[GSDI Legal Socioecon] Cross lingual search requirement in proposed PSI Re-use Directive re-vamping

[Roger Longhorn]

One of the more far reaching (technically and administratively) 
amendments being proposed for the 2003 EU Directive on re-use of Public 
Sector Information, is the proposed change to Article 9 on 'Practical 
Arrangements' - what I have always called the 'do something' clause, 
instructing Member State public sector bodies in 'how' to make their 
assets known, knowable and usable - all one sentence of it! - as opposed 
to the exceptional detail that is being promulgated in the INSPIRE 
Directive for geospatial PSI.

 From the original 2003 Directive 
(http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/policy/psi/rules/eu/index_en.htm)

<begins>
Article 9 - Practical arrangements

Member States shall ensure that practical arrangements are in place that 
facilitate the search for documents available for reuse, such as assets 
lists, accessible preferably online, of main documents, and portal sites 
that are linked to decentralised assets lists.

<ends - that is the whole article>

Article 9 is replaced by the following in the proposed change 
(http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/policy/psi/docs/pdfs/opendata2012/revision_of_PSI_Directive/proposal_directive_EN.pdf)

<begins>
Article 9 - Practical arrangements

Member States shall ensure that practical arrangements facilitating the 
crosslingual search for documents available for re-use are in place, 
such as asset lists of main documents with relevant metadata, accessible 
preferably online and in machine-readable format, and portal sites that 
are linked to decentralised asset lists.’

<ends>

Notice the potentially onerous 'facilitating the crosslingual search' 
requirement and the specific mention of 'with relevant metadata' 
(without stating what that should be, in content or format)?

Regards

Roger Longhorn
ral at alum.mit.edu
vice-Chair, Communications, GSDI Assoc Outreach & Membership Committee