences to re-use co ntent, showing a tendency 
among some cultural bodies to distinguish between access and (commercial) re-use in their 
charging policies. ’ The study concluded moreover that th e perceived practical and financial 
disadvantages for cultural institutions of extending the scope of the Directive to the cultural sector should not be allowed in  the longer term to outweigh th e possible advantages to the 
wider economy, industry and societ y and that large-scal e digitisation combined with enhanced 
information technology for accessing content ma y well create conditions where competition 
factors in relation to re-use  become more evident.  
In 2010, the Commission launched a study to asse ss the importance of re -use in terms of 
revenues for cultural institutions and to estimat e trends in the development of the re-use 
market for cultural material. The study, covering a sample of selected cultural institutions, 
indicates that very few of them depend on the inco me they receive from re -use to enable them 
to undertake their public task. The study also fou nd that the income they receive from re-use 
is in many cases essential to enable future re-use and development of services. In addition, according to the results of the study, the approach that institu tions have taken appears to 
depend on a very wide range of intrinsic and extr insic factors — from the strategy of the State 
they are located in, through the na ture of the collections, right down to the personalities of the 
people involved at an institution.  
The institution (in the overall sample) with th e highest income from re-use generated ~€10m 
in 2009, representing 7.1
 % of total income. The institution with the highest share of income 
from re-use generated ~€6m, representing 11.1  % of total income. The institutions that view 
re-use as a significant element of their operations  and generate income typically in the range 
of 2-10  % of their gross income (in the range of hundreds of thousands to millions of euros) 
comprise the large national institutions. This is  unsurprising, given that they have the largest 
and best-known collections, and they have th e administrative capability to manage the 
exploitation of this material. These institutio ns are also most likely to undertake third-party 
re-use, by licensing entire collections to an exte rnal organisation that undertakes digitisation 
and then generates income. This income is then used to fund the staff time and effort that is required to prepare further collec tions for digitisation and re-use. 
The study also shows that there are considerable vari ations in range of income from re-use 
generated by cultural institutions. Even simi lar organisations can have very different 
approaches to, and financial benefits from re-use. 
See Annex 5 on pricing policies in the cultural s ector for a more detailed presentation of the 
studies. 
                                                
 
57 Economic and Social Impact of the Public Domain: EU Cultural Institutions and the PSI Directive, 
Rightscom, 5.5.2009: 
http://www.epsiplus.net/psi_libra ry/reports/economic_and_social_impact_of_the_public_domain_eu_c
ultural_institutions_and_the_psi_directive_may_2009 . 
 
EN 36   EN When it comes to barriers to re-use in this se ctor, the study found that digitisation of content 
was synonymous with enabling re-use and that th e cost and effort of digitisation was the 
major factor limiting re-use of the material.  
Cataloguing and discoverability of material is an  established challenge for the cultural sector. 
All institutions recogni se that it is beneficial (and indeed  necessary) for potential users and re-
users to identify appropriate re sources. Most respondents have physical catalogues or staff 
that patrons can approach to find holdings, but a smaller number of resp ondent institutions is 
able to make the bulk of their holdings findable through electroni c catalogues or an 
institutional website. In some cases, discov erability of resources is restricted by an 
organisation’s income-generating activities. For example, in libraries, the metadata for their 
holdings is a tool for discoverabi lity, but for some national libraries, this metadata is itself a 
product that they sell.  
The study confirmed time and again that the IPR st atus of holdings provides a challenge that 
can limit the availability of collections for re-use . In addition to the IP presenting a barrier to 
re-use, organisations are deeply  concerned about the administra tive overhead in managing 
requests for re-use that require rights clearance activities. 
On the other hand, the study found a fragmented situ ation with respect to the approaches that 
cultural institutions take to charging, often driven by mission. For example, two national 
libraries charge for re-use of their bibliogr aphic metadata, whereas another two do not. Those 
institutions that hold material  with well-developed commercial  markets — such as images and 
archives of use in genealogy — were found to be correspondingly more likely to adopt 
commercial pricing models. 
Furthermore, the study found that exclusiv e agreements are not rare among cultural 
institutions, many of which have carefully considered the type of  exclusivity in licences they 
offer and are able to justify their choices. Exclusivity is concentrated in the larger organisations, which also have the skill and administrative resources to manage the negotiations and administration require d to establish such relationships. 
Archives are a specific subset among the cultural institutions. Ge nerally archiving institutions 
see re-use of their material as  an opportunity with a clear ma jority of national archives in 
favour of the spirit of the Directive, namely  extending access to public information to more 
and more of Europe’s citizens
58. Nevertheless, they have two main concerns. First, public 
archives hold a great deal of information in wh ich the copyright is pr ivately owned that is 
often mixed with other material  in which copyright is public ly owned. Although the Directive 
does not affect existing copyrig ht, archivists fear having to determine ownership of 
intellectual property rights. Secondly, compel ling cultural bodies to make information 
available for re-use for free or at marginal cost could seriously interfere with existing 
contractual arrangements and restrict the re venue earned through licensing by those archives 
that currently do this. This could lead to less access in future by restricting the archives’ flexibility to invest in furthe r digitisation and access systems. 
As demonstrated by the findings of the study, many cultural institutions already make 
their public domain content available for re -use and many are actively seeking out 
opportunities to re-use their content regardless of whether they intend to generate 
                                                
 
58 European Archives Group, Report of the Working Group on the Re-use of Public Sector Information. 
 
EN 37   EN income from this re-use . In fact, since the Directive was put in place, significant collections 
have been digitised and although digitisation is not in itself re-use, it greatly facilitates it and 
reduces the burden on institutions require d to respond to re-use requests.  
More importantly, digitisation projects have covered millions of objects that are no longer 
protected by copyright and th e amount of valuable public  domain material has thus 
significantly multiplied with respect to the situation in 2003. For example, Europeana, 
Europe's digital library, museum and archive gives access to more than 19 million digitized 
objects. The resulting digital ma terial has a huge potential for innovative re-use in sectors 
such as learning and tourism. The commercia l interest is also shown by the massive 
investments that companies such as Google make  into digitisation. Inst itutions continue to 
invest in digitisation irrespect ive of their re-use policies. Once public domain collections are 
digitised, making them available for re-use allo ws the cultural institutions to reap all the 
potential returns from thei r investment without genera ting unbearable costs.  
Extending the scope appears to most effectively achieve the objectives of  encouraging re-use 
of PSI-based products and services in order to  stimulate economic grow th and job creation in 
Europe. Unlocking data potential is one of the key aims of the EU’s policy on information re-
use. Bringing the cultural sector within the scope  of the Directive would make all this publicly 
funded public domain material available for re-use purposes, under the same conditions 
applicable across the EU. Commercial and non-comme rcial re-users alike would be able to re-
use the vast amounts of valuable content under pr e-defined rules with increased legal certainty 
and more incentives to provide cross-border products and serv ices based on re-used cultural 
material. This would spear innovation across the creative industries in sectors such as 
learning, tourism and design, as well as the de velopment of innovative services and products 
based on cultural material (e.g. apps for mobile phones).  
On the other hand, it is important to recognise the spec ificity of the cultural sector resulting 
from the administrative complexities linked to IPR protection and the mission of public 
cultural institutions, which not only disseminate but  also preserve the cultural heritage they 
hold. In order to account for this specificity a nd minimise the administrative burden linked to 
removing the current exemption, cultural institut ions should benefit fr om specific provisions. 
To avoid excessive administrative overhead in managing requests fo r re-use that require rights 
clearance activities, only public dom ain material with cl ear IPR status is to  be subject to the 
re-use provisions. To enable cultural institutions  to generate funds for making their collections 
available for re-use under conditions  that favour re-use, i.e. with clear IPR status or in re-use 
friendly digital formats (such funds are rarely av ailable in sufficient amounts from the public 
purse), cultural institutio ns should retain the ability to appl y cost recovery with a reasonable 
return on investment.  
In view of all of the above considerations, in order to best attain the objective of 
stimulating PSI re-use across the EU, the scop e of the Directive should be revised to 
encompass cultural establishments with th e benefit of the currently applicable regime 
insofar as charging is concerned.  
4.4.4.  Amending the general principle 
At present, Member States have the possibility  to exclude information from re-use, even if 
this information is already accessible under the access to documents regime. According to the 
current wording of Article 3 of the PSI Dir ective, a general right to re-use for both 
commercial and non-commercial purposes arises  only if a public sector body has already 
 
EN 38   EN allowed this information to be re-used. Some Me mber States or public bodies tend to exploit 
this provision as giving them full discretionary  power to decide whether or not information 
should be re-usable and for what purposes, even if they have already freely disseminated it, 
e.g. online.  
Amending the general principle to make all accessible information re-usable would result in 
the creation of a genuine EU right to re-use, thus ensuring uniform application of the PSI 
Directive across the EU. Such a solution is strongly supported by stakeholders responding to 
the consultation, 90  % of whom consider that informati on that is generally accessible should 
also be re-usable, and some Member States have  already decided to take up this approach in 
their legislation (see Annex 1 for details). St rengthening the general pr inciple in this way 
would provide legal certainty to re-users and public bodies alike and prevent valuable data 
from being arbitrarily withheld from re-use. Any changes to the charging rules or requiring 
adoption of machine-readable formats will be ineffective as long as public bodies retain any 
degree of discretion in making da ta available for re-use. This change would therefore not only 
foster the widest possible availability  of PSI for re-use  purposes but is a sine qua non  
condition to pursue an ambitious pr o re-use policy across the EU.  
In terms of efficiency gains in existing opera tions, improving the accessibility of information 
necessary for e.g. obligatory environmental impa ct assessments could potentially reduce EU-
27 costs by 20  % or around €  2 billion per year, and if European citizens each saved as little as 
2 hours per year through faster  and more comprehensive acce ss to public information, this 
would be worth €  1.4 billion per year59. 
The risks of amending the genera l principle may be twofold.  
Firstly, they may relate firstly to the lack of uniformity between the scopes of application of 
national access to documents regimes. The PSI Directive builds on the national access to 
documents regimes and is withou t prejudice to them, so data are re-usable if they are not 
excluded from access by the national access and data protection regimes. This problem is, however, marginal and most data will receiv e similar treatment across the EU. Different 
treatment of similar data results from the sole competence of Member States to organise their access and privacy protection regimes and is a reflection of differences in the level of 
transparency deemed acceptable by individual countri es. In this area, the subsidiarity principle 
mandates that this competence be left with the Member States.  
Secondly, there is a risk of a possible incompatibility of the amended general principle with 
the EU and international rules governing protec tion of intellectual prope rty rights. In this 
respect, the Court of Justice has stated that pr operty rights, including in tellectual property are 
a fundamental principle of EU law.
60 As a result, amending the ge neral principle to make all 
generally accessible data re-usa ble would limit the exercise of certain intellectual property 
rights and is only justified if it is strictly lim ited and necessary to attain the objectives of the 
revised Directive.  
In this context, three categories of  documents must be distinguished.  
                                                 
59 Op. cit. Vickery. 
60 This principle is now included in Art. 17 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights 
 
EN 39   EN First of all, documents protected in full or in part by third party intell ectual property rights are 
by virtue of article 1 excluded from the scope of the Directive. This exclusion may not be 
affected by the amended general principle.  
Secondly, the amended principle would concern documents protec ted by intellectual property 
rights belonging to employees of the public in stitutions. Currently, the question of ownership 
of intellectual property rights in works created by public officials is regulated exclusively by 
national rules of Member States  and these regimes vary. Neither Member States, nor public 
bodies or re-users have signall ed any problems relating to the implementation of the original 
Directive in this respect. In fact, where the pub lic official retains rights to a document, the 
exclusion from Article 1 w ould apply. Nevertheless, it may be useful to expressly clarify that 
the rules of the Directive are without prejudice to the rights of employ ees in public sector 
bodies.  
Thirdly, the amended general principle would concern documents protected by intellectual 
property rights belonging to pub lic bodies themselves. These inst itutions do not in principle 
have the mission to commercially  exploit the data they produ ce. Charging for re-use is a 
secondary activity intended to generate additi onal revenue and studies have shown that in 
most cases this represents only a small part of the total income of  the public sector body, 
while, as demonstrated above, their re -use offers great economic potential. 
 Also, the creation or collection of documents  for which they may hol d intellectual property 
rights has been funded with public funds and, as demonstrated above, their re-use offers great 
economic potential. As a result, an obligation to make their accessible data re-usable, for 
commercial or non-commercial reasons, does not in principle interfere with the normal 
exploitation of their rights and does not unduly prejudice their legitimate interests.61 However, 
feedback from the public consultation indicates  that there may be cases, however isolated, 
where a public body is self financed, in full or in part, and where proceeds from the exploitation of its intellectual property rights constitute a part  or the totality of its own 
resources. In this respect, those public bod ies may be required to make these protected 
accessible documents reusable but they should be given the possibility to charge accordingly 
to the market value of those intellectual property rights, capped by the maximum charges 
allowed under the Directive. Th is concern is reflected in the analysis of the possible 
amendment of the principles governi ng charges in the section below. 
Establishing an EU right to re-use is the mo st important and indispensable change to the 
Directive as it is the most efficient means of  advancing the policy pur sued by the Commission 
in the area of re-use of PSI, fostering re-use of public data and ensuring consistency across the 
internal market.  
4.4.5.  Amending the principles governing charging  
The Directive establishes an upper limit on allowe d charges based on the costs of collecting, 
producing, reproducing and dissemina ting the information, together with a reasonable return 
on investment. At the same time, recital 14 of  the PSI Directive urges Member States to 
encourage their PSBs to make documents availabl e at charges that do not exceed the marginal 
costs of reproducing and disseminating them. In addition, on request public sector bodies have 
                                                
 
61 The so-called three steps test : Article 9 of the TRIPS Agreement, Article 9 paragraph 2 of the Berne 
Convention, Article 5 paragraph 5 of the Directive 2001/29 and Articles 6 paragraph 3 and 7 paragraph 
5 of the Directive 96/9/CE 
 
EN 40   EN to provide the methods they used to calculate the prices they are charging re-users for the 
information they provide.  
Given the current and potential economic value of the commercial re-use of PSI, the choice of 
charging regime has a direct impact on the economic and soci al potential of re-use (see 
below). 
4.4.5.1.  Principle of charging based on marginal costs 
The problem of high prices charged by PSBs was st ressed by all categories of respondents to 
the consultation as a real barrier  that needs addressing in order to tap the full potential for PSI 
re-use62. In addition, respondents report insufficien t transparency regarding PSI pricing 
calculations. Excessive pricing adversely aff ects competition, innovation and growth of the 
European PSI market.  
The economic theory regarding the supply of PSI presents several scenarios:  
• Profit-maximising: setting a price to maximise pr ofit given the demand faced by a 
public body, where the product being supplied does not face competition. This will 
naturally result in monopoly pricing.  
• Cost-recovery: setting a price equal to averag e long-term costs (including, for 
example, all fixed costs related to data production). A sub-category of this model is 
partial cost-recovery, where th e price is less than averag e long-term costs but more 
than marginal costs. This sub-category  also includes a category whereby only the 
costs related to the facilitation of re-u se are charged (‘re-us e facilitation cost-
recovery’), which only includes costs that can  truly be allocated to the re-users, e.g. 
the salary costs of the help desk personnel.  
• Marginal cost: setting a price equal to the marginal cost of supplying data (cost of 
actually transmitting the data) to an extra user. In today’s digital world information 
products and data are expens ive to produce, but, once pr oduced, they ar e very cheap 
to disseminate. When considering digital da ta, marginal cost is in most cases. A 
recent study estimates the total public sector information related market in 2008 at € 28 billion across the EU.
63 The same study indicates that the overall economic gains 
from further opening up public sector info rmation by allowing easy access are at 
around € 40 billion a year for the EU27. The aggregate direct and indirect economic 
impacts from PSI applications and use across the whole EU27 economy would be in 
the order of € 140 billion annually.zero. 
• Zero pricing:  no price is charged for supplying public sector data. 
In 2008, Cambridge University in vestigated, at the request of  the British Government, the 
impact of adopting different models for the provision of PSI by UK trading funds, which are 
required to be as financially self-sufficient as  possible by selling their data and services and 
eventually providing a return to the UK Treasur y. (For more detailed results of the Cambridge 
Study see Annex 6 on overview of charging tendencies).  
                                                 
62 Op. cit. MICUS, 12/2008. 
63 Review of recent studies on PSI re-use and related market developments, G. Vickery, August 2011. 
 
EN 41   EN The study concludes that charging no or marginal  costs for PSI results in social and economic 
benefits that far outweigh th e immediate financial benefits  attained by cost-recovery 
strategies. However, critics of this report have questioned the permanent sustainability of a 
scheme providing PSI at no or marginal prices  when the cost of creating and maintaining 
quality PSI can be substantial, and when public  bodies must incur e.g. costs necessary to 
sustain data quality or investment necessary  to cope with technological developments.  
The study shows that once PSI is made availa ble by governments under a marginal cost/free 
regime it has considerable economic potential. 
The CUPI report64 by the UK Office for Fair Trading (OFT ) concludes that PSI markets still 
have widely unmet potential, e.g. more competit ion in public sector information re-use could 
double PSI’s contribution to the UK economy in value terms to €  1.5 billion per year.  
The case studies analysed in the 2010-2011 Report65 indicate that the pot ential benefits of 
lower charges for PSI re-use are high. Lower charges lead to more  economic activities, 
market dynamism, innovation and employment. Increased tax returns may easily outweigh the loss of the public body’s revenues, which in fact appear to be non-existe nt if the lowering of 
charges is limited to re-use facilitation costs. At  the same time, unless zero costing is applied, 
the price mechanism may actually increase revenu es rather than lowering them, where higher 
re-use does not seem to entail an increase in co sts. Secondly, the transition costs appear to be 
relatively low, especially since,  to a large extent, the knowledge and infrastructure is already 
there; it is only about converting the processes and mindset, to serve the re-users in the best 
way. (See Annex 6 for more detaile d presentation of effects of PSI  policy changes in selected 
public bodies). 
Case studies also demonstrate that lowering charges brings be nefits for different types of 
users, in particular SMEs (BEV, CENDOJ, IGN-CNIG – Spanish geographical institute, 
KNMI – Dutch Met office, Met.no – Norwegian Me t office, Spanish land registry). This is 
also evidenced by a number of other cases where the price cuts have b een less significant (or 
even non-existent) but special schemes have been  provided for SMEs to stimulate their re-use 
activities (e.g. DWD- German geo-informati on PSBs, planned new pricing model). These 
SMEs tend to introduce new business models and re-use the data quite differently from ‘classical’ re-users
66. 
A binding provision imposing a default rule of ma rginal costs as maximum charges for re-use 
of data is one of the most efficient means of  stimulating the market for PSI-based products 
and services, including across bo rders, and of ensuring a level playing field among re-users. 
Marginal costs of distribution in situations where the data already exist in digital format are minimal or even zero. A shift to a default ru le will significantly reduce prices and provide 
incentives to businesses to invest  in new products and services th at may not have been viable 
otherwise
67.  
Arguably, a mandatory marginal costs rule may reduce incentives for private companies to 
challenge the market for the co llection or production of info rmation where incumbent public 
                                                 
64 The commercial use of public information (CUP I), Report of the UK OFT, December 2006, 
http://www.oft.gov.uk/shared_oft/re ports/consumer_protection/oft861.pdf . 
65 Study on Pricing of Public Sector Information, June 2011, Deloitte. 
66 Op. cit. Deloitte. 
67 Ditto. 
 
EN 42   EN bodies hold monopolistic positions and where the data can be duplicated (because marginal 
costs of distribution of informa tion are lower than the average total or average variable costs 
of potential competitors, as used in compe tition law to assess whether an incumbent is 
abusing its position by imposing predatory pricing68); any foregone incentives for private 
undertakings to enter the market are offset by th e benefits of the marginal costs mechanism, 
which stimulates competition and innovation  on the downstream market for PSI-based 
products and services. In cases where informa tion is deemed of pub lic interest and its 
collection or production is a public  task, and information cannot in  fact be duplicated so that 
its collection or production does not in prin ciple attract competition on costs, where 
appropriate, innovation and competition are in fact  stimulated on the downstream market for 
PSI-based products and services by providing acce ss to the required input at minimum or no 
cost.  
Many Member States (e.g. the UK, the Nether lands, France, Denmark and Finland) are 
reconsidering their pric ing policies or have already adopted  marginal costs for the supply of 
PSI. While these Member States have made or will soon be making the move towards marginal costs as maximum charges for the re -use of PSI, diverging pricing regimes will 
significantly raise transaction co sts and reduce incentives to undertake re-use based activities, 
thereby negatively impacting the smooth functioni ng of the internal market and stalling the 
development of the EU market for products based on PSI-re-use, with adverse effects on 
consumer welfare and the economy at large.  
At the same time, the interests of those public sector bodies that are required to fund their 
operations and/or legally required to generate income must also be taken into account in order 
to ensure that quality data are in fact produced  and/or collected where such an activity is 
included within the scope of the public task. A ma ndatory marginal cost standard may make it 
more difficult for the State to generate PSI as  it may reduce incentives for public sector bodies 
to invest in the production of PSI, thereby unde rmining the very goal of  the Directive. An 
exception to the default rule of marginal costs is therefore necessary to  allow public bodies to 
charge on a cost recovery basis with a reasona ble return on investment. A justified possibility 
to recover costs would prevent upfront the possible deficits created due to lack of 
income/revenue where public sector bodies ar e partly or fully self-financed. Such an 
exception shifts the share of th e costs of producing PSI from ta xpayers to re-users, who may 
then obtain a commercial benefit from re-using it outside its primary purpose. 
As a safeguard to maintain the exceptional nature of the departure from the default rule of 
marginal costs, those public sector bodies that  wish to charge on a cost-recovery basis with a 
reasonable return on investment should bear the burden of proving to an independent body 
that this departure is justified based on an agr eed set of criteria. This approach is currently 
being implemented in the UK. It has proved succe ssful as it has modified  the pricing structure 
of public bodies, which did not have a solid rationale for char ging based on cost recovery. 
This measure, together with the proposed amendment of the general principle and the 
proposed extension of scope to the cultural sector, is  one of the most efficient means of 
stimulating the market for PSI-based products and services, including across borders, and of 
ensuring a level playing field among re-users.  
                                                
 
68 Communication from the Commission — Guidance on the Commission’s enforcement priorities in 
applying Article 82 of the EC Treaty to abusive exclusionary conduct by dominant undertakings, 
2009/C 45/02; see also Case T-83/91 Tetra Pak International SA v Commission  [1994] ECR II-755, 
upheld by the ECJ in Case C-333/94 [1996] ECR I-5951. 
 
EN 43   EN 4.4.5.2.  Reversal of the burden of proof  
Currently, the burden of proving th at charging principles do not comply with the rules of the 
Directive rests on the re-user. However, re-users  have often reported considerable difficulties 
in obtaining the information necessary to sa tisfy that burden of proof, which significantly 
limits the possibility to enfor ce the rights conferred by the PSI Directive with respect to the 
re-use of PSI.  
In order to attain the objectiv e of stimulating the digital content market for PSI-based 
products and services, the burden of  proof should be reversed so th at, in the event of a dispute 
with a re-user, public sector bodies bear the bur den of proving that their charges comply with 
the rules of the Directive. Public sector bodies are best placed to bear  this burden of proof 
because of their privileged access to their inte rnal documents and the understanding of their 
charging structure as opposed to re-users. Revers al of the burden would therefore facilitate 
enforcement of rights established under the PSI  Directive and also reduce the costs of 
producing evidence to satisfy that burden a nd contribute to the economy of proceedings. 
In addition, reversing the burden of proof has a broader re levance for the policy of opening up 
public data resources. It would contribute to catalysing the desi red change of mindset among 
the public sector bodies most re luctant to adopt pro re-use po licies. It would reinforce the 
amendment of the general principle to make all accessible data re-usabl e and contribute to the 
objective of stimulating the market for PSI-based products and services. 
4.4.6.  Requirement to establish an effective re dress system and to designate independent 
PSI regulators 
The only reference in the curren t Directive to means of redre ss available in the event of a 
dispute concerning the availability of re-usable ma terial is to be found in Article 4 referring to 
requests for re-use, pursuant to which ‘ any negative decision shall contain a reference to the 
means of redress in case the app licant wishes to appeal the decision .’ Although the 
formulation in itself implies that means of redress must in fact be available, the details of available remedies or authori ties competent to hear the comp laint are nowhere to be found.  
The lack of an efficient and effective redress system was one of the major problems with the 
PSI re-use system raised by respondents to the public consultation, in particular by re-users, 
citizens and experts. The lack of an effective redress mechanism in some Member States (time 
to decision, effective competen cies of bodies) prevents re-use rs from enforcing their rights 
against monopoly suppliers of PSI, leading to inefficiencies on some markets with negative 
impacts on competition and innovation and, ultima tely, on consumer welfare (see Annex 0 for 
examples on the market for meteorological information). 
Although Member States have functioning redre ss systems, only some have set up specific 
authorities to hear complaints against public b odies infringing the rules for re-use of PSI. 
While e.g. the Slovenian
69 and French70 independent authorities are exemplary insofar as 
redress systems are concerned, re-users in mo st Member States face cumbersome and lengthy 
proceedings ill suited for dealing with their co mplaints, which often require swift results. In 
addition, due to the differences in  the judicial systems of indivi dual countries, the plaintiffs 
                                                 
69 Information Commissioner, http://www.ip-rs.si/?id=195 . 
70 Commission d’Accès aux Documents Administratifs, CADA, http://www.cada.fr/index.htm . 
 
EN 44   EN often face significant costs and di fficulties in identifying competen t courts or authorities and 
applicable rules of procedure, w ith a negative impact on the intern al market for re-use of PSI.  
In order to remove these obst acles and achieve the objectives of stimulating re-use of PSI, 
including across borders, an effective and efficien t system of redress must be put in place for 
the benefit of re-users and public bodies alike. Based on th e successful examples of the 
Slovenian or French authorities, the Dir ective should impose an explicit obligation on 
Member States to appoint an independent regulato r with competencies to (i) decide on appeals 
against the refusal of public bodies to grant re-use  and (ii) decide on complaints from re-users 
against charging and licensing cond itions. In order to best address the current problem of the 
lack of functioning redress mechanisms, the Di rective would indicate the minimum scope of 
competencies and the minimum range of remedies to be granted. On the other hand, in order to safeguard the principles of subsidiarity, pr oportionality and conferra l, the choice of the 
authority as well as the actual procedural rule s would remain with the Member States, which 
have the sole competence to organise their internal judicial systems. 
4.5. Option 5: Packaged solution 
This option would combine a systemic change in the re-use framework (Option 4) with 
additional guidance on the principles to be  applied by national au thorities when they 
implement them at national level (Option 3). 
5. A
SSESSMENT OF POLICY OPTIONS  
This section presents a qualitative and, where possible, quantitative as sessment of the impact 
of each of the five policy options in the light of  the policy objectives id entified in Section 1.  
The main areas of potential impact are economic a nd social. In particular, the capacity of PSI-
based products and services to convey economic and social benefits to all consumers must be 
weighed against the costs resu lting from potential losses in  revenue incurred by releasing 
public data for re-use wi thout charge or at low fees. Any policy in this area must ensure that 
there is a level playing field between hybrid public bodies engaging in commercial re-use of 
data they produce or collect with public funds  and their private competitors and that a 
disproportionate burden is not imposed on the public sector, thereby endangering PSI 
production, investment and innovation. 
5.1. Option 1: No changes to the Directive (baseline) 
This option, the baseline scenar io of no policy change, would ma intain the basic approach to 
re-use of PSI contained in the PSI Directive.  Under this framework, a minimum set of rules 
governing re-use is to be guaranteed, including maximum allowable charges, non-
discrimination and transparency within public bodi es with respect to re -use conditions and 
practical rules on dealing with re-use requests. Leaving it to the Member States to apply the 
current unchanged framework would allow the PSI re -use concept to evolve in step with the 
public openness policy and technological developments at national level.  
On the other hand, the ‘no policy change’ opti on would leave Member States with only the 
terms of the Directive to adapt their current na tional PSI re-use arrangements to take account 
of the increasing economic and social importance of the market for PSI-based products and services in their territories.  In particular, the Directive does not provide guidance on non-
restrictive licensing conditions; it does not define the costs allowed for recovery or a 
 
EN 45   EN reasonable return on investment; its scope does not extend to sect ors where a lot of potentially 
valuable PSI is held and which could be br ought within the scope of the Directive.  
In addition, with increasing real isation of the importance of PSI re-use, individual Member 
States have been pursuing mo re ambitious policies and adopting measures that go beyond the 
minimum rules set by the Directive. Several Member States and some individual public 
bodies in other Member States have adopted ma rginal costs as default allowable charges, 
several Member States have put in place model li cences and e.g. FR has put in place a right to 
re-use accessible public data. Th ere is therefore a significant risk that the no policy change 
option would result in increasingly divergent approaches be ing taken to the issue at national 
level, based on a variety of considerations an d differing levels of am bition with respect to 
releasing public data for re-use. This can give rise to  legal uncertainty an d unpredictability for 
the market, in particular commercial re-users.  
The pressure for releasing more public data at  low charges and without or under permissive 
licensing conditions in all Member States is li kely to grow as the potential market for 
commercial and non-commercial products based on re-use of PSI (e.g. apps) develops. More 
broadly, in addition to the acknow ledged economic benefits of encouraging re-use, PSI and its 
re-use are increasingly important for the democr atic process and for the public transparency 
agenda. 
Any uncertainty, particularly as regards the transaction costs (cha rges, licensing, type of data) 
of making public data available for businesse s could have a chilling effect on innovation and 
investment in this high-potential market as publ ic bodies and re-users alike try to assess the 
implications of future actions by Member Stat es in this area. Stifled innovation would have 
negative impacts on general consumer welfare and on businesses reliant on innovative PSI 
products for their offerings. The potential incons istencies in the appli cation of the existing 
rules and the development of regulatory diverg ences among Member States  could also act as a 
significant barrier to the development of a digital single market within the EU. 
The option of no policy change would therefore not respond to the calls for extension of 
scope, generalisation of charges based by default on marginal costs, for clarification and for 
additional guidance, which emerged from the pu blic consultation process in 2010. Indeed, the 
public consultation yielded signi ficant results in that resp ect with 95% of respondents 
expressing support for further action towards ope ning up public data resources and practical 
measures facilitating re-use for unlocking i nnovation and developing new services. In the 
current environment, inaction would also enta il refraining from harnessing the competitive 
potential of novel markets in a moment in whic h innovation is clearly es sential to counter the 
negative impact of the current economic crisis. 
Advantages Disadvantages 
(+) Existing minimum rules for re-using PSI 
preserved 
(+) Flexibility to take account of national 
conditions 
 (-) Increased likelihood of divergent 
approaches at national level 
(-) Increased fragmentation of internal market 
for re-use of PSI 
(-) Risk of uncertainty for the market and end 
users 
(-) Less dynamic development of PSI re-use 
 
EN 46   EN market 
(-) Losses to consumer welfare 
5.2. Option 2: Discontinuing existing EU action (repeal of the PSI Directive) 
Under this option the availability, affordability  and accessibility of a common set of rules 
governing re-use of public sector informa tion would no longer be guaranteed through a 
harmonised legal framework at EU level. 
As a result, EU businesses and citizens woul d no longer enjoy specific rights created by the 
Directive. There would no longer be an enfor ceable obligation on public bodies to grant re-
use where it is currently prescribed and within pr escribed deadlines, or to ensure transparency 
in the application of their charging and licensi ng conditions; prices for re-use would no longer 
be capped at prescribed levels. In addition, while competition rules can offer re-users the 
possibility to require access to PSI in the ev ent of abuse of the supplier’s dominant position, 
the rules of the Directive go beyond what can be ordered under competition law by creating a 
specific right to re-use  and prohibiting discriminatory prac tices. Application of these specific 
rules also usually produces more  appropriate results more quick ly than by applying the rules 
on the abuse of market dominance. Repealing th e Directive would result in more potential for 
abuse by dominant incumbents and in less competition on the market, thereby hindering development of innovative products based on  re-use of PSI and negatively impacting 
consumer welfare. 
On the other hand, Member States would retain the discretion to act, in accordance with their 
national law and generally applicable EU law, to determine what measures should be taken 
beyond market forces to ensure re -use of information produced w ithin the public sector within 
their territory.  
Consequently, when compared to the baseline scenario, market players and consumers would 
be faced with an increasingly divergent set of na tional measures in the field of re-use of PSI. 
This would lead to further fragmentation of the in ternal market for re-use of PSI, in particular 
in view of the differences in the internal or ganisation of Member St ates and the scope of 
national public sectors. The choice  of this policy option would th erefore not ensure the ‘safety 
net’ of a minimum set of public data, to be delivered within certain deadlines at an affordable price and under permissive conditions across th e EU when incumbents in the public sector 
foreclose markets for re-use of data that they have the monopol y to produce or collect. This 
would reduce the potential for re -use of PSI for economic development, for furthering public 
transparency, efficiency and accountability an d for citizen empowerment. It would fail to 
promote regulatory consistency and predictabil ity across the Member States. Moreover, the 
consequences of repealing the Directive would a ffect related initiatives in specific areas (e.g. 
transport, energy, and the environment) and would run counter to the general policy of 
openness developing across the EU that  the PSI Directive underpins.  
Repealing the Directive would therefore remove the conditions that incen tivise businesses and 
consumers to undertake activities based on re -use of PSI. This would hinder further 
development of the PSI reuse market, which is  growing and facing a lot of potential, but 
which require a minimum of regulatory cohesion  across the EU. Indeed, the outcome of the 
public consultation indicates that stakeholders co nsider that divergent national rules can make 
it more complicated to grasp economic opport unities and to develop cross-border products 
and services.  
 
EN 47   EN Advantages  Disadvantages 
(+) More freedom for Member States 
 (-) Increased likelihood of divergent approaches at 
national level 
(-) Increased fragmentation of internal market for 
re-use of PSI 
(-) Increased legal uncer tainty and regulatory 
unpredictability  
(-) No more safety net at EU level to ensure a level 
playing field on the market for re-use of PSI 
(-) Stifled development of the PSI re-use market 
(-) Losses to consumer welfare 
 
5.3. Option 3: Soft law measures 
This option would build on the current re-use of PSI provisions by providing additional 
guidance on the principles to be  applied by national authorities when they implement them at 
national level. This would be done by me ans of an appropriate Commission guidance 
instrument (such as guidelines or a reco mmendation). Although not binding the Member 
States, these instruments would have indica tive authority without requiring legislative 
changes to the framework itself. In partic ular, guidance would be  given on permissive 
licensing conditions for the s upply of PSI, including a model licence; on the meaning of a 
reasonable return on investment together with  a clarification of recoverable costs; on 
recommended re-use friendly formats. In addi tion, Member States would be encouraged to 
ensure interoperability  of the public data (e.g. by processi ng their non-spatial  public data in 
accordance with the rules governing their spatia l data pursuant to the requirements of the 
INSPIRE Directive) and to release as much data as possible for re-use under the least 
restrictive conditi ons possible.  
This option would share the benefits identified in  relation to the baseline Option 1, in terms of 
the ability for Member States to take due account of nationa l conditions. It would also 
preserve the current role of the set of rules on re-use of PSI as a safety net. If the recommendations and guidance were to be fo llowed by the Member St ates, the option would 
clarify and improve the implementation of th e framework by promoting a higher degree of 
consistency in the implementation of re-use obligations, while leaving public bodies and 
Member States flexibility to adapt their re-u se obligations to national circumstances. The 
setting of a common recommende d methodological approach to th e calculation of costs to be 
charged for delivery of data and of a recomm ended set of licensing conditions would help 
enhance regulatory certainty fo r re-users and public bodies alike. Guidance on cost calculation 
would also prevent public bodie s from overcharging for re-use of public data. Guidance on 
recommended data formats would increase re-usa bility of supplied data, resulting in cost 
reductions for re-users. Combined with guida nce on licensing conditions , it would lead to 
increased efficiency in dealing with re-use  requests, resulting in the long run in lower 
transaction costs for the public sector.  
This option can be a relatively non-intrusive and efficient way of a ddressing some of the 
problems, which arose during the application of  the Directive and which stem from e.g. 
 
EN 48   EN insufficient clarity of a term such as reas onable return on investment. Results of the 
stakeholder consultation confirm that gui dance on e.g. licensing conditions and costs 
calculation is indeed necessary. Indeed, some  65% of respondents to the consultation who 
addressed the question about the necessity of so ft law measures were in favour of such 
measures.  
However, because this option does not entail cr eation of enforceable righ ts or obligations and 
would not amend any of the current provisions of the Directive, it  might alone not be 
sufficient to reach all the objectiv es identified for this initiative  and solve identified problems.  
Commercial and non-commercial re-u sers alike would not be able to enforce the guidelines on 
licensing conditions or charging recommendations if they ar e not applied by public bodies, 
which in addition would retain the current discre tion to grant re-use of  their data. Moreover, 
definition criteria for departing from recommen ded licensing terms or co sts calculation would 
remain within discretion of individual Me mber States. Guidance on costs calculation and 
licensing measures would facilitate the act of  making data available for re-use but alone 
would not exert any pressure on charges and on releasing locked data for re-use. Thereby the 
impact of these measures on incentives to unde rtake re-use activities, commercial and non-
commercial alike would remain very limited. 
This option also shares the limitations identified in relation to Options 1 and 2 in terms of the 
development of regulatory divergences among MS, in particular in relation  to an obligation to 
release public data for re-use, to the scope of  application of the Directive and the maximum 
allowable charging levels, whic h would hinder the development of a digital single market 
within the EU and adversely affect c onsumer welfare and adjacent markets.  
Advantages  Disadvantages 
(+) Existing minimum rules on re-use of 
PSI preserved 
(+) Flexibility to take account of national 
conditions 
(+) Improved legal certainty for re-users 
and public bodies with  respect to cost 
calculations and licensing conditions 
(+) Improved re-usability of data with 
recommended re-use friendly formats 
 (-) Increased likelihood of divergent approaches 
at national level on scope, charging levels 
(-) Increased fragmentation of internal market for 
re-use of PSI 
(-) Lack of enforceability of the measures 
(-) Less dynamic development of PSI re-use 
market 
(-) Losses to consumer welfare  
5.4. Option 4: Legislative amendments 
This option would mandate severa l changes to the current rules of the Directive: linking re-
use to accessibility of information, bringing cult ural public domain mate rial within the scope 
of application of the Directive,  imposing a default rule of ch arging based on marginal costs, 
with exceptions to charging at cost recovery  when a public body is at least partly self-
financed, requiring Member Stat es to define the scope of public tasks by legislation and 
mandating appointment of an independent regulato ry authority to ensure enforcement of the 
re-use provisions. Detailed analys is of the main aspects of this  option is provided in Annex 5. 
 
EN 49   EN Option 4 would effectively create a systemic ch ange in the re-use framework by adopting a 
bundle of legislative amendments facilitating and fostering re-use  within the EU. This option 
would create an enforceable righ t to re-use public information by linking the concept of re-use 
to the concept of access to in formation. It would bring a wea lth of valuable data under a 
harmonised framework of re-use rules by extendi ng the scope of applica tion of the Directive 
to cultural institutions and university libraries . It would make re-use more affordable by 
lowering the maximum allowable charges to marginal costs of dissemination. It would 
enhance enforceability of the rules by explicit ly requiring Member States to appoint a PSI 
regulator competent to investigate alleged infr ingements of re-use ru les and by shifting the 
burden of proof of compliance to  public bodies instead of re-u sers. Finally, without imposing 
a binding requirement on Member  States, the option would exp licitly refer to the use of 
machine-readable formats for data delivery wh ere possible and appropriate. Results of the 
online consultation confirm that lowering allowabl e charging levels, establ ishing a right to re-
use, extending the scope of the Directive and en hancing redress are necessary changes in the 
PSI re-use legal framework (see Annex 2). 
Stimulating development of the PSI-bas ed market, including across borders 
This option has by far the highest expected benefits in terms of facilitating and incentivising 
re-use activities compared with Options 1, 2 an d 3. An enforceable right to re-use linked to 
well established accessibility rules would direc tly enhance legal certainty for re-users, as 
would extension of the scope to cultural ins titutions by making cultural PSI subject to the 
same re-use rules, including licensing  and charging regimes, across the EU.  
Highly priced and ring-fenced PSI creates barriers to entry for new players, thereby limiting 
competition between re-users and keeping prices  artificially high. Lower charges and a more 
re-use friendly regulatory framework will increase incentives to engage in PSI re-use and lead to more competition and more innovation on the markets for re-use of various types of PSI, 
resulting ultimately in more and better products for end-users, private consumers and 
professional consumers alike. In addition, lo wer charges and more re-use will trigger 
significant network effects, in particular with respect to PSI of an infrastructural nature, such as address data and maps, which are ‘capil lary pulled’ into other data environments
71. The 
DECA case is an example of th is phenomenon, where the number of  users of a central register 
of all Danish address data has exploded from 26 (the first-tier di stributors) to 1.100 (second-
tier application builders) to over a million of people (t he third-tier end users of Danish GPS 
devices).72 Option 4 is therefore the only one to allow meaningful  intervention in favour of 
stimulating PSI re-use as market effects depend on the accessibility of da ta, the level of fees 
and the level of restrictions on use.  
Economic analysis demonstrates that lower char ges significantly impact re-use, e.g. in those 
cases where public bodies have moved to re-use  facilitation costs or  marginal/zero costs 
charging, the number of re-users has skyr ocketed by factors ranging from 10 to 100 (1  000-
10 000  % increases). 
In some cases effects on ‘sectors of re-use rs’ could be obtained, in  particular in the 
meteorological market, where the number of fi rst-tier re-users is often limited. The KNMI 
                                                 
71 Op. cit. Deloitte 
72 Op. cit. Deloitte 
 
EN 50   EN case demonstrates73 that in the 11 years (since 1999) following the shift to re-use facilitation 
costs, the number of re-users we nt up by a factor of 10, turnover increased by a factor of 4 and 
employment was boosted by a factor of 3. In the DECA case, which also only featured re-use 
facilitation charges, the number of re-users went up by at least a factor of 54, turnover by a 
factor of 10, and employment  by a factor of 3. In the KNM I case tax gains amount to €35 
million over a period of 11 years, and in the DECA case €14.25 million over nine years. Although these figures are modest at macro level, when placed in relation to the investments made and costs incurred, the returns are high, also  taking into account that this change yielded 
savings (in the KNMI case €3.5 million and in the DECA case €5 million).
74 Other examples 
of the expected impacts of more permissive re -use regulation in specifi c sectors are given in 
sections 0 and 2.5. 
Option 4 will also bring more SMEs into the re-use market, as evidenced by case studies 
where lowered entry barriers (lower charges,  non-restrictive licensing conditions, increased 
legal certainty) for SMEs were put in place75. In turn, SMEs positively impact market 
dynamism and innovation and enable experiments with business models for value-added PSI products, including based on previo usly unexplored PSI datasets. 
Prevent fragmentation of PSI regulation across the EU  
Option 4 would harmonise the increasingly divergen t regulatory re-use regimes in the internal 
market by extending to the whole of  the EU a set of rules that ha ve recently been adopted in 
only a few Member States. Option 4 is theref ore the only option, compared with those 
assessed above, that would prevent increasing di screpancies in national re-use regulations, 
thereby reducing transaction cost s and enhancing legal certainty  for cross-border re-users.  
At the same time, this option shares the benefits  identified in relation to the baseline Option 1 
and Option 3, in terms of the ability for Member States to take due account of national conditions. This is a consequence of the nature of the instrument — a directive par excellence  
allows national differences to be accounted for when it is implemented in the national regime.  
Positive impact on general consumer welfare 
Option 4 is most likely to positively affect consumer welfare and surplus. A 2010 KPMG 
study estimated that the land registry’s online access and digi tal certification service was 
saving Spanish taxpayers at least 157 million Eu ros a year (against a land registry budget of 
118 million for the same year). Another cost -benefit analysis conducted by RSO and Cap 
Gemini showed that the land registry’s el ectronic office was saving the taxpayer about 7
 758 
million Euros76.  
Positive impact on transparency and openness 
Option 4 is also most likely to enhance the openness, transparency and accountability of 
governments. An enforceable right to re-use, combined with more re-use friendly conditions in terms of licensing, charging a nd redress, is most likely to in crease as much non-commercial 
                                                
 
73 idem 
74 idem 
75 Op. cit. Deloitte 
76 Ditto. 
 
EN 51   EN as commercial re-use, thereby positively impac ting citizen engagement and the democratic 
process. 
Positive impact on public bodies 
Option 4 also carries the biggest likelihood of  a positive impact on actual revenues and 
efficiencies within public bodies. Lower prices spur demand, which sometimes grows 
exponentially, and revenues from the sale of PSI actually increase77. Option 4 is also likely to 
enhance public efficiency, as revenues per public  body employee dedicated to the facilitation 
of re-use actually increase when charges ar e lowered. Also, Option 4 can lead to actual 
improvement of data quality as a result of closer  ties with re-users. In fact, quality control is 
stepped up and partly outsourced as deficiencies of supplied da ta are more often flagged up 
and reported back to th e public body by re-users.  
Positive impact on the environment 
Increased re-use of PSI can support the effort to address the environmental challenges. By 
stimulating innovation in intelligent processing a nd linking of public data such as e.g. use of 
environmental pollution data with weather fo recast data and geographical information in 
traffic management or energy consumption patt erns can raise efficiency and exploitation 
capacities of environmental monito ring and can influence policy de cisions in transport, land 
use, environment, health, carbon reduction and c limate change or it can assist the public to 
make informed travel or consumption choices, ultimately contributing to the fight against climate change. Option 4, with lower prices and increased availability for public data for re-use is most likely to stimulate the developm ent of environmentally oriented products and 
services.  
In this respect, only Option 4, through increased av ailability of data and their re-use across the 
EU is likely to support specif ic environmental or transpor t policy initiatives. The PSI 
Directive, together with Directive 2003/4/EC  on public access to environmental information 
(the Aarhus Directive) and Di rective 2007/2/EC establishing an Infrastructure for Spatial 
Information in the EU (INSPIRE), form a set of EU measures aimed at ensuring the widest 
possible dissemination of certain information held by public bodies  thus improving pan-
European policy formulation, analys is, implementation and evaluation.  
Negative impacts 
While Option 4 would ensure convergence of national PSI re-use regimes, it does not share 
one of the benefits identified in Option 3, wh ich is to accompany binding provisions of the 
Directive with guidance on the application of ce rtain provisions. The lack of such guidance 
may lead to diverging applications of some of the Directive’s provisions, e.g. diverging 
interpretation of the types of costs to be incl uded within allowable charges or differences in 
terms of licensing conditions for re-use of PSI.  
Moreover, implementing Option 4 can give rise to additional costs when compared to the 
baseline option. These costs will vary dependi ng on the current national regulatory framework 
for re-use. Increased availability may involve co sts associated with preparation of systems for 
collecting, storing, publishing a nd distributing data. There may also be additional costs for 
                                                
 
77 Op. cit. Deloitte, op. cit. Vickery, op. cit. Cambridge Study 
 
EN 52   EN support services due to higher demand. This is further analysed in the section on 
administrative burden below.  
By lowering charges, Option 4 may also generate  indirect costs, related to e.g. compensating 
public entities for loss of revenue by budgetary transfers to maintain n ecessary activities. In 
this connection, studies indicate  that direct revenue s to governments from  PSI are relatively 
low and are much lower than the estimated firs t- and second-order benefits from access to 
PSI. Upper-end estimates based on the most comp rehensive data available suggest that EU-27 
government revenues are of the order of €  1.4 billion based on revenues in the Netherlands, 
and even higher at around €  3.4 billion if based on the United Kingdom; revenues for the EU-
27 are likely to be considerably lower than these estimates78. This is only 1-2  % of the 
aggregate economic impacts from further opening up PSI by allo wing easy access at marginal 
cost, which are estimated at €  140 billion79. In addition to the relatively low level of revenues, 
there are indirect effects of reduced access an d pricing at more than marginal costs of 
distribution, including lower growth, reduced  employment and reduced dynamism of new 
information-based industries, in addition to  foregone government taxation revenues from 
higher-growth industries. 
However, analysis of cases of public bodies, which have already implemented lower charges 
and favourable re-use conditions, costs often ultim ately decrease – if the volume of re-use and 
re-users increase significantly. Once the facili tation of re-use processes has been properly 
organized, they become subroutines within the organization and are to a large extent 
embedded in the public task-funded activities with no extra costs.80 
Advantages  Disadvantages 
(+) Improved consistency of approach 
between Member States 
(+) Greater harmonisation 
(+) Better regulatory predictability   
(+) More dynamic development of PSI re-use 
market  
(+) More competition on the PSI re-use 
market 
(+) More involvement of SMEs 
(+) Improved efficiency  
(+) Improved transparency 
(+) Improved re-usability of data with 
machine-readable formats  (-) Likelihood of implementation costs 
(-) Likelihood of divergi ng application of cost 
calculations and licensing regimes 
   
                                                 
78 Op. cit. Vickery. 
79 Ditto. 
80 Op. cit. Deloitte 
 
EN 53   EN (+) Taxation from higher-growth industries 
5.5. Option 5: Packaged solution  
This option would combine a systemic change in the re-use framework (Option 4) with 
additional guidance on the principles to be  applied by national au thorities when they 
implement them at national level (Option 3). 
By bundling the two options — legislative amendm ents and soft law measures — this option 
would share the benefits identified for Options 3 and 4 in relation to the baseline Option 1, in 
terms of establishing a more re-use friendly regulatory framework with all its economic and social benefits combined with the benefits of  guidance to increase lega l certainty and ensure 
convergence in application of the regulatory framework.  
The effective use of PSI, especially during a pe riod of austerity, is in creasingly viewed as a 
key driver for stimulating economic growth an d promoting social engagement. The challenge 
for the public sector is to remove the barriers th at stand in the way of re-use. However, it is 
not just about the removal of obstacles, it is about ensuring that processes are in place that encourage and facilita te proactive re-use
81.  
Simply lowering PSI pricing does not lead auto matically to growth of the re-use market. 
Innovation flourishes when the different system ic components are in place and reducing the 
cost of PSI is one component that removes the barrier to innovation, but not a sufficient factor 
per se82. Recommended licensing conditions, guidelines  on cost calculation for marginal costs 
and for costs subject to recovery together wi th guidance on the meaning of ‘reasonable return 
on investment’ will reinforce the positive im pact of the binding regulatory changes by 
assisting public bodies in the actual applicatio n of the provisions and will further reinforce 
legal certainty for re-users.  
This option also shares the risks of direct and indirect implementing costs identified with 
respect to Option 4. 
Advantages  Disadvantages 
(+) Improved consistency of approach 
between Member States 
(+) Greater harmonisation 
(+) Better regulatory predictability   
(+) Improved legal certainty for re-users and 
public bodies with respect to cost calculations and licensing conditions 
(+) More dynamic development of PSI re-use (-) Increased likelihood of implementation 
costs 
 
                                                 
81 The UK Report on the Re-use of Public Sector  Information, unlocking PSI potential, 2010  
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documents/information-management/psi-report.pdf   
82 Op. cit. Deloitte. 
 
EN 54   EN market  
(+) More competition on the PSI re-use 
market 
(+) More involvement of SMEs 
(+) Improved efficiency 
(+) Improved transparency 
(+) Improved re-usability of data with 
machine-readable formats  
(+) Taxation from higher-growth industries 
5.6. Implementation costs 
5.6.1.  Option 1: No changes to the Directive (baseline) 
In this case, the regulatory framework imposed  by the original Direct ive has already been 
implemented and where a public body has moved to  comply with the re-use requirements, the 
costs have already been borne . As public bodies need in a ny event to undertake the tasks 
involved in administering and complying with th e re-use rules in thei r territory under the 
existing framework, no additiona l costs would be incurred. 
5.6.2.  Option 2: Discontinuing existing EU ac tion (repeal of the PSI Directive) 
It is not possible to assess wh at would be the impact on administrative costs of this option. 
Even if this option means the ultimate removal of the costs of administering the system for 
data supply to re-users, it is not possible to  predict what arrangement s might be put in place 
by national governments to achieve similar objectives. 
5.6.3.  Option 3: Soft law measures  
Under this option, implementation of the r ecommended guidance on cost calculations and 
licensing conditions could have an impact on the revenues of the public bodies if it leads to a 
reduction of claimed costs.  
It is difficult to estimate the costs or loss of  revenues thus incurred but some costs could be 
similar to those incurred thr ough compliance with a binding pr ovision on lower charges for 
re-use, as considered in  more detail below.  
5.6.4.  Option 4: Legislative amendments 
Implementation of the package is likely to impose some transition costs for complying with 
the new rules: training of staff,  setting up the help desk, change s to technical infrastructure 
and legal support. In addition, lowering re-use ch arges would initially le ad to lower revenues. 
To the extent that the public ta sk is partly financed through returns from re-use charges and 
their own exploitation of value-added products, public bodies need fi nancial guarantees to 
cover the losses to be incurred. 
 
EN 55   EN The actual administrative burden on public bodies of complying with more ambitious re-use 
rules is difficult to estimate and would vary according to the current situation of a given 
public body. In fact, a large majority of public  bodies will not be c oncerned by th e re-use 
measures as they do not collect, produce or hold  any information that is considered as PSI. 
Many of those public bodies that  do are already familiar with re-use, most have experience in 
granting re-use and a number ha ve already moved to marginal costs without disrupting effects 
on their activities. Switching to lower fees or new licensing conditions would only generate 
one-off costs without imposing any recurrin g burden on the public bodies. Some cases 
indicate that costs incurred for facilitating re-use  hardly grow at all — in fact often ultimately 
decrease — even if the volume of re-use and the number of re-users increase significantly. In 
fact, once the new processes have been put in place, they become subroutines within the organisation that, to a large extent, are em bedded in the public task-funded activities and 
involve no extra costs. This also seems to apply to the transaction costs to be incurred when 
charging for PSI re-use (see for instance  practices by KNMI-Dutch Met office, DECA, 
SIRCOM- outsourced re-use fa cilitation by a French site analysing environmental 
information, Destatis – German statisti cal office, Met.no – Norwegian Met office)
83.  
Within this option, public bodies will not f ace a binding obligation to  make their data 
available in machine-readable formats as th is rule will be indi cative only. Where public 
bodies produce or collect data in digital formats, adopting machine-readable formats where 
not yet used will also only impose one-off transi tion costs and may lead to efficiency gains in 
those public bodies that make the investment  of switching from anal ogue to digital data. 
With respect to loss of revenues, studies indicate that although revenues obtained from 
granting re-use are sometimes substantial (Dutch land registry: €  17m, Ordnance Survey: 
€ 21m), the cost recovery ratio — the amount of revenues from charging for raw data supplied 
to re-users as a percen tage of the total budget of the or ganisation — is often insignificant 
when compared to the full budget of the public bodies concerned (mostly less than 1  %, rarely 
more than 15  %)84. In addition, all case studies where publ ic bodies have lowered their prices 
demonstrate that demand grows in larger re lative proportions, sometimes spectacularly. 
Accordingly, where the price elasti city of demand for PSI seems to be fairly large (well over a 
factor of 1), the price cuts will continue to c ontribute to an increase in revenues. (See Annex 6 
for a table presenting cost recovery ra tios of selected publ ic sector bodies). 
Sequential anthology of some assertions of PSI price elasticity:85 
“Lowering the price of public sector geographic data by 60% leads to a 40% annual turnover 
growth” (Economische effecten van laagdrempelige beschikbaarstelling van 
overheidsinformatie, Ravi Bedrijvenplatform, the Netherlands, 2000). 
“It is clear that there is a significant increase  in the usage of data once it was made freely 
available. Comparing the average dissemination of 200 3-2005 with 2005-07 estimates 
(crudely) gives an elasticity of 2.33 (An Aust ralian Perspective on Open Access to and the 
Pricing of Public Sector Informati on, Brian Fitzgerald, Australia, 2007). 
                                                 
83 Op. cit. Deloitte. 
84 Ditto.  
85 Op. cit. Deloitte 
 
EN 56   EN Moreover, in the cases studied in the report, th e average revenue per re-user, i.e. the amount 
charged per re-user, was relatively low (>€  5 000 per year). On the other hand, the average 
revenue per employee dealing with  re-use increased for the public bodies offering the re-use 
facilitation costs model, including e.g. simple  model licences with little negotiation and 
monitoring burden. This is mainly due to effici ency gains from the need for fewer employees 
dealing with re-use. In addition, as lower charges increase re-use , they may in fact increase 
the public body’s revenues from re-use as demo nstrated by e.g. BEV, where price cuts of up 
to 97  % have led to increased PSI sales revenues (+46  % after four years). (See Annex 6 for 
more detailed analysis of transition financi ng measures of selected public sector bodies). 
On the other hand, the new legislative framew ork would not impose an y compliance costs or 
recurring administrative costs on businesses a nd consumers. On the contrary, lower fees 
would lead to reduced costs for re-users, includi ng also transaction costs where marginal costs 
for dissemination of digital information are zero.  
Option 5: Packaged solution sp ecific licence to be signed.  
5.6.5.  Option 5: Packaged solution 
The administrative costs that would be incurred  under this option would not be greater than 
those arising under Option 4, since public bodies would in any event need to undertake the 
tasks involved in administering and complying with the new regulatory framework for re-use, 
where not already implemented.  
5.7. Comparison of options 
Option 1 ( status quo ) would increase the likelihood of diverg ent approaches at national level, 
giving rise to regulatory uncerta inty and distorting competitive conditions in the internal 
market. 
Option 2 ( repeal of the Directive ) would remove the safety net provided at EU level by the 
minimum established PSI re-use rules. By l eaving Member States free to act in the area 
previously subject to harmonised EU rules, it would give rise to increased legal uncertainty 
and divergence of national approaches, to the detriment of competition and the internal market for re-use of PSI. Repealing the directive is also entirely incoherent with related data 
accessibility and re-usability initiatives pursued at the EU and national level. 
Option 3 ( soft law measures ), if applied, will facilitate application of the rules of the PSI 
Directive on licensing and char ging but will noneth eless increase the likelihood of divergent 
approaches at national levels, giving rise to regulatory uncertainty and distorting competitive 
conditions in the internal market.  
Option 4 ( legislative amendments ) will establish a re-use friendly regulatory framework: it 
will broaden the scope of application of the Directive by bringing in cultural material, create an opposable EU right to re-use public data, brin g down prices for re-use of PSI, enhance the 
effectiveness of the redress mechanism for enfor cement of the right to re-use, increase level 
playing field with public bodies competing with  private re-users but carries a risk of 
divergences – and legal uncertainty  - in the applicati on of individual provisions, in particular 
on costs calculation and licensing conditions.  
Option 5 ( packaged solution of soft law measures and legislative amendments ) shares the 
benefits of Option 4 but will in addition facilitate application of the rules of the PSI Directive 
 
EN 57   EN on licensing and charging. As a result, it will ensure convergen ce of national re-use friendly 
regulatory approaches throughout the internal market, there by enhancing legal certainty, 
increasing incentives and lowering ba rriers to undertake PSI re-use.  
The table below provides a summary of main lik ely impacts and risks (with respect to the 
different economic and social dimensions) arisin g from the four policy options (2, 3, 4 and 5) 
involving a change to the stat us quo, as compared to th e “no change” Option 1, which 
provides a baseline scenario for the assessmen t. The signs represent a scale of possible 
impacts vis-à-vis the “no change scenario”: + positive impact , O neutral impact, − negative 
impact using option 1 as baseline.  
IMPACTS AND 
RISKS Option 1 
No policy 
change Option 2 
Repeal of the 
Directive Option 3 
Soft law 
measures Option 4 
Legislative 
measures Option 5 
Packaged 
solution  
SPECIFIC RE-USE ISSUES 
Data re-
usability O No change − Risk of less 
favourable 
conditions for re-
use of data; risk 
of reduced re-
usability of data + If applied, 
introduction of 
EU guidance on 
costs 
calculation, 
recommended 
data formats 
and 
recommended 
licensing 
conditions 
facilitates and 
stimulates data 
re-use + Improved re-
usability with 
reference to 
machine-readable 
formats where 
possible and 
appropriate + Improved re-
usability with 
reference to and 
guidance on 
machine-readable 
formats where 
possible and 
appropriate 
Data 
availability O No change − Risk of limited 
availability for 
re-use of 
different types of 
PSI O No change + Improved 
availability with 
extension of scope 
to public domain 
cultural material + Improved 
availability with 
extension of scope 
to public domain 
cultural material 
Transparency O  No change − Risk of 
reduced 
transparency in 
procedures for re-
use of PSI + If applied, 
introduction of 
EU guidance on 
cost 
calculations and 
recommended 
licensing 
conditions 
improves 
transparency of 
PSI provision. + Some increase in 
transparency 
following the 
reversed burden of 
proof + Increase in 
transparency 
following 
introduction of EU 
guidance on cost 
calculations and 
recommended 
licensing 
conditions and of 
reversed burden of 
proof  
Costs and 
benefits for re-
users/consumers O No change −− High risk of 
loss to consumer 
welfare and 
economy at large 
from less − Guidance on 
cost calculation 
does not in 
itself lead to 
lowered fees + Reduction of 
costs to re-users 
from lowering of 
default charges; 
improved + Reduction of 
costs to re-users 
from lowering of 
default charges; 
guidance on cost 
 
EN 58   EN dynamic 
development of 
PSI re-use market for PSI 
− Loss to 
consumer 
welfare and 
economy at 
large from less 
dynamic 
development of 
PSI re-use 
market consumer welfare 
from increased 
competition on the 
markets for re-use 
based products; 
increased network 
effects from 
increased re-use calculation and 
recommended 
licensing 
conditions would 
increase 
competition and 
efficiency gains 
strengthening 
network effects and 
improving 
consumer welfare  
Administrative 
burden on 
public bodies O No change + Removes 
administrative 
burden of 
compliance with 
EU rules on re-
use of PSI 
− Risk of 
administrative 
burden of 
phasing out / new 
re-use 
arrangements O Current 
administrative 
burden remains − Increased 
administrative 
burden of 
compliance with 
the new regulatory 
framework 
−/ + Depending 
on the PSI sector 
and price elasticity 
in the market, 
revenues from re-
use would be 
foregone or could 
be raised with 
increased re-use − Increased 
administrative 
burden of 
compliance with 
the new regulatory 
framework 
−/ + Depending on 
the PSI sector and 
price elasticity in 
the market, 
revenues from re-
use would be 
foregone or could 
be raised with 
increased re-use 
Redress system 
for re-users  O No change O No change 
unless 
enforcement 
reverts back to 
the default 
judicial system: 
in some Member 
States this could 
lead to a less 
effective 
enforcement of 
re-use  − No 
improvement of 
enforcement 
mechanisms, 
guidance lacks 
enforceability + Improvement in 
the redress system 
with appointment 
of competent 
authority to 
supervise 
compliance with 
rules of Directive 
and hear 
complaints against 
possible 
infringements; 
enforceable right 
to re-use and 
reversed burden of 
proof improve 
enforceability + Improvement in 
the redress system 
with appointment 
of competent 
authority to 
supervise 
compliance with 
rules of Directive 
and hear 
complaints against 
possible 
infringements; 
enforceable right to 
re-use and reversed 
burden of proof 
improve 
enforceability 
Legal certainty O  No change −− High risk of 
increase in legal 
uncertainty about 
re-use 
possibilities and 
conditions, 
including 
transaction costs 
(charges, 
licensing, type of 
data), for 
availability of + Introduction 
of EU guidance 
on cost 
calculations and 
recommended 
licensing 
conditions 
improves legal 
certainty for 
public bodies 
and re-users + Introduction of 
improved re-use 
framework (an 
enforceable right 
to re-use, 
improved redress 
mechanisms) 
would increase 
legal certainty for 
re-users ++ Introduction of 
improved re-use 
framework (an 
enforceable right to 
re-use, improved 
redress 
mechanisms) with 
guidance on cost 
calculation and 
recommended 
licensing 
conditions would 
 
EN 59   EN public data significantly 
increase legal 
certainty 
Speed of 
implementation  O No change  O No change + EU guidance 
would be 
immediately 
applicable 
(once adopted 
by the 
Commission)  − Length of the 
legislative process 
and of 
transposition 
period would 
postpone the 
positive effects of 
this option. − Length of the 
legislative process 
and of 
transposition 
period would 
postpone the 
positive effects of 
this option.  
+ EU guidance 
would be 
immediately 
applicable (once 
adopted by the 
Commission) and 
beneficial for 
implementation 
ECONOMIC ISSUES 
Competition O  No change  − Risk of legal 
uncertainty and 
regulatory 
unpredictability 
(as Member 
States would 
have full 
flexibility to 
define the rules 
governing re-use) 
having a negative 
impact on 
competition. 
Default 
competition rules 
could reduce 
distortions of 
competition if 
enforced.  O No change, 
although if 
applied, guidance 
on cost 
calculations 
could level the 
playing field 
with ‘hybrid’ 
public bodies  + More re-use 
friendly legal 
framework 
(marginal costs 
regime with 
possible 
exceptions, 
improved redress 
mechanism) in 
Member States 
has been shown 
to stimulate 
innovation and 
promote 
competition on 
PSI re-use 
market. Improved 
regulatory 
predictability and 
transparency in 
the re-use 
markets would 
level the playing 
field with public 
bodies ++ More re-use 
friendly legal 
framework 
(marginal costs 
regime with 
possible 
exceptions, 
improved redress 
mechanism; 
guidance on 
favourable 
licensing 
conditions, costs 
calculation) in 
Member States has 
been shown to 
stimulate 
innovation and 
promote 
competition on PSI 
re-use market. 
Improved 
regulatory 
predictability and 
transparency in the 
re-use markets 
would level the 
playing field with 
public bodies  
Investment and 
innovation O No change  −− High risk of 
legal uncertainty 
and regulatory 
unpredictability 
(as Member O / +  If applied, 
guidance on cost 
calculations and 
licensing 
conditions) could + More re-use 
friendly legal 
framework 
(marginal costs, 
extended scope, ++ More re-use 
friendly legal 
framework 
(marginal costs, 
extended scope, 
 
EN 60   EN States would 
have full 
flexibility to 
define the rules 
governing re-use 
of PSI), with a 
negative impact 
on incentives for 
innovation and 
investment in PSI 
re-use products 
and services provide 
incentives for 
more re-use 
activities and 
innovation  better 
enforceability of 
rights) stimulates 
re-use and 
provides 
incentives for 
more re-use 
activities, 
promoting 
innovation and 
attracting 
investment in PSI 
re-use activities better 
enforceability of 
rights, guidance on 
re-use friendly 
conditions and cost 
calculations) 
stimulates re-use 
and provides strong 
incentives for more 
re-use activities, 
promoting 
innovation and 
attracting 
investment in PSI 
re-use activities  
Internal market  O No change  −− High risk of 
increased 
fragmentation of 
internal market 
for PSI re-use as 
re-users would 
face more 
divergent 
national regimes  − Risk of 
increased 
fragmentation of 
internal market 
for PSI re-use as 
re-users would 
face more 
divergent 
national regimes 
+ If applied, 
guidance on cost 
calculations and 
recommended 
licensing 
conditions would 
stimulate some 
convergence in 
the internal 
market  + The new legal 
framework would 
lead to greater 
harmonisation of 
rules on re-use of 
PSI and improve 
consistency of 
approach 
between Member 
States by 
extending the 
rules applied 
individually by 
some Member 
States across the 
EU 
 ++ The new legal 
framework would 
lead to greater 
harmonisation of 
rules on re-use of 
PSI and improve 
consistency of 
approach between 
Member States by 
extending the rules 
applied 
individually by 
some Member 
States across the 
EU and providing 
guidance on 
application of the 
provisions of the 
Directive (cost 
calculations and 
licensing for re-
use), which are 
now applied 
unevenly and 
inconsistently 
across the EU 
SOCIAL ISSUES 
Citizen 
empowerment/ 
public 
accountability O No change − Removal of  the 
re-use legal 
framework 
negatively 
impacts the 
democratic 
process by 
limiting the 
amount of 
available data O/+  Guidance 
on cost 
calculation has 
limited impact on 
data availability 
for non-
commercial re-
use but 
recommended 
licensing 
conditions could 
improve re-use 
conditions and 
stimulate non-+ The new legal 
framework would 
stimulate non-
commercial re-
use associated 
with openness 
and government 
transparency by 
creating an 
enforceable right 
to re-use and 
improving 
redress solutions + The new legal 
framework with 
guidance on 
licensing 
conditions would 
stimulate and 
facilitate non-
commercial re-use 
associated with 
openness and 
government 
transparency by 
creating an 
enforceable right to 
 
EN 61   EN commercial re-
use associated 
with openness 
and government 
transparency re-use and 
improving redress 
solutions 
Employment 
and labour 
market O No change − Removal of  the 
re-use legal 
framework could 
hold back 
existing business 
activities, leading 
to fewer jobs in 
the PSI re-use 
sector O Guidance on 
costs and 
licensing would 
most likely not 
be sufficient to 
stimulate re-use 
markets to the 
extent that 
appreciable 
effects on jobs 
would ensue + Enhanced new 
legal framework, 
in particular re-
use friendly 
charging, leads to 
an appreciable 
increase in 
commercial re-
use and job 
creation in some 
sectors + Enhanced new 
legal framework, in 
particular re-use 
friendly charging 
and licensing, leads 
to an appreciable 
increase in 
commercial re-use 
and job creation in 
some sectors 
ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES 
Impact on the 
environment O No change  − Removal of  the 
re-use legal 
framework will 
remove support 
for sector-
specific policy 
initiatives, such 
as INSPIRE  O No change  + By stimulating 
innovation, a 
more re-use 
friendly 
framework can 
impact 
environmental 
services and 
products and 
support 
environmental 
policies  + By stimulating 
innovation, a more 
re-use friendly 
framework can 
impact 
environmental 
services and 
products and 
support 
environmental 
policies  
5.8. Conclusion 
The Impact Assessment indicates that Option 5 (packaged solution of soft law measures and 
legislative amendments ) offers the best balance betw een promoting re-use of PSI, 
harmonisation and legal certainty in the light of national circumstances. 
6. MONITORING AND EVALUATION  
A core indicator of progress towards meetin g the identified objectives is the correct 
transposition and applica tion of the Re-use of Public Sector Information  Directive. The 
INFSO Management Plan regularly monitors th e implementation of the PSI Directive with 
this indicator, and this will also be done for the revised Directive. 
The following indicators, which may be refine d in collaboration with Member States' 
representatives86, will allow to measure progress in the re-use of public sector information and 
related policies across the European Union: 
• Number of data portals and of available datasets; 
                                                 
86 Collaboration with the Member Stat es on a common set of the PSI re-use indicators is foreseen under 
the European E- Government Action Plan 2011-2015. 
 
EN 62   EN • Quality of the datasets evaluated according to a set of criteria including machine 
readability and the possibility  of having user feedback; 
• Level of re-use (number of downloads of da ta, number of downloa ds of applications, 
turnover of companies); 
• Cross-border use of data; 
• Number of exceptions from the general ru le on pricing, and their economic impact; 
• Degree of standardisation of licensing c onditions, use of open licenses; 
• Level of activity of redress and enforcem ent mechanisms, including the degree of 
independence of regulatory bodies and effectiveness of their decisions. 
• Number and character of complaints and ot her reports from citi zens and business to 
the Commission.  
Data will be gathered in the following ways: 
– reporting obligation on Member States to be included in the amended Directive, 
– input from stakeholders as pa rt of a regular dialogue and 
– independent studies to collect , collate and assess data. 
The Commission will review the application of the Directive and will communicate the 
results of the review together with any proposals for modifications to the European 
Parliament and to the Council 3 ye ars after the transposition date. 
7. ANNEXES  
• Annex 1: Implementation of the Directive 
• Annex 2: Overview of the resu lts of the public consultation 
• Annex 3: Key findings of the studies 
• Annex 4: Examples of difficulties in accessing PSI for re-use (pricing and licensing 
conditions) 
• Annex 5: Charging policies in the cultural sector 
• Annex 6: Overview of charging tend encies by public sector bodies 
• Annex 7: Machine-readable formats 
 
EN 63   EN Annex 1: Implementation of the Directive  
Implementing acts in Member States 
Member States have implemented the Directive in different ways: 
- 11 Member States have adopted specific PSI re -use measures (BE, DE, GR, ES, IE, IT, CY, 
LU, MT, RO, UK). 
- 4 Member States have used a combination of new measures specifically addressing re-use 
and legislation predating the Directive (DK, AT , SI, SE) and 8 Member States have adapted 
their legislative framework for access to document s to include re-use of PSI (BG, CZ, FI, FR, 
LV, LT, NL, PT). 
- 4 Member States have notifie d the Commission only of pre-exis ting measures (provisions of 
Constitutional Acts, provisions of Freedom of Information/Access to Information Acts), none of which specifically addresse s re-use (EE, HU, PL, SK). 
Actions to support the proper application and implementation of the PSI Directive : 
• PSI group
, a Member States’ expert group fo r the exchange of good practices 
and initiatives supporting public sector information re-use.  
• PSI Platform , the European Public Sector Information (PSI) platform. This 
‘one-stop-shop’ web portal provides news on European PSI developments, 
good practices, examples of new products and services, and legal cases concerning PSI re-use.  
• LAPSI network
. The project aims to analyse th e legal issues related to access 
to and re-use of public sector informa tion, foster debate among researchers and 
players in the field, among other things through dissemination exercises and 
awareness-raising events and contests, and produce a set of policy guidelines 
that will help all interest ed stakeholders in their access and re-use policies and 
practices. 
• Exclusive agreements , an exercise for assessing the existence of possible 
exclusive agreements concluded by public sector bodies within certain Member 
States (pursuant to Article 11 of the Directive). 
• Economic analysis . Several studies have been u ndertaken to measure different 
aspects of PSI. See Annex 3. 
General principle provisions in Member States 
In France, the PSI Directive was transposed by Ordonnance  2005-650 on freedom of access 
to administrative documents and on the re-use of  public sector information. Article 10 of the 
Ordonnance  provides that information featured in documents made or held by public sector 
bodies can be used by any person  for purposes other than those of the public tasks for which 
the documents were created or held. The right to  re-use public sector information concerns all 
documents to which there is a right to access und er the French access to documents regime as 
well as those that were previ ously publicly disseminated.  
 
EN 64   EN In Slovenia the PSI Directive was transposed  by a Decree on the provision and re-use of 
public information amending the Access to Pub lic Information Act from 2003. According to 
the Slovak legislation, all information held by public sector bodies , to which access is 
allowed, may also be re-used, with the except ion of archive material held by a competent 
archive. 
Other Member States (Spain, Poland) are current ly adopting a general principle that makes all 
accessible information re-usable and others are in favour of this option (the Netherlands, 
Denmark). 
Charging regimes in selected  individual Member States  
The National Archives oversees implementati on of re-use policy in the UK and, through the 
Controller of Crown copyright , gives directions to central  government departments and 
agencies whose output is covered by  Crown copyright. It was decided87 t h a t  m o s t  c e n t r a l  
government information should be available for re-u se at marginal cost. In practice this often 
means free of charge, especially where th e information is published online. Where 
departments and agencies other th an trading funds wish to charge  for the re-use of data, they 
are required to justify departures from the ma rginal cost model against the criteria for 
exceptions for marginal cost pricing88. If their request is accepted, they are required to sign up 
to the Information Fair Trader Scheme, which has a system of verifi cation and investigation 
of complaints89. This policy aims to ensure that the Government does not restrict or create 
unnecessary barriers to re-use. Many public bodies have changed their policy from a cost 
recovery policy to a marginal cost  approach, with resounding success.  
France: linked to the creation of the data.gouv.fr portal, a decree has laid down the principle 
of distribution without charge of central government informa tion. All new charging policies 
must be justified and have to be submitted for approval90. 
The Netherlands has announced it is moving towa rds charging only marginal costs or less, in 
line with the preamble to the Directive, which recommends this approach. 
                                                 
87 http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/inform ation-management/ifts/cost-pricing.htm. 
88 http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documents/info rmation-management/criteria-exceptions-marginal-
cost-pricing.pdf. 
89 http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/info rmation-management/ifts/members.htm. 
90 Décret n° 2011-577 du 26 mai 2011 relatif à la réu tilisation des informations publiques détenues par 
l’Etat et ses établissement s publics administratifs. 
 
EN 65   EN Annex 2: Overview of the results of the public consultation  
The consultation was published on the Commi ssion’s ‘Your Voice in Europe’ webpage 
(http://ec.europa.eu/yourvoice/ipm/fo rms/dispatch?form=psidirective2010 ). A press release was 
issued. The launch was publicised also on Twi tter, on the Commission’s Information Society 
PSI website ( http://ec.europa.eu/information_s ociety/policy/psi/index_en.htm ) and on the 
ePSIplatform portal. In addi tion, all types of stakeholde rs were informed about the 
consultation and invited through  their associations and by individual email messages to 
submit their views. A report summarising the resu lts of the consultation was also prepared and 
published on the same site91. 
The overwhelming majority of respondents (over 90  %) stated that PSI re-use has not reached 
its full potential and support fu rther action to stimulate re-u se and promote cross-border 
provision of PSI-based products and services, although responses to the last topic showed 
some difference of opinion among the PSI bodies.  
••• 113.1 Has PSI re-use reached its full potential in Europe?
agree strongly
2%
agree
3%
no opinion
6%
disagree
44%disagree strongly
45%
 
agree strongly 
72%disagree strongly
2%
agree 
23%no opinion 
1%disagree 
2%
Could further action towards opening up public data resources and practical 
measures facilitating re-use contribute to unlocking innovation? 
 
                                                 
91 http://tinyurl.com/PSIconsultation. 
 
EN 66   EN In general, most respondent s favour amendments to the Directive, although support for 
amendments ranges according to  the category of respondents fr om some 40% of PSI content 
holders up to over 70% of re-users.  
Should further action be taken at Community level to 
promote cross-border products and services re-using PSI?
agree
40%no opinion
8%disagree
2%disagree strongly
4%
agree strongly
46%
 
more substantive amendments to the Directive?
79,57%
9,14%
0,00%10,00%20,00%30,00%40,00%50,00%60,00%70,00%80,00%90,00%
yes no
respondentsand/or technical adjustments to the Directive clarifying 
some of the provisions?
76,88%
5,38%
0,00%10,00%20,00%30,00%40,00%50,00%60,00%70,00%80,00%90,00%
yes no
respondents
 
Suggestions for legislative amendments and fo r additional soft law guidance did not differ 
significantly among specific categor ies of respondents. Respondents flagged many issues that 
in their view remain problematic, but several to pics stand out clearly from the submissions.  
Respondents across all categories (88  %) support changing the genera l principle to make all 
accessible information available.  
 
EN 67   EN Agree
Strongly 61%Agree 27%N.O. 1%Disagee 3%Disagree
Strongly 4%
N.A.4%
 
Opinion was almost equally strongly (almost 80  %) in favour of extend ing the scope of the 
Directive, with most support for including resear ch and educational esta blishments and least 
for public broadcasters. Interestingly, PSI conten t holders are generally divided half in favour 
and half against extending the Directive’s scope to any of the sectors. This difference of 
opinion stems from the fact that some opposing PSI holders currently belong to one of the 
excluded sectors and wish to maintain this stat us or represent those PSBs that reluctantly 
make their data available and are in principl e opposed to the open data concept. Those PSI 
bodies in favour of extension have generally embraced the aims of the PSI Directive and 
comply with its provisions. In their opini on, sectoral exclusions are not justifiable. 
More specifically on the question of scope, resp ondents generally favour an extension of the 
Directive, with little difference among opinions  regarding each excluded sector but with 
differences in levels of support: le ast support from PSI  holders (around 50  % for each sector) 
and most from academics and citizens (bordering on 80  % for each sector). Representatives of 
the excluded sectors essentially repeated the arguments against extending the scope that were 
used to justify the initial exclusion of these sectors from the scope of the Directive, i.e. the preponderance of third-party intellectual prope rty rights covering materials held by these 
public bodies. An additional argu ment against extending the scope, to do with protecting 
privacy and personal data, was put forward by representatives of public archives.  
public service broadcasters?
44%68%80%84%
43%12%5%6%7%
16%34%27%14%9%
41%
0%10%20%30%40%50%60%70%80%90%100%
PSI holder PSI reusers academic citizens othersno opinion
diagree
agree
 
 
EN 68   EN educational and research establishments?
53%72%87% 86%
55%8%8%7% 9%
14%39%20%6% 5%
31%
0%10%20%30%40%50%60%70%80%90%100%
PSI holder PSI reusers academic citizens othersno opinion
diagree
agree
 
cultural establishments?
49%72%78% 80%
55%10%4%6%7%
8%31%24%16%13%
37%
0%10%20%30%40%50%60%70%80%90%100%
PSI holder PSI reusers academic citizens othersno opinion
diagree
agree
 
Another strongly supported issue is the promotion of re-use friendly formats with over 83% of 
respondents calling for formats to be machin e readable and/or ba sed on open standards 
software. In parallel, respondents, including PS I content holders, called for the need to 
harmonise and standardise the formats and licen sing terms to prevent fragmentation of the 
internal market for data re-use. Mainly PSI re-users and academics (with fewer PSI bodies) 
also pointed out that restrictiv e and/or un-harmonised licensing terms are frequently a barrier 
to re-use and that accep table conditions should be more preci sely spelled out in  the Directive. 
Many respondents across categories called for st andardisation of licensing terms, frequently 
suggesting the Creative Comm ons framework. Among the re-u sers and the academics, 
respondents called for stronger obligations regard ing redress mechanisms and transparency. A 
recurring remark from re-users is the difficulty to locate a competent interlocutor within PSI 
content holders.  
The question of charging received much attenti on from all respondents. It is clear from many 
submissions that clarification and guidance on many charging issues is  required, including on 
charging strategies versus open access or on admissible tariffs. Although views tend to 
diverge across categories of respondents, some 70% of respondents opposed the rule of full 
cost recovery together with a reasonable return on investment s and some 66% supported free 
re-use for non-commercial purposes. Responde nts were almost equally divided on the 
 
EN 69   EN marginal costs option. PSI bodies called for gui dance on charging to take into account not 
only the type of data in questi on (e.g. raw versus value added da ta), but also the type of end 
use (public, academic, business), and the way data is delivered . PSI re-u sers also called for a 
distinction between raw and value added data. Moreover, together with the academics, they 
were the most numerous to call for the marginal  costs principle. This multitude of proposals 
demonstrates that no one size fits all (e.g. core da ta / raw data versus value added; type of end 
use) and these differences must be accounted for in order not to inhibit data re-use.  
Support (in % of responses received) for different charging regimes 
Finally, respondents across all sectors generall y called for support and deployment measures 
to promote PSI re-use, including across borde rs. These measures ra nge from guidance on 
many topics (licensing, charging, public task, data quality) to support for the development of 
national data portals and for a European single access point to data. % Agree 
strongly Agree No 
opinion Disagree Disagree 
strongly No 
answer TOTAL 
(i) at charges based on 
full cost recovery, 
together with a 
reasonable return on investment?  3.8 6.3 4.6 24.3 46.8 14.2 100 
(ii) at charges based on 
full cost recovery?  3.3 9.6 5.3 31.1 35.9 14.8 100 
(iii) at charges based 
on partial cost 
recovery?  2.6 13 9.7 29.9 27.5 17.3 100 
(iv) at marginal costs 
for reproducing and disseminating the 
documents? 
 12.7 26.7 10.3 19.5 16.6 14.2 100 
(v) at marginal costs as 
the basic rule with 
certain limited exceptions?  7 25.3 13.7 23.1 16 14.9 100 
(vi) for free as regards 
both commercial and 
non-commercial re-use  30.4 20 9 16.8 11.3 12.5 100 
(vii) for free as regards 
non-commercial re-use 49.1 17.1 7.8 6.4 7.7 11.8 100 
 
EN 70   EN Annex 3: Key findings of the studies  
– MEPSIR 
In order to be able to measure the re-use of PSI in the Member States and Norway, the 
Commission ordered a benchm ark study on exploitation of PSI (MEPSIR — Measuring 
European Public Sector Information Resources)92. The main objectives of the study, carried 
out in 2006, were (1 ) to develop, document and test  a repeatable methodology for 
measurement of PSI re-use and (2) to perform a baseline measurement of PSI re-use in the EU 
and Norway93. The study estimated the overall market si ze for public sector information in the 
EU to be in the range of €  10 to €  48 billion, with a mean value around €  27 billion, amounting 
to 0.25  % of the total aggregated GDP for the EU and Norway (€  10 730 billion).  
– Exclusive agreements 
In 2009/2010 the Commission carried out a comp rehensive study to assess the existence of 
possible exclusive agreements concluded by public sector bodies, in the light of Article 11 of 
the Directive and in accordance with the Co mmunication on the Review  of the Directive. 
Article 11 forbids, as a general rule, the ex istence of exclusive agreements (EAs) unless 
necessary for the provision of a service in the public interest, and the transitional period laid down in the Directive for terminating existi ng exclusive agreements ended on 31 December 
2008. Nine Member States were surveyed. Most of the studies revealed very few potential 
exclusive agreements in the EU, and the assessme nt indicated that thes e were not one of the 
major obstacles hindering exploitation of the full potential for PSI re-use in Europe. The 
studies also provide some insigh t into current PSI developments in Member States and point 
to those areas that may be preventin g PSI re-use in each Member State
94. 
– Economic indicators and case st udies on PSI pricing models 
In 2010, the Commission also finalised and publis hed the final report on economic indicators 
and case studies on PSI pricing models95. In all 20 organisations pa rticipated voluntarily in 
working groups representing a broad range of operational expe rience across the EU. Of the 10 
indicators recommended (seven on the supply side  and three on the demand side), only three 
provided a direct economic measure,  with three indicators usable  for regular measurements at 
specific intervals in time.  
In 2010 the Commission launched th ree other external studies on:  (i) assessing the different 
models of supply and charging for PSI (Deloitt e); (ii) a revised figur e for the PSI market 
value for Europe and (iii) re-use of PSI in the cultural sector. These studies were completed during the first half of 2011. 
– Pricing of Public Sector Info rmation Study, Deloitte, July 2011 
                                                
 
92 http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/policy/psi/actions_eu/policy_actions/mepsir/index_en.htm . 
93 http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/policy/psi/actions_eu/policy_actions/mepsir/index_en.htm . 
94
 http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/polic y/psi/facilitating_reuse/exlusive_agreements/inde
x_en.htm. 
95 http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/policy/ psi/docs/pdfs/economic_study_report_final.pdf. 
 
EN 71   EN In order to assess what model of supply and charging for public sector information would 
facilitate the greatest re-use of PSI, maximi sing its social and economic value, the study 
undertook 21 case studies around the EU in cl ose cooperation with public sector bodies 
(PSBs) in four sectors (meteorological, geograp hic, business registries and other) to compare 
and drive conclusions on  the economic effects evident in those PSBs that have shifted towards 
for free and marginal costs pricing models compared  to those that practise full or partial cost 
recovery. Therefore, the study looked into the impacts of di fferent charging regimes on both 
the downstream market and the PSBs providing the PSI. 
The study also performed a snapshot analysis of the Smartphone apps market based on PSI 
and a comparative analysis of some  best practice data gov portals.  
It is evident that we are currently witnessi ng positive political engagement and willingness to 
make government information more widely av ailable and re-usable in Europe, including 
changes in the pricing policy towards for free or  marginal costs, which are having positive 
effects on the increasing number of  citizens and re-users  making use of PSI. This is an evident 
conclusion emerging from this study. 
There is a clear general trend towards lowering ch arges. Furthermore, there are quite a lot of 
cases that appear to be in an  ‘in between’ situation, where non- commercial re-use is allowed 
against zero costs (and only commercial re-use is charged). In almost all cases, PSBs allow 
free access to their PSI. In some cases, free ac cess (i.e. viewing withou t copying) was in fact 
the forerunner to a more liberal re-use regi me. In those case studies where cost-recovery 
regimes are still applied, the calculation basis for setting PSI re-use charges appears to be 
weak. The PSBs concerned are mostly unable to explain the basis for cost allocation. In some cases, the setting of charges seems to be geared towards filling budget gaps rather than a cost-
oriented tariff as is required under the Directive. In all case studies, the PSI re-use related 
revenues of PSBs range from relatively small to extremely small when compared to the full budget of the PSB concerned. In mo re than half of the cases th ese revenues form ed less than 
1
 % of the PSBs’ entire budget and in only four cas es did this cost recovery rate exceed 15  % 
(the highest measurement was 20.7  %). 
In those cases where PSBs have shifted to a lower charging regime, this movement does not 
stand alone, but is rather  part of a broader policy change. Qu ite often this pol icy change also 
entails a change in the assertion of intellectual property rights and cutting of the provision of own value-added products. 
The number of PSBs exploiting value-added products (based on their own raw data) is limited 
and appears to be decreasing ove r time. In quite a number of cas e studies these were referred 
to as ‘headache’ products. 
Lowered charges significantly impact re-use. In those cases where PSBs moved to re-use 
facilitation costs or marginal/zero costs char ging, the number of re-users skyrocketed by 
factors ranging from 10 to 100 (1
 000-10  000  % increases). Furthermore, economic effects 
appear to be multiplied exponentially through the huge network effects that they can trigger. 
This applies particularly to PSI of a infrastr uctural nature, such as address data and maps. 
These are ‘capillary pulled’ in to other data environments.  
Lowering charges also brings in  different types of re-users, in particular SMEs. This was 
evidenced by a number of cases where the price cuts were less significant (or even absent), 
but where special schemes for SMEs were put in place. The snapshot of the apps market 
 
EN 72   EN demonstrates that these lowered entry barrier s for SMEs positively impact market dynamism 
and innovation and enable experiments with busin ess models that create value-added services 
on top of PSI data as well as showing the hidde n value of previously unexplored PSI datasets. 
All case studies where PSBs have lowered thei r prices demonstrate that demand grows in 
larger relative proportions, sometimes spectacula rly. Accordingly, where the price elasticity 
of demand for PSI seems to be fairly large, th e price cuts will continue to contribute to an 
increase in revenues, especially since current revenues appear to be relatively low. Once charges are zero, revenues will also be zero. 
Conversely, costs appear hardly to increase — in  fact, they often ultim ately decrease — if the 
volume of re-use and number of re-users increase signifi cantly. Apparently, once the 
facilitation of re-use processes has been properly organised, th ey become subroutines within 
the organisation and are to a la rge extent embedded in the p ublic task-funded activities with 
no extra costs. Lower charges thus also appear to enhance efficiency, where the revenues per re-use FTE (PSB employees dedicated to the f acilitation of re-use) actually increase when 
charges are lowered. The concern about lower PSI data quality in  the event of increased re-
use, which has often been expr essed by PSBs, was not confirme d by the case studies. Rather 
the opposite was reported:  closer ties with re-users lead  to improved data quality, since 
deficiencies are immediately fl agged up and reported back to the PSB. Hence, quality control 
is partly outsourced when the interest in data quality is shared.  
– Review of recent studies on PSI re-use and related market developments, Graham 
Vickery, July 2011 
Estimated on the basis of the most recently av ailable studies, the narrowly defined EU-27 
direct PSI-related market was worth around €
 28 billion in 2008 and continuing to grow, 
suggesting a figure of around €  32 billion in 2010 provided that PSI markets continued 
growing at earlier rates and were  not affected by the recession.  
Although care needs to be taken with these estimates as they come from a wide range of 
sources using different methodologies, it is clear that even the narrow PSI-based market is 
economically important and the direct economic ‘f ootprint’ is probably larger due to PSI use 
and re-use activities in othe r industries and in government. Furthermore, overall economic 
gains from opening up PSI by allowing easy access fo r free or marginal cost of distribution 
could bring gains of around €  40 billion for the EU-27, depending on the economic impacts of 
current limitations on access and use. 
Aggregate economic impacts from PSI use acro ss the whole EU-27 economy are of the order 
of €  140 billion, showing clearly that there are la rge economic benefits to be gained from 
easier access to and greater use of PSI. It is also clear that new applications and uses in a wide 
variety of goods and services industries and future innovations associated with easier access 
to PSI are more important than the direct mark et associated with the use of PSI, and wider 
second-order uses can be expected to add furt her economic and social benefits to the EU-27 
economy.  
All studies show relatively rapid growth in PSI -related markets, estimated variously in the 
range of 6-11  %, with higher growth rates where PSI is made increasingly accessible at lower 
direct cost.  
 
EN 73   EN There are more scattered estimates of the gains from the removal of curr ent barriers to access 
and improving the underlying infras tructure, and they too are pos itive. For example in the 
geospatial sector, benefits c ould be increased by some 10-40  %, depending on the estimation 
method, by improving access, data standards, a nd building skills and knowledge. Better 
policies in the area of geospati al applications  in local government c ould help the productivity 
gains from applications almost double over the next five years. Large markets are also 
estimated in financial, ener gy and construction sectors.  
On the other hand, direct revenues to government s from PSI are relatively low and are much 
lower than the estimated first- and second -order benefits from access to PSI. Upper-end 
estimates based on the most comprehensive da ta available suggest that EU-27 government 
revenues are of the order of €  1.4 billion based on revenues in the Netherlands, and even 
higher at around €  3.4 billion if based on the United Kingd om, two countries that have been 
relatively effective in collecting revenues.  Revenues for the EU-27 are likely to be 
considerably lower than these estimates. Despite  the relatively low level of revenues, there are 
indirect effects of reduced acce ss and pricing at more than ma rginal costs of distribution, 
including lower growth, reduced employment  and reduced dynamism of new information-
based industries, in addition to foregone gove rnment taxation revenue s from higher-growth 
industries.  
Research suggests that foregone government revenue s from direct sales of  PSI could be raised 
via basic replacement funding, possibly mixed w ith some kind of ‘updater’ funding models, 
where, for example, businesses updating their company data pay a hi gher levy. Nevertheless, 
the extra funding involved is estimated to be ve ry small compared with  the budgets of public 
sector bodies providing pub lic sector information (usually less than 1  % of their expenditures 
and a maximum of one fifth of expenditures in isolated cases), and even smaller compared 
with additional benefits from greater PSI-rela ted economic activity overall. In addition, it is 
worthwhile to improve the IT infrastructure a nd to rationalise terms of access/use policy for 
intra-government PSI re-use (e.g. between nation al and local governments), with both direct 
benefits to governments and related spillovers to the private sector. 
– Re-use of cultural material 
The study investigating the re-use of PSI in the cultural sector found that very few institutions 
are dependent on the income they receive from re-use to enable  them to undert ake their public 
task. However, the income that they receive from re-use is in many cases essential to enable future re-use and development of services.  
The approach that institutions have taken appears to depend on a very wide range of intrinsic 
and extrinsic factors — from the strategy of the State they are located in, through the nature of 
the collections, right down to the personalities of  the people involved at an institution. It is 
important to bear in mind that a sample of this  size cannot be representative of such a diverse 
community. These results should not be seen as statistically representative or significant; rather, they provide a first empi rical view of possible trends a nd practices concerning re-use 
of cultural materials in several EU Member States. 
Most organisations sampled are already re-using material in some way. Based on the survey 
respondents, the institutions with  the highest absolute income from re-use are typically 
national institutions that have been conducting ch argeable re-use activities for many years (in 
one case, since 1765!). This is unsurprising, given that they ha ve the largest and best-known 
collections, and they have the administrative ca pability to manage the exploitation of this 
 
EN 74   EN material. These institutions are also most likely to undertake th ird-party re-use, by licensing 
entire collections to an extern al organisation that undertakes di gitisation and then generates 
income. This income is then us ed to fund the staff time and e ffort required to prepare further 
collections for digitisation and re-use. 
The institution (in the overall sample) with th e highest income from re-use generated ~ €10m 
in 2009, representing 7.1  % of total income. The institution with the highest share of income 
from re-use generated ~ €6m, representing 11.1  % of total income.  
Of the organisations reporting financial data  for this study, between 2005 and 2009 some 
showed growth in revenue from re-use activi ties, while others show ed a decline. As a 
proportion of overall income, however, re-u se remained approximately level (<1  % change) 
for all of the reporting institutions. Many respondents  stressed that they were trying to balance 
their public task of disse minating information with their need  to generate income to fund the 
future development of services. As expected, many new projects have  been started since 
2005, and many more are currently being planne d. Many of these are not yet generating 
income and, indeed, many are not intended to do s o. It is clear, however, that institutions are 
actively seeking out opportunities to re-use their content regardless of whether they intend to 
generate income from this re-use.  
Many respondents expressed in qua litative sections of the survey  a sense that digitisation of 
content was synonymous with enabling re-use. Respondents have generally expressed the 
view that material must be digitised to reach as wide an audience as possible. Nonetheless, there are good examples of ‘a nalogue’ re-use, such as repr oduction fees, selling prints, 
catalogues, etc.  
There was a general view that the cost and effo rt of digitisation was the major factor limiting 
re-use of their material. Depending on the capab ility and nature of the organisation, this 
typically either has prevented th e re-use of the material, or has led to third-party re-use. 
 
EN 75   EN Annex 4: Examples of difficu lties in accessing PSI for re- use (pricing and licensing 
conditions)  
Some public bodies apply a unit pric e that is reasonable for a singl e unit, but not for the entire 
database. As a consequence, the total price of the full data set is prohibitive. For instance, the full database of the CENDOJ would cost €3.4m,  although one unit (i.e. a single sentence) 
would be perfectly affordable at €1.5. The same circumstance applied to the former charging regime of the French land registry, where the entire digital map would have cost a re-user 
€5.7m (the price of a single map was €9.5) and, ther efore, despite interest on the part of re-
users, was never bought
96. 
A national Met Office (names have b een removed to protect business secrets) 
In 2009, the Commission received a complaint from  a pan-European weather business with 
offices in eight European countries and customer s worldwide, providing tailored products to 
consumer, media and professional markets.  
Since 2003 the company had been attempting to enter into a business relationship with a 
national Met Office with the intention of purchas ing meteorological data for the territory of 
the Member State — namely hourly SYNOP obse rvations and radar composites. The first 
answer from the Met Office came in 2006, when it refused to supply the data. The matter was 
brought to the SOLVIT centre, which was unable to broker an agreement and recommended 
an official complaint to the European Commission for breaching Article 49 of the EC Treaty. 
In 2007 the Met Office issued its first offer. It  covered all the requested data types but was 
priced at ~ €  20 250 for national 10 minute radar data compared to ~ €  6 700 charged for 5 
minute German radar data by the Deutsche We tterdienst DWD (5 minute radar data being 
higher resolution and therefore more valuable than 10 minute radar data). Also, the offer 
contained very restrictive licensing conditions (e.g. radar data could only be made available 
with a three-hour delay on the open internet wh ile the Met Office published this information 
in real time on the open internet). 
In 2008, the Met Office provided a new offer with  two variants. 30 minute radar images were 
offered at ~ €  4 000 per month but without the right to resell data prod ucts to end users (the 
price doubled for the right to resell). In a s ubsequent offer in 2008, th e Met Office offered  30 
minute radar images at ~ €  1 600 per month with no re-use rights  associated with the delivery. 
The company eventually signed an agreement with  the Met Office after informal intervention 
by a competition authority. The company was relu ctant to bring proceedings against the Met 
Office on competition grounds (refusal to suppl y, excessive charging) given the need to 
maintain commercial relations with the public body and the urgency of obtaining data for re-
use in order to remain on the market (again st the expected leng th of proceedings). 
This example demonstrates the difficulties that re-users face in obtaining PSI for re-use in 
some markets. It also illustrate s the reluctance to bring proceed ings against public  bodies that 
do not comply with the re-use provisions, for r easons of reliance on the supply of data from 
the public body (a monopolist on the market) and insufficient or ineffective redress 
mechanisms. 
                                                 
96 Op. cit. Deloitte. 
 
EN 76   EN Effects of high charges in the meteorological sector on SMEs  
According to PRIMET, an association of re-u sers of meteorological services, the charges 
made by the public meteorological offices for re-use  of their data constitute a barrier to entry 
the market, especially for the small companies.  The absolute minimum data (PSI) required to 
provide quite basic meteorologi cal services, for which the market value per customer might 
lie in the range of €  6 000 to €  20 000, would cost a typical sma ll company in each of three 
representative national territories (F rance, Luxembourg, Poland) between €  84 000 and 
€ 400  000 at current prices. These costs do not incl ude the further charges for dissemination of 
the data by the suppliers, nor do they include any of the normal business overheads such as employment costs, social costs or the costs of premises. The position paper distributed by 
PRIMET at the Share-PSI workshop in Ma y 2011 sets out the figures in detail
97. 
Typical single contract values, of which at leas t 20 are typically required to be profitable, are 
from €  6 000 (general energy market  in Poland), through €  10 000–15  000 (general ‘weather 
forecasting’ in Luxembourg) to €  20 000 (highways operations in France). Small companies, 
particularly start-up companie s, cannot flourish in such a PSI charging regime. As a 
consequence, the value-added meteorological  market is stagnant and there are major 
opportunity costs accruing to nati onal treasuries that are conser vatively calculated to be €  300 
million annually98. 
PRIMET states that these figures have been obta ined from the relevant official bodies, but 
ECOMET, the Economic Interest Grouping of the National Meteorological Services of the 
European Economic Area, contests conclusi ons drawn by PRIMET. According to ECOMET, 
its members offer favourable terms to SMEs, in cluding general discounts enabling starters in 
the private sector to obtain large volumes of necessary data fo r reduced fees. ECOMET 
admits however, that prices for information are the responsibility of individual ECOMET 
members and are subject to individual a nd often varying national regulations. 
This dispute illustrates on one hand the considerable degree of discretion in terms of pricing 
policy which public bodies enj oy under the current rules of the Directive and on the other 
hand a need for at least minimal harmonisation at  the EU level. The above presented example 
also shows that there is a room for dis pute about the resulting effects on competition. 
Moreover, it reinforces the case for the Co mmission to issue guidelines on prices, for 
reinforcing the obligation of tran sparency about the way prices are calculated by reversing the 
burden of proof and for an inde pendent regulator who can deal  with complaints objectively. 
                                                 
97 Pricing of PSI in the Meteorological Sector bloc ks market development, R. E. W. Pettifer, General 
Secretary of PRIMET, Share-PSI workshop, Brussels, May 2011 http://share-psi.eu/papers/primet.pdf  
98 Workshop: Removing the roadblocks to a pan European market for Public Sector Information re-use. 
Position Paper — Pricing of PSI in the Meteorological Sector blocks market development, Richard 
Pettifer, General Secretary of PRIMET, 2010. 
 
EN 77   EN Annex 5: Charging policies in the cultural sector  
Methods of generating income from re-use as well as the range of such income vary 
considerably from one cultura l institution to another.  
In some cases such income may be primordial as it will provide fo r the necessary sources 
allowing for digitalisation and re-use. For exam ple, one group of small museums are working 
together to take digital images of their arte facts. The photographer is  employed with income 
generated from the sale of these images (and  postcards printed from them). Without the 
income from the re-use, it would not be possibl e to employ the photographer, so the digitised 
material would not exist to be re-used.  
To illustrate the range of income generated by re -use, the following table sets out the absolute 
and relative importance of re-use for the national libraries that supported this work (figures in 
Euros are rounded). This demonstrates how even similar organisations can have very different 
approaches to, and financial bene fits from, re-use (the picture is similar for other types of 
institution). 
 
Of the organisations that provided financial data for the report, between 2005 and 2009 some 
showed growth in revenue from re-use activities,  while others showed a decline. As a share of 
overall income, however, re-use remained approximately level (<1  % change) for all the 
reporting institutions. The situation is complex acr oss the cultural instituti ons as rising income 
from many individual projects is so metimes offset by other projects  that have de clined, or by 
the decline in other re-use ac tivities that respondents did not  describe in detail. More 
importantly, however, many of the respondents saw their overall budge ts increase over the 
time period considered while income from re-use  activities did not increase proportionately or 
institutions offered re-use w ithout charge. As such, this explains why, even though the total 
income from re-use may have risen, there is s till a fall in the share of  the institution’s total 
income that comes from re-use. 
 
EN 78   EN 
 
The Commission's study launched in 2010 indicates also that ma ny new re-use projects have 
been started since 2005, and many more are cu rrently being planned. Many of these are not 
yet generating income and, indeed, many are not intended to do so. It is clear, however, that 
institutions are actively seeki ng out opportunities to re-use thei r content regardless of whether 
they intend to generate income fr om this re-use. Moreover, with regard to the type of re-use 
activities they engage in, many respondents stre ssed that they were trying to balance their 
public task of disseminating information with th e need to generate income to fund future 
development of services. 
     
 
EN 79   EN Annex 6: Overview of charging te ndencies by public sector bodies  
The 2008 Cambridge study examined the costs and benefits to society and the effects on 
government revenue of the different charging policies99. It concluded in its report that:  
• the case for pricing no higher than marginal cost (which, for most digital data, will be zero) 
on basic data products is very strong; 
• there are likely to be large beneficial spillove rs in inducing users to innovate new services 
based on the data, as is evidently the case for other ICT services;  
• the case for hard budget constraints to ensure  efficient provision and induce innovative 
product development is weak for public enterpri ses not subject to regulation and providing 
monopoly services without f ear of competition; and  
• for several services, the Government is alrea dy providing effectively a large contribution to 
fixed costs, without allowing the public to enjoy the bene fits of efficient pricing.  
The study concludes that charging no or marginal  costs for PSI results in social and economic 
benefits that far outweigh th e immediate financial benefits  attained by cost-recovery 
strategies. However, critics of this report have questioned the permanent sustainability of a 
scheme providing PSI at no or marginal prices  when the cost of creating and maintaining 
quality PSI can be substantial, and when public  bodies must incur e.g. costs necessary to 
sustain data quality or investment necessary  to cope with technological developments.  
The study shows that once PSI is made availa ble by governments under a marginal cost/free 
regime it has considerable economic potential: 
Cambridge Study report financial summa ry of moving to marginal cost 
Trading fund Gross benefit Cost to Government Gain to society 
Companies House £2.6m £0.681m £1.9m 
Met Office £1.2m £0.26m £1.03m 
Ordnance Survey £168m £12.0m £156.0m 
UKHO £1.082m £0.746m £0.338m 
HM Land Registry £2.3m £1.1m £1.2m 
DVLA £4.3m £0.582m £3.7m 
The table below shows effects of po licy changes in selected cases. 
                                                 
99 Models of Public Sector Information Provision via Trading Funds, Cambridge University, 02/2008, 
http://www.berr.gov.uk/files/file45136.pdf . 
 
EN 80   EN Case 
study Policy change Effects 
KNMI 1999 
-Switch from full cost recovery charging to recovery of 
the re-use facilitation costs 
-Leading to an 80  % decrease in price for the full KNMI 
national meteorological dataset  
-Withdrawal from its own commercial activities 
-Selling off the commercial arm. 2010 (cumulative) 
-Private sector turnover grew by 400  %  
-Re-user employment boosted by 300  % 
-Innovation stimulated -Gave rise to new business models 
-Extra tax revenues amounted to total of €35m 
-Internal efficiency gains of €3.5m -Re-use department now run by 1.5 FTE  -Data quality and service delivery enhanced -Level of professionalism increased 
DECA 2002 
-Under free of charge agreement central database of all 
Danish addresses created, driven by public task 
ambitions 
-Local PSBs compensated for losses and rewarded by 
free re-use  
-By distinguishing between the public sector investment 
and subsequent exploitation of the facility created, 
allocating the costs to those that benefit, no need to rely 
on cost recovery above re-use facilitation level 
-Open network of distributor s established, acquiring PSI 
against re-use facilitation costs 
-No re-use limitations  2010 (cumulative) 
-Turnover of re-use market grew by factor of 10 -Number of re-users went up by factor of 100 -FTEs employed by re-users  boosted by factor of 8-10 
-Tax gains exceed PSB investment by factor of 4 
-Almost 100
 % decrease in variable charges and minimal fixed 
costs (€0.01m) 
-Self-propelling and financing re-use system maximising the 
multiplier effects downstream  
Met.no 2007 
-Moves to most liberal re-use policy, driven by internal 
commitment 
-All weather data, including most data from ECMWF 
partners, opened up for free and anonymous re-use  
-Steps forward in value ch ain, providing full service 
forecasts to all citizens, forcing re-users to further innovate 
-Actively promotes its re-use philosophy in international 
fora  2011 (cumulative) 
-Downstream effects are significant where the number of single 
weekly re-users exploded from around 100 to almost 3
 000 
(factor of 30)  
-Met.no serves a need felt throughout Europe (and beyond) 
where over 40  % of re-users are from outside Norway 
-Re-users appear to be SMEs in tegrating data in own content 
services towards large groups of users (rather than adding high 
resolution value) and app builders 
-Establishing a direct link with citizens assures quality of data 
(feedback) and embeds the public  business case (and the public 
funding), protecting against reverse currents 
BEV 2006 
-Move from a complex full cost recovery pricing regime 
based on the costs of mainly analogue products (such as 
paper maps) to a simplified partial cost recovery pricing 
and licensing model with dras tic price cuts of up to 97  %. 
-Regular reviews (2008, 2010) 
-Introduction of web portal  2009 and 2010 
-Substantial increase in the number of data sets sold: sales for 
many BEV PSI products increase d significantly: cartographic 
products by factor of 2-15, digita l orthoimages by factor of 70, 
digital land registry map and elev ation model by factor of 2.5, 
digital landscape model by factor of 10 
-Total revenues from re-use fac ilitation slightly increased, in 
spite of big price cuts  
-The bulk of the additional demand comes from Austrian SMEs. 
IGN-CNIG -Prior to 2008, all the PSI was for sale. 
-Prior to 2008 there were only 10 re-users (including 
both commercial and non-comme rcial re-users). Hence 
the increase has been very remarkable. -The situation today m eans that over 40 re-users (the majority of 
them being SMEs) are purch asing the information for 
commercial purposes. 
-Since October 2010, the volume of data services and users has 
doubled. 
-Between 2008 and February 2010, there have been about 
165  257 requests from 37  417 non-commercial re-users 
 
EN 81   EN Cost recovery ratios for sele cted public sector bodies100 
Country Public sector body Sector Cost recovery ratio 
IT Infocamere Business register 31.31% 
NL KvK Business register 0.96% 
UK Companies House Business register 20.73% 
AT BEV Geographic information < 26.5% 
DE BKG Geographic information 0.24% 
DE SenStadt Geographic information 10.38% 
DK DECA Geographic information 0.82% 
ES IGN-CENIG Geographic information 4.12% 
ES Spanish land registry Geographic information 0.00% 
FR French land registry Geographic information 0.55% 
IT Italian land registry Geographic information 0.50% 
NL Dutch land registry Geographic information 6.57% 
UK Ordnance Survey Geographic information 16.54% 
DE DWD Meteorological information 0.93% 
NL KNMI Meteorological information 0.45% 
NO Met.no Meteorological information 0.00% 
SI ARSO Meteorological information 6.00% 
ES CENDOJ Legal information 16.67% 
FR DILA Legal information 0.67% 
FR SIRCOM Information on fuel prices  15.91% 
DE DeStatis Statistical information 0.11% 
 
Transition financing measures of  selected public sector bodies 
The table below provides examples of the type s of financing measures involved when the 
public body transitioned to a more re -use favorable charging regime.  
 
Case study name Charging regime move Financing measures 
DECA Non-existent Æ Re-use Compensation to municipalities through: 
                                                 
100 Op. cit., Deloitte 
 
EN 82   EN facilitation costs charging One-off payment 
Future free use of database  €3m budget to cover the investments to be made 
Clear self-financing exploita tion plan for future re-
users  
KNMI Cost recovery + own value 
added products Æ re-use 
facilitation costs charging Reorganisation budget for privatising commercial 
arm 
€0.2m budget for investments 
Clear self-financing exploita tion plan for future re-
users 
Met.no Cost recovery Æ zero 
costing (+ re-use 
facilitation costs charging 
for ‘guaranteed delivery’) Compensation of €125,000 from the Ministry 
Other transition costs (small amount) were covered 
by own resources 
UK Ordnance Survey  Cost recovery Æ zero 
costing at the point of use for some less granular 
products. Higher quality 
products still attract a fee  Introduction of tiered ‘freemium model’ of data 
provision in April 2010 state funding was facilitated to enable ‘free distribution’ of lower quality data. Full impact yet to be assessed 
IGN-CENIG Cost recovery Æ zero 
costing/marginal cost for 
non-commercial re-users Marginal costs charging and sales to commercial 
re-users have allowed income to be maintained at a similar level to before 2008 (many small transactions as opposed to only a few large ones). 
BEV Cost recovery Æ Cost 
recovery (with price cuts of 
up to 97%) No additional state funding. Price cuts were 
financed by increased demand. 
The transition was financed by own resources. PSI sales revenues went up by 46% after 4 years. 
Destatis Partial cost recovery Æ 
zero costing (+ premium 
accounts) Transition costs were very low and financed by 
own resources. They were partly financed by cutting administrative costs (licensing, online shop 
operation, etc.). 
Spanish land registry Cost recovery Æ zero 
costing This has only recently been implemented since 
April 2011. It is expected to be evaluated but high demand has already been addressed thanks to the mass downloads service while there are few 
operating costs. 
French land 
registry Cost recovery Æ Cost 
recovery (with price cuts of 
up to 97%) No additional state funding. Price cuts will be 
financed by expected increases in demand. 
 
 
EN 83   EN Annex 7: Machine-readable formats  
In order to be able to process data, computers need to  receive it (by means of appropriate file 
formats) with enough structur e to be able to tell: 
– where a ‘record’ (i.e. a statement of fact , e.g. information related to a person’s 
identity) begins and where it ends;  
– within each ‘record’, where ‘entities’ (e.g. fa mily name or date of birth in a record 
related to a person’s identity) begin and end. 
In some formats, records are stored in succes sive rows and within each row, entities and 
values are stored in separate cells, and appropriate software applications can extract data of interest from these. A data file format is said to be machine-readable if and only if it can support software applications in this fashion. Da ta encoded in files that are structured in a 
machine-readable format are machine-readable data.  
Machine-readable formats can be open (for example Comma Separated Values
101) or 
proprietary (as used by various proprietary spre adsheet programs such as XLS); they can be 
formal standards (for example XML102 or RDF103) or not (for exam ple Comma Separated 
Values). 
On the other hand, there are a number of electronic formats that limit such automatic 
processing because the data ca nnot be extracted or cannot eas ily be extracted from these 
documents for further processing. 
Textual formats such as PDF104 are not machine-readable be cause they do not generally 
guarantee (i) and (ii) above. Image formats such as JPEG105 (even when they are used to 
display data graphs) are not machine-readable ei ther, for the same reasons. This category also 
includes the use of Flash formats for information on websites as these are not picked up by search engines and text often cannot be extracted from them. 
Re-users have developed various methods to ex tract structured data (or information in a 
database-like form that a computer can read) from sources that are more or less unstructured (such as government websites, PDF documents, and scanned documents). This involves identifying patterns in the unstructured sour ces (such as columns and rows in a budget 
document) and writing a computer program to reconstruct the underlying data sets on the 
basis of these patterns. This process (known as  screen scraping) can be time-consuming and 
may often require a degree of technical ingenuity. 
                                                
 
101 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comma_separated_values. 
102 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xml. 
103 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_Description_Framework. 
104 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pdf. 
105 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JFIF. 
 
EN 84   EN 
106 
                                                 
106 http://writetoreply.org/ beyondaccess/4-2-2-machin e-readable-formats/