Advisory Panel on Public Sector Information

Today, the Chair of APPSI, Professor David Rhind CBE, has written to Michael Wills, Minister of State for Justice, updating him on the presentations and discussions at the APPSI Seminar on 10 December 2010. Highlights of this Seminar include presentations from:

• Jon Kingsbury, NESTA on New IPR Framework for public organisations
• Mark Houghton, Environment Agency on Making money from PSI a practitioner view
• Glen Watson and Alistair Calder, ONS on 2011 Census for England and Wales
• Carol Tullo, Director of OPSI at The National Archives and Michael Jennings, APPSI's Local Government Representative on Local authorities and NHS PSI re-use
• David Lammey, APPSI's Northern Ireland Representative and Hector MacQueen, APPSI's Scotland Representative on PSI in Scotland and Northern Ireland
• Bill Oates on PSI in Wales
• Carol Tullo, Director of OPSI at The National Archives, Summary of-EU and UK PSI-Policy

See: 14.01.10-APPSI-Letter-to-Michael-Wills.pdf (110.29 KB)

The Prime Minister has tasked Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Professor Nigel Shadbolt with making much more Public Sector Information (PSI) easily accessible over the web. In parallel, the Shareholder Executive has been studying how best to make available information from Trading Funds in a sustainable way. Both organisations have asked the government's Advisory Panel on Public Sector Information (APPSI) for suggestions on how to facilitate their work. Since the two tasks interact and success will need both short and long term actions, APPSI has produced a paper entitled Exploiting government's information assets for the public good which sets out a consolidated view by the Panel of how best to proceed.

APPSI's key points are:

• The value of PSI to citizens and businesses alike is now widely recognised. The factors which block realisation of this value are no longer technological but rather cultural, policy, institutional and financial ones. We therefore warmly welcome the Making Public Data Public initiative;
• We identify areas where information 'prospecting and harvesting' would be beneficial in the short term. But we also urge that a longer term and prioritised information garnering strategy should be put in place;
• In particular, we identify some 'Core Reference Geographies' which would underpin many activities of the state, its organisations (e.g. emergency services) and businesses and urge that these are made freely available and maintained as a key part of a national information infrastructure;
• We identify some policy changes and other actions which would considerably facilitate successful re-use of PSI;
• We note that the growing use of the new technologies has major ramifications for current government policies and practice applied to Trading Funds, notably in the practicability of some forms of end user licenses.

See Exploiting-government-information-assets-for-public-good.pdf (247.54 KB)

Today, the Chair of APPSI, David Rhind, has written to Michael Wills, Minister of State for Justice, updating him on the presentations and discussions at the APPSI meeting on 23 July 2009 which was attended by two external speakers:

• Michael Cross, journalist and founder of the Guardian Free Our Data campaign
• Andrew Stott, Director of Digital Engagement, Cabinet Office

See Letter-to-MW.pdf (38.42 KB) and AnnexA-APPSI-minutes.pdf (66.19 KB)

Michael Wills Minister of State for Justice has been sent a briefing which sets out the Panel's views on Ordnance Survey's new business strategy.

The briefing is preceded with a covering letter from David Rhind, Chair of APPSI, which updates the  Minister on various PSI developments since their meeting in early June.  The briefing itself welcomes and acknowledges the principles underpinning Ordnance Survey's new Business Strategy and their importance in facilitating resolution of one of the longest running and most distracting issues in the public sector information world. It also highlights many of the issues which need to be resolved before any Strategy can be realised and make some constructive comments on these.  This briefing was sent to the Shareholder Executive leading on the implementation of Ordnance Survey's new business strategy on 29 May 2009.

See the full briefing, including the Chair of APPSI's letter to Michael Wills: 09-07-09-APPSI-briefing-to-MW.pdf (244.83 KB)

Michael Wills responded positively to APPSI’s letter by reinforcing the need to drive the PSI agenda with greater speed, and he looks forward to meeting the Chair of APPSI in autumn 2008 to discuss how to take APPSI’s recommendations forward.

 

Letter from Michael Wills MP to the Chair (PDF - 135 KB)

The Chair of APPSI, Professor David Rhind set out a series of recommendations to progress the re-use of PSI in the UK in a letter to Michael WIlls MP, Minister of State for Justice, on 21 July 2008.  The letter refers to

• a lack of any compulsion for public sector bodies to make PSI available for re-use
• the need to define the term public task
• the need for more research regarding third party Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) held by public sector bodies as third party IPR falls outside the scope of the EC Directive and the PSI regulations
• the EC Directive and PSI Regulations, which have little power to enforce penalties to prohibit breaches of the EC Directive or PSI Regulations
• pricing issues that have long been a contentious issue and a main barrier to re-use
• the need for clarity on exclusive licensing arrangements.

Letter to Michael Wills MP (PDF - 135 KB)

This paper was written primarily for Ministers who have a direct interest in or responsibility for the re-use of public sector information.  It sets out a short-term PSI strategy (the coming 12 months) and a medium term PSI strategy (the next 3 years) for the UK government.

 

Government Strategy on PSI re-use (PDF -  73 KB)

Professor Avinash Persaud, APPSI's economics expert, has written a short note that analyses the provision and value of PSI for HM Treasury.  In this paper, Professor Persaud argues that

"to facilitate appropriate investment and development of the PSI economy, a necessary early step will be for the whole value chain of PSI across the economy, and to government revenues in particular, to be more visible."

He also recommends

"that any study of trading funds focused on the three largest and tried to draw some general conclusions across their differences, rather than tried to tackle trading funds as a generic group."

See 'A Short Note On Analysing the Provision and Value of Public Sector Information'.

 

This letter sets out some observations on The Power of Information Review, and correlate some elements of it with the recommendations that APPSI made in A Strategy for the re-use of public sector information (March 2007). 

 

Letter to the Rt. Hon Lord Falconer of Thoroton, Secretary of State and Lord Chancellor  (PDF - 228 KB)