Mittuniversitetet

This chapter investigates the challenges faced by two Swedish municipalities in freeing government information as required by both the European and the Swedish Public Sector Information (PSI) directives. Sweden enacted its PSI directive in July 2010, based on the 2003 European PSI directive, which all member states were required to implement. Municipalities are directed to proactively publish data for public consumption. Swedish municipalities are engaged in e-Government development, which has also led to an increase of the information they are required to manage effectively. In Sweden, PSI is an integral part of the e-Government policy. Sweden is working to regain its leading position in the World, as far as e-Government development is concerned. Sweden’s e-Government mantra is “to make it as simple as possible, for as many as possible.” e-Government development is meant to transform government institutions by making them simple, open, accessible, effective, and secure. The Swedish third generation e-Government focuses on demand-driven development of electronic services, third-party collaboration in service development, that is, the citizens, increased re-use of public sector information, and responsibility for adding value to information and services. The implementation of the PSI directive is slow because municipalities have different budgetary capacities. Large municipalities, with sufficient budgets, are implementing the directive and have started releasing for public consumption while small ones continue to issue single documents on websites. Uneven e-Government development influences the release of PSI. Small municipalities lack human, technical, and financial resources available to large ones.