80% of the expertise

Capetown: 26 August 2008

The proceedings of the third Map Africa Conference have been published. Map Africa 2008 took place on the 25 and 26 August 2008 in Cape Town, South Africa. The conference include a presentation from the Landmark Information Group titled: Re-use of public sector environmental and land use information in property markets. The presentation described the Landmark business and the processes involved in delivering environmental products and services based on public sector information.

Slide six of the presentation outlines the drivers for better access to environmental PSI, which the slide presents as:

• Aarhus -1998 Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision Making, and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters
• Freedom of Information Acts
• Directive 2003/4/EC –access to environmental information
• Directive 2003/98/EC –re-use of public information: “PSI” Directive
• Environmental Information Regulations in force 2005
• Directive for a spatial information infrastructure (INSPIRE)
• 2008: EU, OECD, ePSIplus, PSI Alliance initiatives

The presentation concludes with the following points:

• Data aggregation for commercial re-use is not particularly suited to the public sector
• From a public sector standpoint It is not easy to add commercial value to PSI
• Value in PSI is created through legislation and cases demonstrating the risks
• Value in providing PSI is shifting away from technology towards ownership in data, services and integration in workflow
• Valuable PSI is currently denied in real estate investment decision making
• Public sector has 80% of the data, and the private sector 80% of the expertise needed to exploit it
• Increasing openness to PSI needs to be more joined up to its re-use
• Emerging principles and best practice examples signal growth in access to PSI
• To get the best out of the public and private sectors draw the line over competition
• Landmark’s Envirocheck shows how balanced public private sector re-use works

The presentation refers to Denmark, France, Netherlands and the UK amongst other European countries and covers the OECD PSI policy principles and the European Union PSI Directive 2003/98/EC.

Related ePSIplus news topics

OECD Best Practice Forum

PSI Re-user expands

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ePSIplus Competition Authorities Thematic Meeting

Related ePSIplus Cases

Landmark Nederland BV v Amsterdam City Council