Work Package 8: Policy Recommendations (POLICY)

WP8 will operate a synthesis to deliver actual policy recommendation to be addressed to the local government (in particular at regional level) or to other policy-makers. Depending on the results of the previous WPs, with particular reference to WP2 (MAPPING) and WP3 (ECONOMICS), the recommendations of WP8 shall be focused on specific sectors or toward specific pilot projects.
Based on the results of WP2 (MAPPING) and of WP6 (COMPLIANCE), WP8 will also check the level of compliance of regional Public Sector Information Holders with the European legislation (in particular, with the PSI Directive) and it will formulate specific recommendations in order to solve possible critical situations.
WP8 will use various methodologies, including law & economics and transaction costs approach, to attempt a definition of the optimal scope of application of normative tools such as the PSI Directive.

OBJECTIVES: The minimum goal of WP8 is to study whether PSI policy guidelines developed at a higher level of generality (e.g. the OECD Recommendation of the Council C(2008)36) are consistent with the results of the analysis performed in the previous part of the project. Even in the unlikely hypothesis of complete coherence of the results of the project with existing policy recommendations, WP8 will analyse how these suggestions can be declined in the actual Italian legal and economic setting, with particular reference to the current situation of Piedmont.
Because of the regional level of analysis, it is clear that a special focus will be on policies which – in theory or given the existing legal setting – may be performed with especially significant expected results at the level of local governments. However, WP8 will take into account a flexible application of the principle of subsidiarity and will also consider the need of avoiding counter-productive fragmentation of policies, especially in cases in which relevant re-uses are performed at national or European level.

ATTENDED RESULTS: An example of the balancing activity that will have to be performed by WP8 may concern the topic of optimal licensing of PSI. Here, actual licensing of PSI disclosed and available for re-use (“output licenses”) and standard forms and agreements used in order to collect/create PSI (“input licenses”) may be distinguished.
Useful elements to devise these licenses will be studied in at least three different WPs (4, 5 and 6) and significant guidelines on the goals to achieve through these licenses will come also from WP3 (ECONOMICS).
Specific recommendations will also concern the optimal pricing policy for PSI. International consensus seems to be going in the direction of a marginal cost of dissemination principle; however the problem of optimal pricing of PSI obviously depends and interacts with the problem of optimal licensing.
Specific attention should also be devoted to the analysis of transaction costs. Specific attention should also be devoted to the effects of pricing choices on private undertaking competing in the same or adjacent markets.