Public sector information reuse across Europe: Patterns in policy-making from an organizational perspective

Abstract

The success of Google Maps suggests that free access to public sector information PSI contributes to a prosperous economy. Although considerable attention has been paid to the legal and economic aspects of policies on public sector information PSI, also known as open data OD, the organizational consequences regarding the nature and shape of the public sector are rarely anticipated. We develop a framework to analyse organizational settings by comparing policies and outcomes of PSI reuse in EU member states. In many discussions on PSI reuse, government is treated as a unitary phenomenon with a single voice. We found considerable differences among EU member states concerning the implementation of PSI policies and indications that they are connected with the nature of the public sector in a specific state. Therefore we suggest that policies on PSI reuse to stimulate economic prosperity should be developed which take the specific national setting into consideration. When national government develops policies aimed simply at disclosing PSI without paying attention to the development of PSI reuse arenas, it runs the risk of unleashing narratives of control within the public sector, preventing them from releasing the innovative potential that PSI reuse intrinsically possesses.