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PSInet: Public Sector Information Network

By Rob Davies - October 2001

Rob Davies discusses the possible relationship between the e-Content's PSINet project, demonstrating the commercial potential of Europe's Public Sector Information (PSI), and digital culture.

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Scope

PSINet [1] is a preparatory action under the European Union’s e-Content programme, supporting the overall aim to explore and demonstrate the commercial potential of Europe's Public Sector Information (PSI). Among the key issues to be addressed are standards and new forms of public/private partnerships and exploitation models. PSINet covers and involves the ten associated states of Central and Eastern Europe (C&EE) as well as all EU member states.

Objectives

PSINet is setting out to:

• Provide a clear and extensive definition of what is meant by the term Public Sector Information (PSI), building on those offered by the Green Paper.
• Establish a useful and usable typology of public sector information, incorprating factors such as:
• Policy, legislation and approach
• Subject domain
• Type of collector/provider
• Method of data collection
• Attribution and expression of rights
• Potential for commercial exploitation
• Metadata and identifiers used
• Identify countries and important domains where PSI is not available or easily accessible, taking into account cultural, instututional and political differences and the relevance to Europe of developments in North America, Australia and elsewhere.
• Clarify issues which define and identify examples of good practice in collection, access and exploitation of PSI.
• Document, define, describe and assess the use of standards e.g. for metadata and formats applicable to PSI.
• Define and differentiate existing and potential business models for public sector information, identifying underlying tensions, concerns and approaches.
• Provide an assessment of gaps, developments required, barriers and problems and make recommendations for the future research agenda.

What will PSINet Actually Achieve?

The PSINet Preparatory Action has taken significant steps toward creation of a human network for identification of good practice, exchange of knowledge. By the end of its one-year period of work on December 31 2001, important elements of this framework will be put in place including:

• A network of Country co-ordinators plus support groups in 27 countries of the EU and CEE. Many of them participated in the PSINet workshop ‘Preparing the ground for the future European PSI Network’ at the European Parliament in Brussels on 19 June 2001.
• A large stakeholder database consisting of more than 2500 public administration information providers, user representatives and commercial intermediaries.
• A clear definition of PSI, a typology of what it encompasses and the attributes of each of these types of this information.
• A Web Gateway to policies, legislation, regulatory regimes and innovations across all 27 countries
• A deeper understanding of the issues affecting business models, regulatory and policy issues involving government, business and citizens, including clearer appreciation of what has been achieved in the USA and how Europe can benefit from this experience.

What should Happen Next?

EPSINet - the European PSI Network

The actors, domains and areas of activity within ‘PSI’ are very diverse, encompassing, for example, those with a strategic and commercial interest in:

• e-government, information and transactions for citizens
• parliamentary and legislative information services
• exploitation of large data sets and registries, such as meterorology, geospatial and statistical data
• public records management, archives and the related preservation issues
• digital cultural heritage
• access to publicly-funded education resources.

The overall goal of wide interoperability in the interests of usability demands that the public, private and NGO interests involved come together to enable new and more productive types of partnership and business models to emerge.

There is a need for high-level knowledge exchange, stimulation of best practice, consensus building and dissemination. The continued activation of a human network is necessary to overcome the fragmentation and generally weak co-ordination of developments, which applies nationally and across Europe, in the field of PSI.

It is planned that a Network of Excellence (EPSINet) with links to all EU and C&EE countries will be established as result of the PSINet preparatory action, building on its findings. EPSINet will enable consensus building, exchange of knowledge and learning from good practice among those organisations concerned with PSI.

PSINet has identified four priority areas where a strong Europe-wide focus over the next 2 years is likely to have an impact. There is also a growing recognition that these issues are global and much is to be gained by internationalisation of knowledge sharing and research.

Four Areas for Future Research and Knowledge Exchange

1 Business and investment models

There is a need to:

• carry out empirical research to demonstrate decisively to governments the comparative economic impact of ‘open’ models of public sector information versus public sector commercialisation versus other models.
• promote models for private sector survival and success through value-added exploitation of PSI, stimulating the confidence of businesses;
• establish and promote workable groundrules and fiscal models for public sector processing of raw data;
• establish good practice in mandating the work of public sector agencies in PSI.

2 Policy and legislation

There is a need to establish regulatory environments in member states which encourage adoption of positive regulatory frameworks eg involving Freedom of Information, non-assertion of government copyright, a sense of public ownership of PSI and affirmative rights of public access.

3 Channels of Access

There are gains to be achieved by further encouragement of innovation and emulation of successful developments in delivery channels for PSI. This involves an enhanced process of knowledge exchange about architectures and developments such as portal search technologies, involving not only Web-based portals but also the use of telephone, television, kiosks and other digital technologies.

4 Standards

Important work is now being undertaken to establish metadata standards for government information in Europe. There is a need to build on this and to move more rapidly toward consensus on standards needed for wide interoperability of PSI, such as:

• easing the process of multiple use of data in value-added exploitation by encouraging and easing creation of resources in XML and the application of its derivative standards;
• integrating the ever-growing range of good quality metadata needed to support multimedia services, rights expression, multilingual applications, workflow and information management;
• linking related developments e.g. unique identification and controlled vocabularies;
• putting in place other necessary elements of the Semantic Web, supporting the delivery of Web Services-related by promoting the necessary common standards, such as UDDI.

Is PSINet Relevant to the Cultural Heritage Sector?

The field encompassed by the term PSI is so broad that there is a clear temptation to refine the area by exclusion wherever possible. Reasons to ‘ignore Culture’ may be seen to include the fact that Cultural Heritage Applications currently have their own ‘home’ within EU programmes such as IST and Culture 2000. However, developments such as the FP6 workprogramme and the ‘ Florence Agenda’ may however provide good reasons for the two fields to embrace one another. There are other good reasons for contemplating this. Much cultural heritage content is by definition PSI. Wide interoperability through the deployment of common standards is in the general interest of users.

Other common concerns include approaches to unlocking content, business models, quality of content and IPR. The Cultural Heritage field may have successes from which other PSI domains can learn, by virtue of its concern with multimedia added-value content and the need to utilize high bandwidth. The particularities of the culturalisation of the economy/economisation of culture, identified by a recent study on Exploitation and development of the job potential in the cultural sector in the age of digitalization [2] - especially the growth in the employment of freelancers and small companies in digital cultural content production- may also provide an exemplar of the benefits which better exploitation of PSI can bring to the SME sector.

Ways to Participate in PSINet?

1 Use the PSINet Website

A discussion list and news service will shortly be inaugurated [1].

2 Participate in PSINet Workshops

Please contact us at any of the following addresses or through your country coordinator (see below).

Business models workshop

Frankfurt Book Fair, 10 October 2001

Standards workshop

Details to be announced.

Regional workshops to assess regional and national factors: commonalities and divergences

Details to be announced.

3 Contact a PSINet Partner or your Country Co-ordinator

The current country co-ordinators are:

• Belgium: Ben Smeets, Ministry of Public Affairs
• Bulgaria: Gergana Jouleva, Access to Information Programme
• Czech Republic: Daniel Miklas, Oziveni Bohemian Greenways
• Denmark: Bettina Rasmussen, Danish State Information Service
• Estonia: Imre Siil, Estonian Information Centre
• Finland: Juhani Korhonen, Ministry of Finance
• Greece: Denis Moschopoulos, Ionian University, Department of Archives and Library Science
• Hungary: Erenyi Istvan, Miniszterelnoki Hivatal Informatikai Kormanybiztossag
• Ireland: Niall Monks, Department for Enterprise, Trade and Employment
• Italy: Daniela Tiscornia, CNR/IDG
• Latvia: Rihards Balodis, State Information Network Agency
• Lithuania: Renaldas Gudauskas, Faculty of Mass Communications, Vilnius University
• The Netherlands: Leon Kee, Public Sector Information Policy Dept., Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations
• Norway: Heidi Hoeiskar, Statskonsult, Norwegian Central State Information
• Poland: Krzysztof Glomb, Cities on the Internet Association
• Romania: Nicolae Iordan Constantinescu, Ministry of Public Information
• Slovakia: Igor Privara, Institute for Informatics and Statistics
• Slovenia: Alja Brglez, Public Relations and Media Office of the Slovene Government
• Spain: Rosa de la Viesca, CINDOC
• Sweden: Soren Lindh, Swedish Agency for Public Management
• The United Kingdom: Ian Ascough, Office of the E-envoy, Cabinet Office
• To be appointed: Austria, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Portugal and Switzerland

More information on the country co-ordinatiors and PSINet partners is available from the Web site [1]. For further information on PSINet please contact the Project Director or Special Advisor [3].

References

1. PSINet Web site
   URL: <http://www.publicsectorinfo.com/>
2. European Commission (2001) Exploitation and development of the job potential in the cultural sector in the age of digitalization, DG Employment and Social Affairs Study. July 2001.
3. Mary Rowlatt, Project Director Maryr@essexcc.gov.uk
   Rob Davies, Special Adviser Rob.davies@mdrpartners.com

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Author Details

Rob Davies
MDR Partners, UK

rob.davies@mdrpartners.com
http://www.mdrpartners.com

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For citation purposes:
Davies, R. "PSInet: Public Sector Information Network", Cultivate Interactive, issue 5, 1 October 2001
URL: <http://www.cultivate-int.org/issue5/psinet/>

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