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ESS report 2017

ESS report 2017

 
Terms and Conditions of European Statistics

ESS policy on free acccess to and re-use of data

The European Statistical System (ESS) provides its statistics free of charge as a public good of high quality irrespective of subsequent commercial or non-commercial use.

The ESS, subscribes to an open, free access and re-use policy for its publicly released statistics under the conditions described below.

Minimun conditions

A detailed list of what is subject to be re-used:

  • Scope of data: aggregated statistical data and its metadata and all textual content are included. All statistical data and other material where copyright is on third parties (in some cases photographs, maps, etc) are excluded, as well as any data which an NSI wishes to exclude for specific reasons.
  • What's in:
    • data (aggregated statistical data) available in the NSIs websites (including individual datasets, bulk download extractions, Excel files etc).
    • statistical data retrievable through any type of automatic data retrieval system, such as APIs, web services, bulk download facilities (i.e. any machine readable format)
    • metadata
    • textual website content (text, graphs, etc)
  • What's not in
    • microdata (both confidential and non-confidential)
    • personal data (such as addresses of individuals)
    • data from third parties (maps, geographic boundaries, etc.)
    • tailor-made extractions
    • publications
    • any data which an NSIs wishes to exclude from free access/re-use for specific reasons
  • Scope of re-use: data (as defined in the first point) for commercial and non-commercial purposes.
  • Conditions specified in the different NSIs for the re-use of their data include basic common requirements, irrespectively of the format chosen: simple copyright statement, custom licence or Creative Commons licence.

These conditions for re-use should

  • be short, clear, fair and transparent;
  • include the obligation to acknowledge the source;
  • include the obligation to not distort the original meaning of the data;
  • include non-liability of the NSI for any consequences from the reuse.

These minimum conditions are in line with the PSI Directive. This policy was approved by the European Statistical System Committee at its 16th meeting on 7 February 2013.

How do ESS bodies implement this policy?

Legislation