The Swedish National Archives (Riksarkivet) wants to help the country’s public administrations to share lists of documents that can be reused. In June, the Archives published a proposal on how it could harvest these lists and make them available to the public. The proposal is open for comments until 28 August.
The National Archives proposes to publish the lists of public sector documents in the country’s national open data portal, Öppna Data.
The proposal, titled ‘Riksarkivets förstudie om PSI förteckningar’ (National Archives study on PSI document lists) describes a method for creating and publishing such lists, using DCAT-AP. This is a specification for describing public sector datasets to make them easier to find and reuse. (DCAT-AP is being developed by the European Commission’s ISA² Programme, which also runs the ePractice community for eGovernment professionals).
The study is based on a survey of user needs and takes into account the changes that are necessary in public administrations to create and manage such lists (impact assessment).
Open for comment
Earlier this month, the National Archives called for comments on its recommendations.
Better known for making public sector datasets available as open data, the PSI Directive’s other goal is to make public sector documents available. It is this latter part that is the topic of the Swedish National Archives’ study. “Currently, not many lists are created, and what is available is usually published in the form of continuous text on web page; coordination on publication is not available”, the study says.
Transposing the PSI Directive, the Swedish government assigned to the Riksarkivet the task of helping to collect and publish such lists.