Advocates of open source tools that use geographical data (GIS) are concerned about a new directive proposed by the European Commission on the use of governmental geospatial data. The INSPIRE Directive, adopted by the Commission in July 2004, aims to establish a spatial information infrastructure in Europe. It covers 30 broad types of data, such as (the location and the 3D descriptors of) buildings, forests, rivers, mountains, transport networks, all kinds of territorial definitions (names, postcodes, population and distribution of species) and all kinds of environmental indicators, such as occurrence of epidemics, pollution etc.
Critics say the consultation process has been unrepresentative, and fear that the proposed directive gives too much power to government data collection and licensing agencies. They argue that the directive imposes unnecessary costs and that the end result will benefit government agencies, rather than citizens or the industry. Geographic data should be made available free of licensing costs, they argue, for example to help develop grassroots level campaigns and election monitoring enhanced with geographic data and maps. Currently, in the UK for example, it costs almost 3.000 euro per year to license a simple postcode look-up service.
Spatial data forms a core high-value part of the information produced by the public sector. Though the proposed directive contains a non-prejudice clause to Directive 2003/98/EC on the re-use of public sector information, it seems to undermine its core principles. This 2003 Directive contains rules on transparency, standard and non-exclusive licences, appeal provisions, an upper limit for charging, etc. and is currently being implemented by member states. In contrast, the INSPIRE Directive gives responsibility to an expert group, together with Member States, to set a common geospatial data licensing and cost policy and to provide e-commerce services for 'data availability'.
The rapporteur from the European Parliament for this Directive will be the Belgian christian-democrat Mme Frederika Brepoels (EPP-ED), in the Committee on Environment, Public Health and Food Safety. According to the Legislative Observatory from the European Parliament, there will only be 1 reading by Parliament, and the Committee is expected to adopt its opinion on 15 March 2005.
INSPIRE
http://europa.eu.int/comm/environment/geo/
Critical analysis of the INSPIRE Directive
http://space.frot.org/docs/inspire_directive.html
European Commission pages on public sector information
http://europa.eu.int/information_society/policy/psi/index_en.htm
ePSINet, European Public Sector Information Network
http://www.epsigate.org/
(Thanks to Teresa Hackett, Ireland)