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POLICY
LAPSI: An EU thematic
network for enabling public
sector information re-use
Many legal aspects remain unclear and lots of doubts are there as to the
technical issues, with particular reference to interoperability
Cristiana Sappa
Project Manager, LAPSI
and EVPSI, Postdoctoral
Researcher, Torino Law
School, Research Fellow,
Nexa Center for Internet
and Society, Italy
Giuseppe Futia
Communications
Manager, NEXA Center
for Internet & Society,
Politecnico di Torino
– DAUIN, Italy
One of the pillars of the European
Union is the creation of a single
market. Therefore, the European
Union (EU) Institutions intervene
at different levels in order to create
conditions for fostering a fair and
competitive cross-border market in
the entire EU area, as well as in the
European Free Trade Area (EFTA).
Information generated and collected by
public sector bodies (PSI) represents a
veritable mine eld in both democracy
and market perspectives; it may make
a much greater contribution to EU
economies and societies, in particular
if current legal barriers to access and
re-use were removed. This is why
the EU Commission in 2003 issued
a Directive on the re-use of Public
Sector Information (hereinafter the PSI
Directive). In a three steps model of
1. Arrange for information to
be publicly available,
2. Allow re-use of such information
3. Ensure practical and legal conditions
foster alternative uses of PSI, the PSI
Directive clearly operates only at stage
3, and in a modest manner at that.
Even if an upcoming revision of the
said PSI Directive will lead to a duty
for Member States to allow re-use,
the decision about what information
or data is made public would remain
a domestic one. There are sound
reasons for this; an important one is
that the legislative competence of
the EU to regulate access to national
government information is limited.
In 2009 the European Commission
launched a call for creating a thematic
network supposed to provide with some
policy support for the impact assessment
of the PSI Directive and for its review,
scheduled for 2012. The Nexa Research
Center for Internet and Society gathered
a consortium of twenty partners from
thirteen different EU member state,
drafted a proposal and won the call. This
is how the LAPSI Thematic Network
saw the light. Since the beginning
the LAPSI project intended to build
a network apt to become the main
European point of reference for highlevel
policy discussions and strategic
action on all legal issues related to the
re-use of the PSI – but also to the access
- , namely in the digital environment.
During this two years, the Legal Aspect
of Public Sector Information (LAPSI)
Thematic Network intensively worked
on the legal aspects of PSI re-use without
neglecting the legal issue of access
and some technical issues, such as
interoperability; in addition the Thematic
Network also focused on some economic
aspects, such as charging policies. In
particular the LAPSI Thematic Network
engaged in policy document production,
such as draft policy recommendations,
position papers and guidelines.
As to position papers, the LAPSI Thematic
Network produced four advanced draft
so far. As outlined in the introductory
section of the rst position paper on the
“Consultation On behalf of the Comité de
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Coordinates May 2012 | 35