EU to Make All Public Data Available in Digital Formats | PCWorld Business Center

"According to new proposals put forward by the European Union's Digital Agenda Commissioner Neelie Kroes, all E.U. countries will be obliged to make their public data available in digital formats. This represents a huge opportunity for tech companies, which could be worth €40 billion (US$53.5 billion) to the E.U.'s economy each year, according to the Commission. Funding earmarked for research on data-handling technologies alone is around €100 million. Money will also be made available for creating data portal websites through the E.U.'s Competitiveness and Innovation Program, and the Commission will also back research into data infrastructures. All this is aimed at making the most of Europe's hidden "goldmine" of information. Public data includes all the information that public bodies in the European Union produce, collect or pay for. This could include geographical data, statistics, meteorological data, data from publicly funded research projects and digitized books from libraries...."