Directive 2003/98/EC of the European Parliament and of the CouncilShow full title

Directive 2003/98/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 17 November 2003 on the re-use of public sector information

Article 2U.K.Definitions

For the purpose of this Directive the following definitions shall apply:

1.

‘public sector body’ means the State, regional or local authorities, bodies governed by public law and associations formed by one or several such authorities or one or several such bodies governed by public law;

2.

‘body governed by public law’ means any body:

(a)

established for the specific purpose of meeting needs in the general interest, not having an industrial or commercial character; and

(b)

having legal personality; and

(c)

financed, for the most part by the State, or regional or local authorities, or other bodies governed by public law; or subject to management supervision by those bodies; or having an administrative, managerial or supervisory board, more than half of whose members are appointed by the State, regional or local authorities or by other bodies governed by public law;

3.

‘document’ means:

(a)

any content whatever its medium (written on paper or stored in electronic form or as a sound, visual or audiovisual recording);

(b)

any part of such content;

4.

‘re-use’ means the use by persons or legal entities of documents held by public sector bodies, for commercial or non-commercial purposes other than the initial purpose within the public task for which the documents were produced. Exchange of documents between public sector bodies purely in pursuit of their public tasks does not constitute re-use;

5.

‘personal data’ means data as defined in Article 2(a) of Directive 95/46/EC.

6.

[F1 machine-readable format means a file format structured so that software applications can easily identify, recognize and extract specific data, including individual statements of fact, and their internal structure;

7.

open format means a file format that is platform-independent and made available to the public without any restriction that impedes the re-use of documents;

8.

formal open standard means a standard which has been laid down in written form, detailing specifications for the requirements on how to ensure software interoperability;

9.

university means any public sector body that provides post-secondary-school higher education leading to academic degrees.]