DISCOVERING NEW DIGITAL BUSINESS MODEL TYPES – A STUDY OF TECHNOLOGY STARTUPS FROM THE MOBILITY SECTOR

In the 1990s, the broad diffusion of the internet allowed firms such as Amazon, eBay, and Google to invent new digital business models. Since then, research has formalized recurring configurations as digital business model types, still frequently being used to analyze existing business models and develop new ones. Now, the next wave of digital transformation – enabled by ongoing improvements in processing power, the miniaturization of hardware, and ubiquitous wireless connectivity – is again driving innovation. For instance, in the mobility sector, startups such as Uber, Turo, and Streetline have formed business logics that cannot be understood with existing types. Therefore, we identified and formalized new business model configurations by systematically analyzing a comprehensive data set of technology startups from the US mobility sector. We found that, in order to adequately account for the new digital logics, 14 digital business model types must be added to existing collections: app developer, autonomous products/robots manufacturer, data analytics provider, integrator of third-party services, IT-enabled self-service provider, IT-guided service provider, manufacturer of connected physical products, manufacturer of connectivity devices for physical products, mobilized service provider, P2P goods sharing platform, P2P information sharing community, P2P service provision platform, seller of sensor information, and sensor-enabled service innovator

Data portability as a new means of data protection? Examining the right to data portability in the EU General Data Protection Regulation

On 25 May 2018, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into effect across the European Union. This new Regulation has a number of innovations, notably including a new right for the data subject to port personal data out of a processing system and reuse it elsewhere. Data portability has an immediate impact on data flows across systems and has been sought as a catalyst for competition, consumer welfare, innovation and institutional efficiency. The issue of how data portability furthers the objective of data protection appears not straightforward. This thesis primarily examines the legitimacy, coherence and added value of the right to data portability in the EU data protection regime. In recognition of its wide-ranging implications, it also explores how the GDPR right interacts with many other areas of law and ‘interfaces’ with user-centric technologies devised to better protect our personal data. The thesis is divided into six chapters. Before analysing the GDPR right, Chapter 1 first maps a wide array of similar schemes that have emerged over two decades (1995-2019), whether they be industry-initiated projects, government-led initiatives or statutory schemes. Particular attention is paid to the legacy of early attempts that predate the GDPR, as well as the recent developments in the wake of the GDPR. Chapters 2 provides a detailed account of the right to data portability in the GDPR. It inquires whether the new right can legitimately sit within the EU data protection framework, act in harmony with other components, and bring added value to the imperative of data protection. The EU data protection regime has a dual purpose, that is, the protection of personal data and the free movement of personal data in the EU. Whereas Chapter 2 examines the right through the lens of data protection, Chapter 3 ventures to explore the right’s link to the free flow of personal data. Beyond data protection, the GDPR right may also have an impact on the economic welfare of the data subject. This is especially the case when data protection, consumer protection and competition law converge around the objective of promoting individual welfare. Chapter 3 examines whether the GDPR right may legitimately pursue consumer welfare (an overarching goal pursued by consumer protection and competition law), and how it interacts with similar schemes recently developed in those interrelated areas of law. Chapter 4 focuses on the potential barriers to individual-led data flows, resulting from a set of information rights relating to intellectual property, trade secrets, and database protection. The extent to which the GDPR right contributes to data protection depends upon the applicability and effects of these counteracting rules. It is argued that a rough line exists between different types of data to which the data protection and information rights respectively apply. That said, grey areas do exist at the boundaries of data taxonomies, and Chapter 4 examines the rules developed for balancing the rights in conflict. To ensure that datasets smoothly flow between systems and are well adapted to a new environment, the GDPR lays down some requirements concerning data interoperability. Chapter 5 draws knowledge from the field of data science and builds a conceptual model of interoperability to elucidate those legal requirements. Since data interoperability relies upon layers of specifications, this chapter reconstruct the EU Guidelines accordingly in order to clarify the legal issues associated with each layer of interoperability. The GDPR right’s impact on data transmission and reuse is immediately noticeable; its contribution to data protection is, however, not. Basically, this right promotes data protection by channelling data into alternative systems where our data is supposedly better protected. Chapter 6 surveys the user-centric technological systems that have emerged over the last two decades (1999-2019). By revealing their attributes, development and potential interplay with the legal rights examined above, this chapter considers the extent to which a joint effort of law and technology could make a difference to our quest for data protection

Information Outlook, May 2001

Volume 5, Issue 5https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/sla_io_2001/1004/thumbnail.jp

From access to re-use:

If data are the building blocks to generate information needed to acquire knowledge and understanding, then geodata, i.e. data with a geographic component (geodata), are the building blocks for information vital for decision-making at all levels of government, for companies and for citizens. Governments collect geodata and create, develop and use geo-information - also referred to as spatial information - to carry out public tasks as almost all decision-making involves a geographic component, such as a location or demographic information. Geo-information is often considered “special” for technical, economic reasons and legal reasons. Geoinformation is considered special for technical reasons because geo-information is multi-dimensional, voluminous and often dynamic, and can be represented at multiple scales. Because of this complexity, geodata require specialised hardware, software, analysis tools and skills to collect, to process into information and to use geoinformation for analyses. Geo-information is considered special for economic reasons because of the economic aspects, which sets it apart from other products. The fixed production costs to create geo-information are high, especially for large-scale geo-information, such as topographic data, whereas the variable costs of reproduction are low which do not increase with the number of copies produced. In addition, there are substantial sunk costs, which cannot be recovered from the market. As such, geo-information shows characteristics of a public good, i.e. a good that is non-rivalrous and non-excludable. However, to protect the high investments costs, re-use of geo-information may be limited by legal and/or technological means such as intellectual property rights and digital rights management. Thus, by making geo-information excludable, it becomes a club good, i.e. a non-rivalrous but excludable good. By claiming intellectual property rights, such as copyright and/or database rights, and restricting (re-)use through licences and licence fees, geo-information can be commercially exploited and used to recover some of the investment costs. Geo-information is considered special for a number of legal reasons. First, as geo-information has a geographic component, e.g. a reference to a location, geoinformation may contain personal data, sensitive company data, environmentally sensitive data, or data that may pose a threat to the national security. Therefore, the dataset may have to be adapted, aggregated or anonymised before it can be made public. Secondly, geo-information may be subject to intellectual property rights. There may be a copyright on cartographic images or database rights on digital information. Such intellectual property rights may be claimed by third parties involved in the information chain, e.g. a private company supplying aerial photography to the National Mapping Authority. The data holder may also claim intellectual property rights to commercially exploit the dataset and recoup some of the vast investment costs made to produce the dataset. Lastly, there may be other (international) legislation or agreements that may either impede or promote publishing public sector information, whereby in some cases, these policies may contradict each other. It has been recognised that to deal with national, regional and global challenges, it is essential that geo-information collected by one level of government or government organisation be shared between all levels of government via a so-called Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI). The main principles governing SDIs are that data are collected once and (re-)used many times; that data should be easy to discover, access and use; and that data are harmonised so that it is possible to combine spatial data from different sources seamlessly. In line with the SDI governing principles, this dissertation considers accessibility of information to include all these aspects. Accessibility concerns not only access to data, i.e. to be able to view the data without being able to alter the contents but also re-use of data, i.e. to be able to download and/or invoke the data and to share data, including to be able to provide feedback and/or to provide input for co-generated information. Accessibility to public sector geo-information is not only essential for effective and efficient government policy-making but is also associated with realising other ambitions. Examples of these ambitions are a more transparent and accountable government, more citizens’ participation in democratic processes, (co-)generation of solutions to societal problems, and to increase economic value due to companies creating innovative products and services with public sector information as a resource. Especially the latter ambition has been the subject of many international publications stressing the enormous potential economic value of re-use of public sector (geo-) information by companies. Previous research indicated that re-users of public sector information in Europe encountered barriers related to technical, organisational, legal and financial aspects, which was deemed to be the main reason why in Europe the number of value added products and services based on public service information were lagging compared to the United States. Especially the latter two barriers (restrictive licence conditions and high licence fees) were often cited to be the main barriers for reusers in Europe. However, in spite of considerable resources invested by governments to establish spatial data infrastructures, to facilitate data portals and to release public sector information as open data, i.e. without legal and financial restrictions, the expected surge of value added products based on public sector information has not quite eventuated to date and the expected benefits still appear to lag expectations. When this research started a decade ago, the debate around accessibility of public sector information focussed on access policies. Access policies ranged from open access (data available with a minimum of legal restrictions and for no more than marginal dissemination costs) to full cost recovery, whereby all costs incurred in collection, creation, processing, maintenance and dissemination costs to be recoveredfrom the re-users. Most of the public sector bodies in the European Union adhered to a cost recovery policy for allowing re-use of public sector information. In 2003, the European Commission adopted two directives to ensure better accessibility of public sector information Directive 2003/4/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 28 January 2003 on public access to environmental information and repealing Council Directive 90/313/EEC, the so-called Access Directive, provided citizens the right of access to environmental information. Citizens should be able to access documents related to the environment via a register, preferably in an electronic form and if a copy of a document was requested, the charges must not exceed marginal dissemination costs. Directive 2003/98/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 17 November 2003 on the re-use of public sector information, the co-called PSI Directive, intended to create conditions for a level playing field for all re-users of public sector information. However, the PSI Directive of 2003 left room for public sector organisations to maintain a cost recovery regime with restrictive licence conditions. In spite of these directives, access policies for geographic data were slow to change in most European nations. At the end of the last decade, accessibility of public sector information received two major impulses. The first major impulse was the implementation of Directive 2007/2/ EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 14 March 2007 establishing an Infrastructure for Spatial Information in the European Community (INSPIRE), the cocalled INSPIRE Directive, established a framework of standardisation rules for the data and publishing via web services, which significantly contributed to the accessibility of public sector geo-information. The second major impulse was the development of open data policies following the Digital Agenda for Europe adopted in 2010 and the USA Open Government Directive of 2009 and the Digital Agenda for Europe of 2010. These two impulses were the main drivers in Europe to start a careful move from cost recovery policies to open access or open data policies and for more public sector information to be made available as open data. Thus, of the four barriers to re-use of public sector information data cited in Chapter 1 (legal, financial, technical and organisational barriers), two barriers should have been lifted to a large degree due to open data. This shift to open data provided an excellent opportunity to test the hypothesis that the main barriers for re-users of public sector information were indeed restrictive licences and high fees as suggested by earlier research. Chapter 2 showed that by 2008, most European Union Member States had transposed and implemented the 2003/98/EC PSI Directive, however, in various ways and with considerable delay. By 2008, the effects of the PSI Directive were only slowly starting to emerge. A number of Member States reviewed their access policies and more public sector information became available for re-use. Some Member States made the information available free-of-charge or reduced their fees significantly. In many cases, where re-use fees were reduced the number of regular re-users increased significantly and total revenue even increased in spite of lower fees. Although the 2007/2/EC INSPIRE Directive paved the way for technical interoperability by providing guidelines for web services and catalogues, neither the INSPIRE Directive nor the PSI Directive had tackled the issue of legal interoperability. Chapter 2 also demonstrated that a major barrier to creating a level playing field for the private sector was the fact that some public sector bodies acted as value added resellers by developing and selling products and services based on their own data. Thus, the level playing field envisioned by the European Commission had not been realised. Chapter 3 researched the aspect of harmonised licences as a first step towards legal interoperability. Earlier research had indicated that one of the biggest barriers for re-users were complex, intransparent and inconsistent licence conditions, especially for re-users wanting to combine data from multiple sources. A survey of licences used by public sector data providers in the Netherlands demonstrated that although there were differences in length and language, there were also many similarities. The conclusion was that the introduction of a licence suite inspired by the Creative Commons concept would be a step towards increased transparency and consistency of geo-information license agreements. This chapter introduced a conceptual model for such a geo-information licence suite, the so-called Geo Shared licences. Both Creative Commons and Geo Shared licence suites enable harmonisation of licence conditions and promote transparency and legal interoperability, especially when re-users combine data from different sources. The Geo Shared licence suite became a serious option for inclusion into the draft version of the INSPIRE Directive as an annex. Unfortunately, the concept of one licence suite for the entire European Union came too early in 2006. The Geo Shared licences were further developed and implemented into the Dutch National Geo Register. In 2009, the European Commission recognised that PSI was the single largest source of information in Europe and the potential for re-use of PSI needed to be highlighted in the digital age. As part of a review of the 2003/98/EC PSI Directive, the European Commission carried out a round of consultations with stakeholders to seek their views on specific issues to be addressed in the future in 2010. In addition, the Commission commissioned a number of studies. These studies included a review of studies on public sector information re-use and related market studies, an assessment of the different models of supply and charging for public sector information and a study on public sector re-user in the cultural sector. The first study, carried out by Graham Vickery in 2011, showed that the overall economic gain from opening up public sector information as a resource for new products and services could be in the order of €40 billion per annum in the European Union. Both the Vickery Report and the second study, the so-called POPSIS Study, showed that for most public sector data providers their revenues from licence fees were relatively low in comparison to their total budget. After the evaluation, Directive 2013/37/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 26 June 2013 amending Directive 2003/98/EC on the re-use of public sector information was adopted and came into force on 17 July 2013. Chapter 4 described the main changes of the 2013/37/EU Amended PSI Directive, including the recommendation to employ open data licences. This chapter continued with a review of the various open data licences in use in Europe and analysed their interoperability. Although adoption of open data licences for public sector information should have addressed legal interoperability barriers for re-users, in practice, the different types of open data licences might not be so interoperable after all. Effectively, only a public domain declaration, such as a Creative Commons Zero (CC0) declaration, is suitable for open data re-users requiring with cross-border data sets and that such a public domain declaration is published in a prominent place to remove uncertainty for re-users. Without a public domain declaration, re-use of open data is still impeded as re-users are loathe to invest time into the development of value added products or services when it is uncertain if and which restrictions may be applicable and what the impact may be on their product or service. This dissertation also researched the financial and economic aspects of public sector information accessibility. Chapters 1 and 2 indicated that a cost recovery regime for dissemination of public sector information provided a financial barrier for private sector re-users because the fees charged were perceived to be too high. However, in 2008, there were still many advocates for maintaining a cost recovery regime. Especially public sector bodies that are not funded by the national Treasury, the socalled self-funding agencies, needed revenue from data sales to cover a substantial part of their operational costs. A sustainable source of revenue was viewed as essential to maintain the data at an adequate level, and to ensure actuality and continuity. Chapter 5 explored the potential business models and pricing mechanisms for public sector INSPIRE web services. Although, depending on the type of web service, and type of re-user, there might have been an argument for employing a subscription model as a pricing mechanism, business models based on generating revenue from public sector information would not be viable in the long run and were not in the spirit of the INSPIRE Directive. This research concluded that public sector information web services employing different pricing regimes were counterproductive to achieving financial interoperability. In Chapter 6, business models for public sector data providers were revisited, this time from an open data perspective. Government agencies, including self-funding government agencies are under increasing pressure to implement open data policies. This chapter analysed the business models of self-funding agencies either already providing open data or under pressure to provide (some) open data in the near future. The analysis showed which adaptions might be necessary to ensure the long-term availability of high quality open data and the long-term financial sustainability of self-funding agencies. The case studies confirmed that providing (raw) open data does not necessarily lead to losses in revenue in the long term as long as the organisation has enough flexibility to adapt its role in the information value chain, especially when revenue from licence fees represents only a relative small part of theirtotal budget. The case studies indicated that switching to open data has resulted in internal efficiency gains. In practice, it is difficult to isolate and quantify the internal efficiency gains that are solely attributable to open data as the researched organisations continuously implement efficiency measures. However, the reported decreases in internal and external transaction costs due to open data are in line with the case study carried out in Chapter 7. Open data also provided an excellent opportunity to assess the effects of open data ex ante as baseline measurements could be carried out. To develop both quantitative and qualitative indicators to assess the success of a policy change is a challenge for open data initiatives. In Chapter 7, a model to assess the effects on the organisation of an open data provider was developed. Liander, a private energy network administrator mandated with a public task, planned to publish some of their datasets as open data in the autumn of 2013. This offered an excellent opportunity to apply the developed assessment model to provide an insight into internal, external, and relational effects on Liander. A benchmark was carried out prior to release of open data and a follow-up measurement one year later. The benchmark provided an insight into the then work processes and into the preparations required to implement open data. The follow-up monitor indicated that Liander open data are used by a wide range of users and have had a positive effect on the development of apps to aid energy savings. However, it remains a challenge to quantify the societal effects of such apps. The follow-up monitor also indicated that regular re-users of Liander data used the open data to improve existing applications and work processes rather than to create new products. The case study demonstrated that private energy companies could successfully release open data. The case study also showed that Liander served as a best-practice case for open data and had a flywheel effect on companies within the same sector. By 2015, nearly all energy network administrators had published similar open data. The monitoring model developed in this project was assessed to be suitable to monitor the open data effects on the organisation of the data provider. The assessment model developed and tested in Chapter 7 proved to be suitable to monitor the effects of open data on organisational level. However, to provide a more complete picture of the effects of open data and to assess if there are other barriers for re-users, a more holistic approach was required to assess the maturity of open data. Therefore, a holistic open data assessment framework addressing the supplier side, the governance side, and the user side of the open data was developed and applied to the Dutch open data infrastructure in Chapter 8. This Holistic Open Data Maturity Assessment Framework was used to evaluate the State of the Open Data Nation in the Netherlands and to provide valuable information on (potential) bottlenecks. The framework showed that geographic data scored significantly better than other types of government data. The standardisation and implementation rules laid down by INSPIRE Directive framework appear to have been a catalyst for moving geographic data to a higher level of maturity. The maturity assessment framework provided Dutch policy makers with useful inputs for further development of the open data ecosystem and development of well-founded strategies that will ensure the full potential of open data will be reached. Since the publication of the State of the Open Data Nation in 2014, a number of the recommendations have already been implemented. This dissertation demonstrated that many aspects that should facilitate accessibility, such as standardised metadata, have already been addressed for geodata. This research also showed that for other types of data, there is still a long way to go. There is a growing demand for other types of data, such as financial data and healthcare data. Public sector organisations holding such types of data need hands-on guidelines to enable publication of their datasets, preferably as open data. However, data published as open data are forever and cannot be recalled. Therefore, the decision to publish public sector data as open data is complex: datasets are often of a heterogeneous nature and may contain microdata (data that quantify observations or facts, such as data collected during surveys) Although microdata may not necessarily contain personal data, the datasets will probably have to be processed before publication to address confidentiality and data quality issues. In addition, there is a tension between open data and protection of personal data. The big question remains to which level the data need to be aggregated and/or anonymised to ensure protection of personal data now and in the future, and at the same time keeping sufficient significance to be re-usable. Another issue that needs further research is data-ownership of sensor data and co-created data. Increasingly, sensor data generated by e.g. smart phones, smart energy meters and traffic sensors are collected by the public sector and the private sector and become part of a big data ecosystem. In addition, public sector organisations cooperate with other public sector organisations and the private sector to create information from their data, so-called co-created information. Citizens also collect data or complement information on

From access to re-use

If data are the building blocks to generate information needed to acquire knowledge and understanding, then geodata, i.e. data with a geographic component (geodata), are the building blocks for information vital for decision-making at all levels of government, for companies and for citizens. Governments collect geodata and create, develop and use geo-information - also referred to as spatial information - to carry out public tasks as almost all decision-making involves a geographic component, such as a location or demographic information. Geo-information is often considered “special” for technical, economic reasons and legal reasons. Geoinformation is considered special for technical reasons because geo-information is multi-dimensional, voluminous and often dynamic, and can be represented at multiple scales. Because of this complexity, geodata require specialised hardware, software, analysis tools and skills to collect, to process into information and to use geoinformation for analyses. Geo-information is considered special for economic reasons because of the economic aspects, which sets it apart from other products. The fixed production costs to create geo-information are high, especially for large-scale geo-information, such as topographic data, whereas the variable costs of reproduction are low which do not increase with the number of copies produced. In addition, there are substantial sunk costs, which cannot be recovered from the market. As such, geo-information shows characteristics of a public good, i.e. a good that is non-rivalrous and non-excludable. However, to protect the high investments costs, re-use of geo-information may be limited by legal and/or technological means such as intellectual property rights and digital rights management. Thus, by making geo-information excludable, it becomes a club good, i.e. a non-rivalrous but excludable good. By claiming intellectual property rights, such as copyright and/or database rights, and restricting (re-)use through licences and licence fees, geo-information can be commercially exploited and used to recover some of the investment costs. Geo-information is considered special for a number of legal reasons. First, as geo-information has a geographic component, e.g. a reference to a location, geoinformation may contain personal data, sensitive company data, environmentally sensitive data, or data that may pose a threat to the national security. Therefore, the dataset may have to be adapted, aggregated or anonymised before it can be made public. Secondly, geo-information may be subject to intellectual property rights. There may be a copyright on cartographic images or database rights on digital information. Such intellectual property rights may be claimed by third parties involved in the information chain, e.g. a private company supplying aerial photography to the National Mapping Authority. The data holder may also claim intellectual property rights to commercially exploit the dataset and recoup some of the vast investment costs made to produce the dataset. Lastly, there may be other (international) legislation or agreements that may either impede or promote publishing public sector information, whereby in some cases, these policies may contradict each other. It has been recognised that to deal with national, regional and global challenges, it is essential that geo-information collected by one level of government or government organisation be shared between all levels of government via a so-called Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI). The main principles governing SDIs are that data are collected once and (re-)used many times; that data should be easy to discover, access and use; and that data are harmonised so that it is possible to combine spatial data from different sources seamlessly. In line with the SDI governing principles, this dissertation considers accessibility of information to include all these aspects. Accessibility concerns not only access to data, i.e. to be able to view the data without being able to alter the contents but also re-use of data, i.e. to be able to download and/or invoke the data and to share data, including to be able to provide feedback and/or to provide input for co-generated information. Accessibility to public sector geo-information is not only essential for effective and efficient government policy-making but is also associated with realising other ambitions. Examples of these ambitions are a more transparent and accountable government, more citizens’ participation in democratic processes, (co-)generation of solutions to societal problems, and to increase economic value due to companies creating innovative products and services with public sector information as a resource. Especially the latter ambition has been the subject of many international publications stressing the enormous potential economic value of re-use of public sector (geo-) information by companies. Previous research indicated that re-users of public sector information in Europe encountered barriers related to technical, organisational, legal and financial aspects, which was deemed to be the main reason why in Europe the number of value added products and services based on public service information were lagging compared to the United States. Especially the latter two barriers (restrictive licence conditions and high licence fees) were often cited to be the main barriers for reusers in Europe. However, in spite of considerable resources invested by governments to establish spatial data infrastructures, to facilitate data portals and to release public sector information as open data, i.e. without legal and financial restrictions, the expected surge of value added products based on public sector information has not quite eventuated to date and the expected benefits still appear to lag expectations. When this research started a decade ago, the debate around accessibility of public sector information focussed on access policies. Access policies ranged from open access (data available with a minimum of legal restrictions and for no more than marginal dissemination costs) to full cost recovery, whereby all costs incurred in collection, creation, processing, maintenance and dissemination costs to be recoveredfrom the re-users. Most of the public sector bodies in the European Union adhered to a cost recovery policy for allowing re-use of public sector information. In 2003, the European Commission adopted two directives to ensure better accessibility of public sector information Directive 2003/4/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 28 January 2003 on public access to environmental information and repealing Council Directive 90/313/EEC, the so-called Access Directive, provided citizens the right of access to environmental information. Citizens should be able to access documents related to the environment via a register, preferably in an electronic form and if a copy of a document was requested, the charges must not exceed marginal dissemination costs. Directive 2003/98/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 17 November 2003 on the re-use of public sector information, the co-called PSI Directive, intended to create conditions for a level playing field for all re-users of public sector information. However, the PSI Directive of 2003 left room for public sector organisations to maintain a cost recovery regime with restrictive licence conditions. In spite of these directives, access policies for geographic data were slow to change in most European nations. At the end of the last decade, accessibility of public sector information received two major impulses. The first major impulse was the implementation of Directive 2007/2/ EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 14 March 2007 establishing an Infrastructure for Spatial Information in the European Community (INSPIRE), the cocalled INSPIRE Directive, established a framework of standardisation rules for the data and publishing via web services, which significantly contributed to the accessibility of public sector geo-information. The second major impulse was the development of open data policies following the Digital Agenda for Europe adopted in 2010 and the USA Open Government Directive of 2009 and the Digital Agenda for Europe of 2010. These two impulses were the main drivers in Europe to start a careful move from cost recovery policies to open access or open data policies and for more public sector information to be made available as open data. Thus, of the four barriers to re-use of public sector information data cited in Chapter 1 (legal, financial, technical and organisational barriers), two barriers should have been lifted to a large degree due to open data. This shift to open data provided an excellent opportunity to test the hypothesis that the main barriers for re-users of public sector information were indeed restrictive licences and high fees as suggested by earlier research. Chapter 2 showed that by 2008, most European Union Member States had transposed and implemented the 2003/98/EC PSI Directive, however, in various ways and with considerable delay. By 2008, the effects of the PSI Directive were only slowly starting to emerge. A number of Member States reviewed their access policies and more public sector information became available for re-use. Some Member States made the information available free-of-charge or reduced their fees significantly. In many cases, where re-use fees were reduced the number of regular re-users increased significantly and total revenue even increased in spite of lower fees. Although the 2007/2/EC INSPIRE Directive paved the way for technical interoperability by providing guidelines for web services and catalogues, neither the INSPIRE Directive nor the PSI Directive had tackled the issue of legal interoperability. Chapter 2 also demonstrated that a major barrier to creating a level playing field for the private sector was the fact that some public sector bodies acted as value added resellers by developing and selling products and services based on their own data. Thus, the level playing field envisioned by the European Commission had not been realised. Chapter 3 researched the aspect of harmonised licences as a first step towards legal interoperability. Earlier research had indicated that one of the biggest barriers for re-users were complex, intransparent and inconsistent licence conditions, especially for re-users wanting to combine data from multiple sources. A survey of licences used by public sector data providers in the Netherlands demonstrated that although there were differences in length and language, there were also many similarities. The conclusion was that the introduction of a licence suite inspired by the Creative Commons concept would be a step towards increased transparency and consistency of geo-information license agreements. This chapter introduced a conceptual model for such a geo-information licence suite, the so-called Geo Shared licences. Both Creative Commons and Geo Shared licence suites enable harmonisation of licence conditions and promote transparency and legal interoperability, especially when re-users combine data from different sources. The Geo Shared licence suite became a serious option for inclusion into the draft version of the INSPIRE Directive as an annex. Unfortunately, the concept of one licence suite for the entire European Union came too early in 2006. The Geo Shared licences were further developed and implemented into the Dutch National Geo Register. In 2009, the European Commission recognised that PSI was the single largest source of information in Europe and the potential for re-use of PSI needed to be highlighted in the digital age. As part of a review of the 2003/98/EC PSI Directive, the European Commission carried out a round of consultations with stakeholders to seek their views on specific issues to be addressed in the future in 2010. In addition, the Commission commissioned a number of studies. These studies included a review of studies on public sector information re-use and related market studies, an assessment of the different models of supply and charging for public sector information and a study on public sector re-user in the cultural sector. The first study, carried out by Graham Vickery in 2011, showed that the overall economic gain from opening up public sector information as a resource for new products and services could be in the order of €40 billion per annum in the European Union. Both the Vickery Report and the second study, the so-called POPSIS Study, showed that for most public sector data providers their revenues from licence fees were relatively low in comparison to their total budget. After the evaluation, Directive 2013/37/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 26 June 2013 amending Directive 2003/98/EC on the re-use of public sector information was adopted and came into force on 17 July 2013. Chapter 4 described the main changes of the 2013/37/EU Amended PSI Directive, including the recommendation to employ open data licences. This chapter continued with a review of the various open data licences in use in Europe and analysed their interoperability. Although adoption of open data licences for public sector information should have addressed legal interoperability barriers for re-users, in practice, the different types of open data licences might not be so interoperable after all. Effectively, only a public domain declaration, such as a Creative Commons Zero (CC0) declaration, is suitable for open data re-users requiring with cross-border data sets and that such a public domain declaration is published in a prominent place to remove uncertainty for re-users. Without a public domain declaration, re-use of open data is still impeded as re-users are loathe to invest time into the development of value added products or services when it is uncertain if and which restrictions may be applicable and what the impact may be on their product or service. This dissertation also researched the financial and economic aspects of public sector information accessibility. Chapters 1 and 2 indicated that a cost recovery regime for dissemination of public sector information provided a financial barrier for private sector re-users because the fees charged were perceived to be too high. However, in 2008, there were still many advocates for maintaining a cost recovery regime. Especially public sector bodies that are not funded by the national Treasury, the socalled self-funding agencies, needed revenue from data sales to cover a substantial part of their operational costs. A sustainable source of revenue was viewed as essential to maintain the data at an adequate level, and to ensure actuality and continuity. Chapter 5 explored the potential business models and pricing mechanisms for public sector INSPIRE web services. Although, depending on the type of web service, and type of re-user, there might have been an argument for employing a subscription model as a pricing mechanism, business models based on generating revenue from public sector information would not be viable in the long run and were not in the spirit of the INSPIRE Directive. This research concluded that public sector information web services employing different pricing regimes were counterproductive to achieving financial interoperability. In Chapter 6, business models for public sector data providers were revisited, this time from an open data perspective. Government agencies, including self-funding government agencies are under increasing pressure to implement open data policies. This chapter analysed the business models of self-funding agencies either already providing open data or under pressure to provide (some) open data in the near future. The analysis showed which adaptions might be necessary to ensure the long-term availability of high quality open data and the long-term financial sustainability of self-funding agencies. The case studies confirmed that providing (raw) open data does not necessarily lead to losses in revenue in the long term as long as the organisation has enough flexibility to adapt its role in the information value chain, especially when revenue from licence fees represents only a relative small part of theirtotal budget. The case studies indicated that switching to open data has resulted in internal efficiency gains. In practice, it is difficult to isolate and quantify the internal efficiency gains that are solely attributable to open data as the researched organisations continuously implement efficiency measures. However, the reported decreases in internal and external transaction costs due to open data are in line with the case study carried out in Chapter 7. Open data also provided an excellent opportunity to assess the effects of open data ex ante as baseline measurements could be carried out. To develop both quantitative and qualitative indicators to assess the success of a policy change is a challenge for open data initiatives. In Chapter 7, a model to assess the effects on the organisation of an open data provider was developed. Liander, a private energy network administrator mandated with a public task, planned to publish some of their datasets as open data in the autumn of 2013. This offered an excellent opportunity to apply the developed assessment model to provide an insight into internal, external, and relational effects on Liander. A benchmark was carried out prior to release of open data and a follow-up measurement one year later. The benchmark provided an insight into the then work processes and into the preparations required to implement open data. The follow-up monitor indicated that Liander open data are used by a wide range of users and have had a positive effect on the development of apps to aid energy savings. However, it remains a challenge to quantify the societal effects of such apps. The follow-up monitor also indicated that regular re-users of Liander data used the open data to improve existing applications and work processes rather than to create new products. The case study demonstrated that private energy companies could successfully release open data. The case study also showed that Liander served as a best-practice case for open data and had a flywheel effect on companies within the same sector. By 2015, nearly all energy network administrators had published similar open data. The monitoring model developed in this project was assessed to be suitable to monitor the open data effects on the organisation of the data provider. The assessment model developed and tested in Chapter 7 proved to be suitable to monitor the effects of open data on organisational level. However, to provide a more complete picture of the effects of open data and to assess if there are other barriers for re-users, a more holistic approach was required to assess the maturity of open data. Therefore, a holistic open data assessment framework addressing the supplier side, the governance side, and the user side of the open data was developed and applied to the Dutch open data infrastructure in Chapter 8. This Holistic Open Data Maturity Assessment Framework was used to evaluate the State of the Open Data Nation in the Netherlands and to provide valuable information on (potential) bottlenecks. The framework showed that geographic data scored significantly better than other types of government data. The standardisation and implementation rules laid down by INSPIRE Directive framework appear to have been a catalyst for moving geographic data to a higher level of maturity. The maturity assessment framework provided Dutch policy makers with useful inputs for further development of the open data ecosystem and development of well-founded strategies that will ensure the full potential of open data will be reached. Since the publication of the State of the Open Data Nation in 2014, a number of the recommendations have already been implemented. This dissertation demonstrated that many aspects that should facilitate accessibility, such as standardised metadata, have already been addressed for geodata. This research also showed that for other types of data, there is still a long way to go. There is a growing demand for other types of data, such as financial data and healthcare data. Public sector organisations holding such types of data need hands-on guidelines to enable publication of their datasets, preferably as open data. However, data published as open data are forever and cannot be recalled. Therefore, the decision to publish public sector data as open data is complex: datasets are often of a heterogeneous nature and may contain microdata (data that quantify observations or facts, such as data collected during surveys) Although microdata may not necessarily contain personal data, the datasets will probably have to be processed before publication to address confidentiality and data quality issues. In addition, there is a tension between open data and protection of personal data. The big question remains to which level the data need to be aggregated and/or anonymised to ensure protection of personal data now and in the future, and at the same time keeping sufficient significance to be re-usable. Another issue that needs further research is data-ownership of sensor data and co-created data. Increasingly, sensor data generated by e.g. smart phones, smart energy meters and traffic sensors are collected by the public sector and the private sector and become part of a big data ecosystem. In addition, public sector organisations cooperate with other public sector organisations and the private sector to create information from their data, so-called co-created information. Citizens also collect data or complement information on

The role of Spatial Data Infrastructures in the Digital Government Transformation of Public Administrations

Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDIs) play a pivotal role in Digital Government Transformation (DGT) of countries. They constitute one of the main building blocks for effective data sharing and their development in the past years has taught some important lessons to public authorities in terms of collaboration across sectors, centricity of users’ needs as well as usefulness of platforms and Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). However, the specific analysis of the role that SDIs play in Digital Government Transformation has not been the object of many studies so far. With practitioners and academics acknowledging more and more the links between these two concepts, there is a need to provide an initial picture of how SDIs have contributed to Digital Government Transformation until now and what could be their role in the future. The present study is a first attempt to examine this relation and develop a methodology for apprehending the role of SDIs in the Digital Transformation of the public sector. It first develops an analytical framework for examining different aspects that can provide an explanation of the relationship between SDIs and DGT and notably institutional aspects, technical aspects and impact aspects. It then tests this framework on twenty-nine countries (all European Member States plus Norway) in order to assess the validity of this instrument for the collection of data as well as for the wider understanding of this topic. From these analytical and data collection efforts, it emerged the strength of the relationship that SDIs and Digital Government Transformation entertain and the variety of ways in which countries have understood and cultivated it. The study also provides an attempt to link the OECD Recommendation on Digital Governments with the SDIs and Digital Transformation experience of the countries in scope. This also helped understanding that SDIs already significantly support Digital Government Transformation, even from the OECD perspective, and that this relationship will only be stronger in the future.JRC.B.6-Digital Econom

Utilização da Norma JPEG2000 para codificar proteger e comercializar Produtos de Observação Terrestre

Applications like, change detection, global monitoring, disaster detection and management have emerging requirements that need the availability of large amounts of data. This data is currently being capture by a multiplicity of instruments and EO (Earth Observation) sensors originating large volumes of data that needs to be stored, processed and accessed in order to be useful – as an example, ENVISAT accumulates, in a yearly basis, several hundred terabytes of data. This need to recover, store, process and access brings some interesting challenges, like storage space, processing power, bandwidth and security, just to mention a few. These challenges are still very important on today’s technological world. If we take a look for example at the number of subscribers of ISP (Internet Service Providers) broadband services on the developed world today, one can notice that broadband services are still far from being common and dominant. On the underdeveloped countries the picture is even dimmer, not only from a bandwidth point of view but also in all other aspects regarding information and communication technologies (ICTs). All this challenges need to be taken into account if a service is to reach the broadest audience possible. Obviously protection and securing of services and contents is an extra asset that helps on the preservation of possible business values, especially if we consider such a costly business as the space industry. This thesis presents and describes a system which allows, not only the encoding and decoding of several EO products into a JPEG2000 format, but also supports some of the security requirements identified previously that allows ESA (European Space Agency) and related EO services to define and apply efficient EO data access security policies and even to exploit new ways to commerce EO products over the Internet.Aplicações como, detecção de mudanças no terreno, monitorização planetária, detecção e gestão de desastres, têm necessidades prementes que necessitam de vastas quantidades de dados. Estes dados estão presentemente a ser capturados por uma multiplicidade de instrumentos e sensores de observação terrestre, que originam uma enormidade de dados que necessitam de ser armazenados processados e acedidos de forma a se tornarem úteis – por exemplo, a ENVISAT acumula anualmente varias centenas de terabytes de dados. Esta necessidade de recuperar, armazenar, processar e aceder introduz alguns desafios interessantes como o espaço de armazenamento, poder de processamento, largura de banda e segurança dos dados só para mencionar alguns. Estes desafios são muito importantes no mundo tecnológico de hoje. Se olharmos, por exemplo, ao número actual de subscritores de ISP (Internet Service Providers) de banda larga nos países desenvolvidos podemos ficar surpreendidos com o facto do número de subscritores desses serviços ainda não ser uma maioria da população ou dos agregados familiares. Nos países subdesenvolvidos o quadro é ainda mais negro não só do ponto de vista da largura de banda mas também de todos os outros aspectos relacionados com Tecnologias da Informação e Comunicação (TICs). Todos estes aspectos devem ser levados em consideração se se pretende que um serviço se torne o mais abrangente possível em termos de audiências. Obviamente a protecção e segurança dos conteúdos é um factor extra que ajuda a preservar possíveis valores de negócio, especialmente considerando industrias tão onerosas como a Industria Espacial. Esta tese apresenta e descreve um sistema que permite, não só a codificação e descodificação de diversos produtos de observação terrestre para formato JPEG2000 mas também o suporte de alguns requisitos de segurança identificados previamente que permitem, á Agência Espacial Europeia e a outros serviços relacionados com observação terrestre, a aplicação de politicas eficientes de acesso seguro a produtos de observação terrestre, permitindo até o aparecimento de novas forma de comercialização de produtos de observação terrestre através da Internet