Re-use Of Public Information Research Articles

Reuse of the transparency-related information posted on Spanish library and archive websites

This study addresses the types of formats and ease of reuse of transparency-related information available on the websites of 53 national public libraries and 53 provincial historic archives. Further to Spain’s Transparency Act, reuse of public sector information is one of the elements comprising the right of access to information. Access and use must consequently be ensured to enable citizens and businesses to reuse all available data. The working methodology deployed here consisted in searching for, identifying and analysing the transparency-related documents carried on library and archive websites and the legal warnings governing their reuse. The findings revealed a wide variety of formats and rules governing reuse and indications of scant interest in these institutions in fostering the transparency and reuse of public information. Even when available, reusable information was normally found to be posted either separately from the data furnished by libraries and archives directly or positioned on pages or sections with complex access paths.

Information, Law and Society

While the information law framework encompasses information which relates to the private and the public, the commercial and the personal, the government and privately (self) regulated, this article focuses on aspects of the information environment relevant to the commercial and quasi-commercial sector, and to that surrounding government. it analyses seven case studies from these araeas of activity. When considering whether the legal framework helps or hinders these enterprises in their endeavours, pressing issues emerge. Much hope is placed on the success of digital industries and their capacity to revive the economy. The key question to be addressed therefore is whether we have the optimum legal framework for the information environment within the public, quasi-public and private sectors. By optimum, we mean a legal framework that supports the fullest possible exploitation of digital technology and its possibilities for the benefit of society, and that is itself broadly accepted within society. We conclude that the optimum legal framework may be a problem without a final solution; but this does not mean that it should be ignored and participants left to muddle along as best they can in a difficult world. It behoves the law-maker to keep trying for laws that work and are reasonably well-respected by those most directly affected. Part of that effort, it is suggested, should be given over, where appropriate, to looking at the law in the round or as a whole, and seeking to give it coherence wherever possible. It is a reproach to the law if those subject to it perceive it to be self-contradictory: for example, to mandate access to and re-use of public information, but to require paid-for consent before it can be published. Even worse where a law the principles of which seem entirely appropriate in a liberal democracy, such as data protection, freedom of information and re-use of public sector information, is seen by those who hold the information primarily as a burden on rather than a natural part of their working lives.

La producción informativa y documental del Estado: hacia un inventario de los recursos públicos

The internet offers a new way of shaping the messages that the State transmits to its citizens and provides a means of generating new relationships with them. With this in mind, this paper focuses on how State-produced information should be organized to provide a useful information service. The proper generation and management of public sector information is essential, not just for its own inherent value but because of the economic assets with which it deals. In this context of the access to and the re-use of public information there is also a need for the use of specific terminology. This paper sets out the general principles governing the management of information generated by the public sector and, with respect to the inventory principle, summarizes the main results obtained within the framework of our research group on the identification and description of public sector information and documentation assets, particularly those of State authorities. This subject is of great interest to practitioners and researchers in Library and Information Science, since it puts into perspective the value of documentary information resources and provides great impetus for the creation of a public information services market.