FOIMan finds the Holy Grail of a first decision under the Re-use of Public Sector Information Regulations.
Ever since the first Re-use of Public Sector Information Regulations became law in 2005, I’ve known them as RoPSI. This has always amused me as I envisage them as a cute little bunny rabbit. Flopsy RoPSI. Bless.
But in fact since 2015 they’ve had more teeth – think more of the blood-thirsty fur-ball in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The 2015 regs require public authorities to allow re-use of information on request in most circumstances. And what’s more, they bring the full range of FOI enforcement options to bear on re-use. Which are of course wielded by the Information Commissioner.
That said, we haven’t seen the Commissioner use these powers in anger – until now. The first decision notice has been issued in relation to RoPSI. It criticises Cambridgeshire County Council for imposing unnecessary restrictions on the applicant for re-use of right of way data.
Cambridgeshire had allowed the re-use of the data under a licence which was limited to one year, and appeared to limit re-use to the applicant alone. These were problems for the applicant as the intention was to use the data on an open mapping website where it might then be further re-purposed by others. They had also reserved the right to charge for re-use but had waived the charge on this occasion.
One of the council’s concerns was that the intellectual property of the Ordnance Survey (OS) would be breached, which was soon dismissed when the OS told the ICO that they had no problem with rights of way data being re-used under the Open Government Licence (OGL). Another was that the data itself would soon be updated. The council was imposing the one year licence so that the applicant would be forced to update their map after a year. The ICO pointed out that the OGL requires those reusing data to publish data with a caveat warning that the data might not be accurate. This should be sufficient to meet the council’s concerns.
The council’s position was also undermined by the fact that other councils allowed re-use under the OGL. Taking all this into account, the Commissioner concluded that the licence terms were unnecessarily restrictive. It appears that when it comes to licensing of public sector data, public authorities will need good reasons not to apply the OGL.
Unfortunately the issue of whether the council could charge for re-use wasn’t examined because the council hadn’t charged in this case. I suspect that if it had been looked at, the Commissioner would not have been sympathetic to a charge. Under RoPSI, in many circumstances, only “marginal costs incurred in respect of the reproduction, provision and dissemination of documents” can be charged for re-use. Take note those tempted, like Cambridgeshire, to adopt the National Archives’ “Charged Licence” when responding to re-use requests.
The Commissioner was also critical of the council’s tardiness in responding to ICO enquiries (and indeed considered whether they had failed to deal with the original request ‘promptly’). The decision notice threatens that in future the Commissioner will be prepared to require information under her statutory powers at s51 of FOIA, and suggests that the council should consider whether sufficient resources are in place. It’s clear the Commissioner has been less than impressed with the way that Cambridgeshire have dealt with her enquiries and this request for re-use.
This first decision notice under RoPSI sends out a signal that, as with FOIA and data protection, the ICO means business under their new Commissioner.
Should Cambridgeshire disagree with the Commissioner, they need only appeal to the First Tier Tribunal. Unless they have access to the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch, of course.
I’ll be covering re-use and the Re-use of Public Sector Information Regulations on my Practical FOI Skills and Transparency Requirements course for Act Now Training.
References:
Decision notice FS50619465 (Cambridgeshire County Council)