fundamental rights to education in public sector information re-use – case study czech republic

Aleš Pekárek

EPMA – European Projects & Management Agency

Czech PSI Watch Initiative

Institute of Information Science of Charles University

Fundamental rights to education in public sector information re-use – Case

Study Czech Republic

BACKGROUND – Czech Republic

Stakeholders on Public Sector Information• Public authorities – creators and/or users• Enterprises – creators of added value

and providers of information services• Enterprises – users (generally

all industries)• Non profit sector – creators and/or users• Citizens – users

Each of them follows own interest• public services• business• non profit activities etc.

Situation in re-use of PSI• ACCES to PSI – quite favourable state• RE-USE of PSI – more issues, necessity

to cultivate environment, conditions and general attitude

Aleš Pekárek, EPMA / Charles University LAPSI First Joint WG2 & WG6 Thematic Seminar, 7-8 October 2010, Leuven


Freedom of Information Act (FOI Act)

• The Directive 2003/98/EC was transposed into existing act – Free Access to Information Act No. 106/1999 Coll.

• FOI legislation governs mainly ACCESS to information but not RE-USE

• Practice processes of PSI Holders has not changed considerably

• They publish PSI mostly on web pages

• They do not care for re-users needs

• Distribution services lag behind single shot access

• Restrictions and exceptions are occurred

BACKGROUND - Legal Framework


Public Sector Culture

Factors influencing culture in Public Sector:• Internal

• Civil servant him/herself, his/her personality and opinion

• Civil servant's boss opinion (all bosses in the organizational hierarchy)

• Internal lawyer's education and attitude to information society

• External• Traditions of the institution (open versus secretive)

• (Market) Value of information produced

• Number of „friendly“ companies being able to generate money from PSI

• Costs needed for investment in technologies, personnel etc.


Non-public sector Initiatives

Czech PSI Watch Initiative• Voluntary initiative of public, commercial and non-profit entities (EPMA is

a founder)

• Based (by 3 organizations) in 2005 with aim to• watch process of „PSI Re-use Directive“ transposition into Czech legal rules• encourage a discussion between Public Data Holders and re-users

(commercial and non commercial)• organize seminars for better understanding of „PSI Re-use

Directive“ and European experience• promote knowledge from official government decisions

and from international project experience

• After PSI Re-use Directive transposition the aim is to• keep stakeholders in touch• continue dialogue between PDH and re-users community• concentrate opinions, comments and issues of PSI re-use

and feed back

• Web page www.czechpsi.info was launched in Summer 2007


OK, but… does anybody know about?

• Almost no educational occassions yet

• Something at MASARYK UNIVERSITY, Brno (colleague Polčák)

• A lot of confusing information and metadata on PSI

• Possible abuse from the governmental & experts side

FUNDAMENTAL RIGHT TO HAVE A PROPER EDUCATION POSSIBILITY TO KNOW THE TRUE


RESEARCH THROUGH EDUCATION

• PSI is not common research topic in CR

• Lack of awareness among „old school teachers“

• Affilation unclear (some in Brno – lawyers, economists, geographers) – no holistic approach

Information science, PhD thesis (enforced), PSI seminar


FIRST SEMINAR 2007/08

• first PSI university seminar in CR ever – summer semester, Charles University, Faculty of Philosophy and Arts, Institute of Information Science

• 15 students subscribed

• Main task – to get complete catalogue of all electronic data from selected public institution

• FOIA request


FOIA Request

„I request complete thematically structured catalogue of all electronic data (databases, parts of databases, documents - PDF, DOC, TXT, XLS, JPG, PPT, DBF etc. - all formats, audio records, video records, geographical layers..) available as per (date of request), together with terms of their OFFLINE provision (price, licences, data format, accuracy, actuality). Catalogue is requested in Microsoft Excel format).“


PSI seminar research results

• each public institution answered in different way

• from „we are not in duty to provide such a catalogue“ through „I do not understand at all what you want“ to „here is the list“ or „the catalogue would cost 1000 EUR as we don’t use Data management“

• several hundred obliged public institutions – a LOT of research


PSI seminar research results

• results was used as a basement for negotiation with Ministry of Interior to amend FOIA with a new article:

„Each institution is obliged to have a catalogue of all electronic data with relevant metadata and conditions of re-use“Model: Czech Statistical Office


PSI seminar evaluation

• Students appreciate seminar• A big suprise how much PSI exist• Evaluated as „a great personal asset“• Demand on seminar integration to the Information science study programme


NEXT STEPS

• This current winter semestr – another seminar after one-year-break

• The research ordered by the Czech Governmental Office - Information Centre

•They want to know, what other Information Centres of Governments exactly do

Thank you for your attention

[email protected]

www.epma.czwww.czechpsi.info

fundamental rights to education in public sector information re-use – case study czech republic

Documents

epma charles university

joint wg2 wg6 thematic

reuse of psiacces

leuven ale pekrek

reusers commercial

leuvenale pekrek

nonprofit entities epma

general attitudeale