OK, after looking at the methodology again. here is my conclusion. The methodology state this -
This question addresses whether the data is "public.” This does not require it to be freely available, but does require that someone outside of the government can access it in some form (examples include if the data is available for purchase, if it exists as a PDF on a website that you can access, if you can get it in paper form — then it is public). If a freedom of information request or similar is needed to access the data, it is not considered publicly available.
Therefore, if you don’t need to request it from government, but just to sign up, it is publicly available. We can be strict, but I don’t think it will serve the purpose.
I will flag this for next year methodology consultation.
@nilleren - I hope it helps!