Today there is no legal right to access information electronically from the public sector. The upcoming Swedish Open Data Act introduces the concept of a “request for re-use”, which will hopefully change this. It could make it easier to build services like Öppna skolplattformen that compete with the City of Stockholm’s own school app.
Most people are probably familiar with “Öppna skolplattformen” (the Open School Platform), the private alternative to the City of Stockholm’s own mobile app for parents. The city’s own app has a rating of 1.1 in the App Store and generally works poorly, so Christian Landgren started building the private alternative and quickly got others to contribute their time and expertise. Within a couple of months they had a working alternative published. They did this by communicating with the same API as the city’s own app, but the problem is that the city had not envisaged others using it, nor does it even seem to have understood that this was possible. “Öppna skolplattformen” quickly became popular, and the city was now faced with a new, unexpected situation and had to decide how to handle it. The city’s actions have been somewhat ambivalent, but for the most part it has tried to put a spanner in the works for the new app.
Morally speaking, the city ought to make it as easy as possible for parents to access the information by creating an open API for others to use. Legally, however, it has not acted wrongly as regards access to the information. Under current legislation you have little or no right to access information in a way that makes it possible to build services like Öppna skolplattformen. The principle of public access to official documents only gives a right to access information on paper, and that can take a couple of days – not ideal for building digital services.
At the same time, it should be pointed out that there is nothing preventing the city from creating an open API for others to use, and that would also be in line with the city’s own policies. Let us hope the city changes its stance over time; the public sector should be permeated by openness and transparency.
During the year, however, new legislation is on its way that aims to change this. The proposal for a new “Open Data” Act, which is based on the updated Open Data Directive from the EU, contains provisions on the right to receive requested information electronically, in the desired format and in the desired way. This could be an opportunity to gain access to the information that is needed.
The proposal introduces the concept of a “request for re-use”. Such a request does not give any right to access information – that is still determined by the old rules – but if you do have a right of access, a request can determine how it is to be provided. Such a request can include wishes to access the information electronically via an API, in as close to real time as possible, free of charge and according to a particular standard.
For the school platform, this would mean first having to determine whether a person has the right to access the information? Since the purpose is to display it in the city’s own app, and parents already access it there today, the answer is of course yes. The upcoming act then opens the way for a request for re-use, and since the API already exists and is used by the city’s own app, it ought to be difficult to refuse it.
Issues that could complicate the process are that the city could choose to take the view that each person who wants to access information needs to submit their own request. That would complicate matters somewhat, but the process for submitting a request can be automated, and the city would create a great deal of extra work for itself without achieving very much.
Another big question mark is whether the new act will in practice lead to an opportunity to obtain information electronically. That is the legislator’s intention, but there is a long tradition of resistance to this within Swedish law and legal practice, and there is a risk that the new act will be ineffective as it clashes with other legislation.
It is important to be aware that the information Öppna skolplattformen uses from the city is almost exclusively personal data, which therefore cannot become open data. The act is called the Open Data Act but covers more than open data. It is a little confusing, but the upshot is that the act ought to be applicable here. I would also like to say that I am not a lawyer, that there may be details in the interpretation of the act that I am missing, and that it is still only a proposal and may change before it comes into force.