Description (short summary):
Opening up government data to the public has been part of the European policy agenda since the introduction of the Re-use of Public Sector Information (PSI) Directive in 2003. European Member States continue to lean towards a cautious approach of making their data available to citizens. This is partly caused by conflicting legal frameworks, cultural norms and the idea to recover the costs of data production. At the same time and inspired by activities in the United States and the United Kingdom, the open data movement has emerged in many countries around the globe. They have a simple demand: Government agencies should put as much of their data online as possible in a machine-readable format so that everyone can re-use it since they were paid for by taxes.

This study analyses the current state of open government data offerings in nine selected European Member States. Since none of the countries studied has implemented an open data portal, this study compares a range of data offered online by the national Statistics Offices. These data offerings fulfill a number of open data principles defined by the open data movement but significant challenges remain. This study underlines that the development of data catalogues and portals should not be seen as means to an end.

Number of pages:
EN Version: 37
DE Version: 38

ISBN Number: N/A

Description of license: Copyright © 2011 CSC. All rights reserved.

Nature of documentation: Independent reports and studies