The Free/Libre Culture Forum started with a day dedicated to the initiatives, challenges and opportunities related to Open Public Sector Information (PSI).

What is Public Sector Information?

PSI stands for data held, collected or managed by the public administration. It can take several forms: digital maps, meteorological, legal, financial, economic or social data. PSI opens up incredible opportunities (but also challenges) in re-using and creating mashups of public raw data - a good example is the commuting time-housing prices map (see this example in London).

"Re-use of public sector information means using it in new ways by adding value to it, combining information from different sources, making mash-ups and new applications, both for commercial and non-commercial purposes. Examples include real time traffic information and bus timetables together with maps downloaded to smart phones." (see the European Commission website for more information). The European Union finally adopted the "PSI directive" in 2003.

PSI strongly relates to the issues of:

• access: can I access the data?
• accessibility: is the data accessible in a way that makes it usable?
• copy: can I duplicate and reuse the data for my own purposes?
• fair conditions: can everyone access and reuse the data under the same conditions?

Daniel Dietrich posed 3 rules public data should comply to:

• if it can't be spidered or indexed, it does not exist
• if it's not available in raw machine format, nobody can engage with the data
• if the data cannot be reused, there is no empowerment of users.

The challenges of "Cultural PSI"

Traditional cultural institutions also face the same information issues. This is especially true for museums, whose role is indeed to spread information and knowledge to their audience - an area where digitization of their collections can bring several opportunities. However, the PSI does not apply to the "educational, scientific, broadcasting and cultural sectors"…
This situation brings several questions that need to be addressed:

• who is the author of the work - and who detains the rights on the object? This is very important for commissioned work.
• how to deal with orphan works?

And, as panelist Raquel Xalabarder concluded: should the public sector create their own licensing model?

What are the main actors in PSI policy work?

A lot of information can be found through the EVPSI (Extracting Value from PSI) and LAPSI (Legal Aspects of PSI) websites.

http://www.evpsi.org/
http://www.lapsi-project.eu/