Open Access News

News from the open access movement


Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Working for OA to public info in Greece

Public information belongs to the public, Re-Public, undated but apparently today.  An interview with Dimitrios Zachariadis, creator of Tilaphos and Tilaphos-reforest, two blogs on deforestation in Greece (in Greek).  Excerpt:

...Thanasis/Pavlos: When is an information considered open (licensing, internet web service)? What’s your experience from the domestic and the international public administration regarding data collection?

Dimitrios Zachariadis: Information written on paper is practically closed information nowadays. Can anyone imagine a graduate forestry student, wanting to write a paper about the decline of forest land in Greece and having to enter one by one all the data published in the Government Gazette issues? He will simply never write that paper because he will choose another subject....In a few words, it is not sufficient that the information be published somewhere; it should also not cost an arm and a leg to use it....

Most of the western countries have [decided to let public information circulate freely]....As a result, numerous web services have been created as well as web standards, so that public data would be usable by machines, or by intermediate services and end users. People and organizations, who are interested in using such data, produce better results both quantitatively and qualitatively, while other people are better informed for what is going on. The provision for free access to public information can be found in the Greek Constitution, Article 5A – (Right to information), where the right of every citizen to participate in the Information Society is explicitly stated. Therefore, theoretically, the Greek state has answered the question with an unconditional “yes”....

As far as I know, the state administration and many public organizations (e.g. universities) produce a significant number of quality raw data. Until now, the unresolved problem is that there is no data release policy....There is rarely, if at all, any mention about providing reliable data to professionals and citizens, unlike the case of the National Statistical Service that was mentioned above. The Ministry of Environment, Physical Planning and Public Works is, unfortunately, a negative example, even though it’s the ministry of works and engineers. The Intellectual Property Organization is another sad example: it addresses the Greek citizens only in … English....

Thanasis/Pavlos: Finally, what does public information mean? How difficult is, let’s say, for the Hellenic Mapping and Cadastral Organization to implement the Cadastral Register through a convenient flexible schema? Would such a suggestion be utopian?

Dimitrios Zachariadis: The slogan “The public information belongs to the people”, that is Tilaphos’ heading, is a tautology. Public is something that by definition belongs to the citizens. Nevertheless, in Greece, the slogan is still an unfulfilled requirement because public information produced on taxpayer’s money remains in the drawers of civil servants, as if it were their property....

[Y]ou cannot find an official Greek free topographical data source, not even a university. It’s quite noticeable that even the National Statistical Service of Greece, which generally releases statistical data into the public domain, does not provide any of the topographical data it collects for free.

If one envies the progress of other western countries or of companies which operate there, one should pay attention to the conditions which nourished and sustain them. Many maps used by Google, Yahoo or Microsoft, for example, are based on satellite images provided freely by NASA. One can read the following remarkable for its frugality and comprehensiveness statement, under the photographs published in the web and coming from American public organizations (here from NOAA): “This image is in the public domain because it contains materials that originally came from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, taken or made during the course of an employee’s official duties.” I do not think that further explanations are necessary.

A policy of open access to public information in Greece is not utopian, because the current state of affairs here lags far behind what happens abroad....