The PSI Directive and the chance to overcome obstacles to growth

PSI Alliance Conference: Solutions for the Future

European Parliament 2012

The PSI Alliance hosted its fifth annual conference in the European Parliament 5 June 2012, where entrepreneurs, product developers, politicians, civil servants, authorities and academics discussed in detail how to overcome obstacles to reuse and create solutions for the future of PSI.

The Conference started with a discussion on the review of the PSI Directive, led my Mr Ivailo Kalfin MEP, rapporteur and spokesman on behalf of the European Parliament on PSI, who called for a change in mindset on how we see PSI reuse, whereby data should be made available by default, unless there is a good reason not to. The conference also heard contributions from Commission Head of Unit Richard Swetenham, ePSI Platform’s Marc de Vries and the Executive Director of Eurogeographics, Dave Lovell. Panellists discussed their views on the review of the PSI Directive and some of the challenges to be overcome, both technical and political.

Last year saw the inaugural PSI Alliance Five Star Award and this year the PSI Alliance continued its search for public Authorities that have shown excellence in data provision. The PSI Alliance was extremely pleased to give the Five Star Award to the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment and to give the honourable mention to the Spanish National Institute for Statistics.

After a lunch in the Parliament Members’ Restaurant, the conference continued with a demonstration of innovative examples of PSI reuse from Bisnode, TomTom and Lexis Nexis showing what products can be made with PSI.

The conference concluded with an impassioned panel debate featuring entrepreneurs and policymakers on how to overcome obstacles to a PSI explosion, where the real life problems encountered by entrepreneurs were discussed, dissected and debated. The goal of entrepreneurial reusers can be boiled down to a simple desire for a fair PSI marketplace, and much of the conference concluded that many of the obstacles to achieving this could be overcome by an independent authority to oversee and mediate difficulties encountered.

The presentations shown at the conference are available by clicking here