Øystein Jakobsen to speak at OpenForum Europe

OpenForum Europe   is a non-profit organisation working with open source, open data, open access and standardisation. The OpenForum Summit 2011 has speakers such as head of EC Digital Agenda   Neelie Kroes   and Google CEO   Hal Varian   - and our own Øystein Jakobsen.

Informed Individual is working to make relevant data about products and services publically available, and   Øystein Jakobsen will tell this story   at the OpenForum summit.

The merits of open government data is now widely accepted, and through initiatives such as   data.gov   and   data.gov.uk   public institutions are scrambling to publicice data on everything from weather and maps to voting and city planning.

Now it is time to adress the topic of product data; Who made it, what it contains, what it costs etc. This is data which can be used for a number of important purposes relating to the enivronment, health, human and animal rights, competition and more. This kind of data would allow for services to help individuals make better informed choices - whatever their priorities.

Currently the laws demand that some information be made available on the packaging, but not as structured data usable for services. Challenges related to technology, standardisation and law is fairly easily overcome as they have been with open government data. What is needed is primarily for legislators to accept the importance of open product data.

This is what Øystein will be doing in Brussels - attempt to convince EU legislators to begin working towards making product data publically available.