What should an Open Data Law look like?

If we’re talking about top level legislation that needs to be approved in congress and is slow and difficult to change, I believe this is the way to go. The community consensus on those issues changes after some years.

For instance, about licences. when we began discussing open data almost 9 years ago there wasn’t really an appropriate answer to sui generis database rights, so people came up with the ODbL. Some years later, came Creative Commons version 4.0, which also addressed the issue and became a viable option for licensing open data. If for every step like this we have to get congress approval for changing the recommended licence, then we have a problem. That’s why I argue that top level legislation should be more about “generic” principles, and the specifics should go to lower level norms that can be updated more easily.

Thinking again about the Open Data Charter, from what I understand, has multiple aspects to it. The principles are generic enough that I believe that at least some of them could perhaps, indeed, be adopted as part of top level legislation.

However, the Charter also requires commitments and action plans that go into more specifics. Those are political issues and should be explicitly adopted by authorities in mandate, instead of baked into legislation. Decrees or lower level norms could be more appropriate. Of course, you’d have to take into consideration the structure of the State in any given country and adapt as necessary.

When you have a legal mandate to open up the data, you end up trying not to convince the gov players to publish some data, but actually the data that matters the most to constituents. If opening data is required for compliance with a law only, without political leadership and without social participation in setting priorities, you risk getting what people have been calling “open washing” – governments open up data that is not especially relevant, while leaving closed what people want the most

Sure. In Brazil, this is set by Decree no. 8.777 of 2016. The responsibilities are defined in Article 5.

The Ministry of Planning (now called Ministry of Economy) is responsible for running the open data portal, managing the bi-annual Action Plan, coordinating a Committee comprised of members of government agencies and data users that set the directives for the open data policy, setting the technical standards.

The Office of the Comptroller-General (called by the Portuguese acronym – CGU), which also does coordinate the Open Government initiative in the country, monitors the government ministries and agencies for compliance with the open data policy, especially in regards to the disposition in Decree 8.777/2016, article 9, that each ministry and agency must development a bi-annual organization-wide action plan detailing which data they will open in the period, who within the organization is responsible, etc.

With a shift in priorities in the Ministry of Economy, since last year, toward the digitalization of services, they have decided to hand over to the CGU all other aspects of managing the open data policy, except for the open data portal. The change to Decree 8.777 is coming soon, but the decision to do so has already been made public as can be seen on the notes of the Committee meetings late last year.

I questioned this by creating a topic at the France local group, and was answered by @clombion, who explained that in France the law that passes the National Assembly still needs a decree to apply. As I understand, even though the law passed in 2016, that hasn’t happened yet.

There are many positive aspects to the law that are also present in Brazil’s Decree 8.777/2016, such as requiring open data by default, prioritizing high value datasets, and opening the possibility to request open data as part of a freedom of information request. Other provisions are only present in the Brazilian legislation, such as requiring social participation on which datasets will be published.

Open Data by default

Brazil

Art. 8 º Consideram-se automaticamente passíveis de abertura as bases de dados do Governo federal que não contenham informações protegidas nos termos dos art. 7, § 3º, art. 22, art. 23 e art. 31 da Lei n º 12.527, de 2011.

France

Le livre III du même code est ainsi modifié :
1° Après l’article L. 300-2, il est inséré un article L. 300-4 ainsi rédigé :

« Art. L. 300-4.-Toute mise à disposition effectuée sous forme électronique en application du présent livre se fait dans un standard ouvert, aisément réutilisable et exploitable par un système de traitement automatisé. » ;

2° A l’article L. 311-1, après le mot : « tenues », sont insérés les mots : « de publier en ligne ou » ;
3° L’article L. 311-9 est complété par un 4° ainsi rédigé :
« 4° Par publication des informations en ligne, à moins que les documents ne soient communicables qu’à l’intéressé en application de l’article L. 311-6. »

High value datasets

Brazil

Art. 9 º Os Planos de Dados Abertos dos órgãos e das entidades da administração pública federal direta, autárquica e fundacional deverão ser elaborados e publicados em sítio eletrônico no prazo de sessenta dias da data de publicação deste Decreto.

§ 1 º Os Planos de Dados Abertos dos órgãos e das entidades da administração pública federal direta, autárquica e fundacional deverão priorizar a abertura dos dados de interesse público listados no Anexo, os quais deverão ser publicados em formato aberto no prazo de cento e oitenta dias da data de publicação deste Decreto.

(the datasets are further specified in the Annex to Decree 8.777)

Social participation in prioritizing datasets

Brazil

Art. 5º (…)

§ 2 º A implementação da Política de Dados Abertos ocorrerá por meio da execução de Plano de Dados Abertos no âmbito de cada órgão ou entidade da administração pública federal, direta, autárquica e fundacional, o qual deverá dispor, no mínimo, sobre os seguintes tópicos:

(…)

II - mecanismos transparentes de priorização na abertura de bases de dados, os quais obedecerão os critérios estabelecidos pela INDA e considerarão o potencial de utilização e reutilização dos dados tanto pelo Governo quanto pela sociedade civil;

This is further detailed in Article 1 of Resolution no. 3 of the Steering Committee:

Art. 1º Para promover a cultura de transparência pública, conforme inciso IIdo § 2º do art. 5º do Decreto nº 8.777, de 11 de maio de 2016, as bases de dados a serem disponibilizadas devem ser priorizadas e justificadas, nos Planos de Dados Abertos – PDA, em função de seu potencial em termos deinteresse público, considerando-se o que for aplicável:

I - o grau de relevância para o cidadão;

(…)

§ 1º Para garantir o grau de relevância para o cidadão, previsto no inciso I, deverá ser adotado mecanismo de participação social como audiência pública, consulta pública na internet ou outra estratégia de interação com a sociedade.

Open Licensing

Brazil

Art. 4 º Os dados disponibilizados pelo Poder Executivo federal, bem como qualquer informação de transparência ativa, são de livre utilização pelo Governo federal e pela sociedade.

Parágrafo único. Na divulgação de dados protegidos por direitos autorais pertencentes a terceiros, fica o Poder Executivo federal obrigado a indicar o seu detentor e as condições de utilização por ele autorizadas.

This is further detailed by the Resolution no. 2 of the Steering Committee:

Antes da realização da escolha da licença mais adequada, deverá ser levado em consideração se o dado possui direito autoral ou não. A base de dados deverá ser identificada como sendode domínio público nos seguintes casos: aquelas que, por critério de seleção, organização ou disposição de seu conteúdo, não puderem ser consideradas criações intelectuais e oscadastros e os atos oficiais que não gozam de proteção de direitos autorais.

Caso contrário, seu direito autoral existe e pertence à Administração, de maneira que cada instituição deverá escolher uma licença que configure a base de dados como sendo dados abertos, tais como: Creative Commons Zero, Public Domain Dedication and License (PDDL),Creative Commons Atribuição 4.0 e Open Database License (OdbL).

France

Article 11

Le titre II du livre III du même code est ainsi modifié :
1° Le chapitre Ier est complété par un article L. 321-3 ainsi rédigé :

« Art. L. 321-3.-Sous réserve de droits de propriété intellectuelle détenus par des tiers, les droits des administrations mentionnées au premier alinéa de l’article L. 300-2 du présent code, au titre des articles L. 342-1 et L. 342-2 du code de la propriété intellectuelle, ne peuvent faire obstacle à la réutilisation du contenu des bases de données que ces administrations publient en application du 3° de l’article L. 312-1-1 du présent code.
« Le premier alinéa du présent article n’est pas applicable aux bases de données produites ou reçues par les administrations mentionnées au premier alinéa de l’article L. 300-2 dans l’exercice d’une mission de service public à caractère industriel ou commercial soumise à la concurrence. » ;

2° L’article L. 323-2 est complété par un alinéa ainsi rédigé :
« Lorsque la réutilisation à titre gratuit donne lieu à l’établissement d’une licence, cette licence est choisie parmi celles figurant sur une liste fixée par décret, qui est révisée tous les cinq ans, après concertation avec les collectivités territoriales et leurs groupements. Lorsqu’une administration souhaite recourir à une licence ne figurant pas sur cette liste, cette licence doit être préalablement homologuée par l’Etat, dans des conditions fixées par décret. »

Open data as a FOI request

Brazil

CAPÍTULO IV
DA SOLICITAÇÃO DE ABERTURA DE BASES DE DADOS

Art. 6 º Às solicitações de abertura de bases de dados da administração pública federal aplicam-se os prazos e os procedimentos previstos para o processamento de pedidos de acesso à informação, nos termos da Lei nº 12.527, de 2011, e do Decreto n º 7.724, de 16 de maio de 2012.

Parágrafo único. A decisão negativa de acesso de pedido de abertura de base de dados governamentais fundamentada na demanda por custos adicionais desproporcionais e não previstos pelo órgão ou pela entidade da administração pública federal deverá apresentar análise sobre a quantificação de tais custos e sobre a viabilidade da inclusão das bases de dados em edição futura do Plano de Dados Abertos.

France

I could not find the exact provision, but @clombion mentioned that it is possible under French law.

It would be an interesting to make a comparative study of international legislation about open data considering these and other aspects.

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The provision in French law that says that you can ask for a FOI request to be published openly is described in the article L311-9 of the Public book of relations between the general public and the administration.

The October 2016 law “Pour une République numérique” added the following line in this article:

4° Par publication des informations en ligne, à moins que les documents ne soient communicables qu’à l’intéressé en application de l’article L. 311-6.

Which basically says that among the options that a requester has is to ask for the documents to be provided to him through an online publication (of the documents), unless these documents can only be communicated to the requester.

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Thank you, Cédric!

This is interesting. When you read that paragraph together with the caput of Art. L. 300-4 that says it must be machine readable, you get the “open data by FOI request” mechanism:

« Art. L. 300-4.-Toute mise à disposition effectuée sous forme électronique en application du présent livre se fait dans un standard ouvert, aisément réutilisable et exploitable par un système de traitement automatisé. » ;

The provision to put the data online except for (what I assume are) privacy reasons is indeed clear.

Is there an exception for cases where processing and publishing the data would have a high cost?

The Brazilian decree says they can deny it on alleged cost reasons, but in that case they must present a detailed analysis of the costs and consider the data to be scheduled to be open at a later date in their open data plan (this is in “parágrafo único” of Art. 6º I quoted above).