Commercializing public information: A critical issue for governmental IS professionals

Abstract

Public data is viewed as an increasingly valuable commodity by business. Access to this data is affected by many federal and state legislative acts, most notably the Freedom of Information, Privacy Act, and Open Access laws. Some governmental agencies recognize that their data is a saleable commodity and are seeking to charge access fees that exceed actual copying costs. It is important for public information systems managers to recognize their role in dealing with the most salient issues arising from the commercialization of public data, including their ability to charge fees for their data that are in excess of copying costs to recover reasonable costs related to obtaining and formatting the information and the degree to which they must respond to specialized formatting and access requests.