GI Policies in Norway and England: Are they within the Spirit of Recent EU Directives?

Abstract

The removal of GI from their current ‘silo systems’ is a socio-political challenge based on intertwined regional and national policies, and the different policies and cultures of public sector information holders. 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 GI. Therefore, for GI to be made more accessible there should be in place more transparent, formalised, non-conflicting and well-structured policies to regulate sharing and reuse. A number of European States have made considerable efforts to facilitate the sharing and reuse of GI. 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 of Public Sector Geo-Information (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 above questions 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 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 the 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 current EU Directives.