PSGI policies in Norway and England: are they within the spirit of recent EU directives?

Abstract

The removal of Public Sector Geo-Information (PSGI) from current ‘silo systems’
is a socio-political challenge based on intertwined regional and national policies,
along with the different policies and cultures of public sector agencies. These
socio-political issues have created a web of complex access policies (e.g.,
pricing, copyright, and licensing agreements) that have in many cases negatively
influenced access of PSGI. Therefore, for PSGI to be made more accessible
there should be in place more transparent, formalised, non-conflicting and wellstructured policies to regulate sharing and reuse. A number of European states have made considerable efforts to facilitate the sharing and reuse of PSGI.
Recently, their efforts were boosted by the European Union through the issuing of
two key Directives (PSI and INSPIRE) to facilitate the concept of reuse of Public
Sector Information (PSI) and the sharing PSGI in the case of INSPIRE. The
challenge then is to determine whether these Directives are effective in improving
the quality of access to PSI across Europe. The success of the Directives can in
part be measured by answering the following questions: Are the current and
future access policies of member States in compliance with the letter of the
Directives? And are they in compliance within the spirit of the Directives? In an
attempt to answer the questions above the authors investigated and analysed
key policies supporting the concept of sharing and the reusing of PSI/PSGI in five
European jurisdictions. This paper discusses key findings of the investigation with
respect to Norway and the United Kingdom with specific reference to England.
The paper presents the results of the investigation in the following manner: a
discussion of the concept of sharing and reusing of PSGI, followed by a review of
key EU Directives that directly or indirectly govern access to PSGI, and a
discussion on PSGI access policies in Norway and England. An analysis of these
policies is then presented to illustrate whether or not they are within the spirit and
letter of the PSI and INSPIRE Directives.