Advanced Course of Legal Informatics

Objective

The aim of this course is to facilitate supplementary information about the specific area of Legal Informatics, particularly concerning with Open Data.

A further aim of the course is to emphasize the interdisciplinary perspective of Legal Informatics research. More specifically, the course seeks to illuminate the interaction of legal norms with ethical, economic and technological aspects.

The course gives the student the basic knowledge concerning the Legal Informatics methodology of research applied for Open Data.

Content

The main focus of the course is to analyse the development of Open Data and Open Government Data (OGD) from an interdisciplinary perspective and to study and point out the legal aspects of OGD together with the interconnected economical and technological issues. The course covers topics such as:

- a comprehensive introduction concerning the concepts of Open Data and OGD;
- the EU legislation concerning the field of OGD, in particular the course examines the recent recast Directive on Open Data and the re-use of Public Sector Information (PSI) Directive 2019/924/EU;
- the legal, economic, technological and ethical issue arising from the opening, dissemination, re-use, exploitation of Open Data datasets at different levels;
- the licences adopted for open data;
- the impact on open data ecosystem of the GDPR;
- the implementation of a sustainable Business Models for Open Data and OGD;
- the relevant technological issues linked with the Semantic Web and OGD;
- open data and AI;
- an overview concerning the methodology of research in Legal Informatics from an interdisciplinary perspective.

Materials

The required reading is comprised of chapters of books, journal articles and relevant EU directives, which will be all available online. More reading will be suggested through the lectures.

Reference literature/legislation/normative:

1. Palmirani, M., Girardi, D., Open Government Data: Legal, Economical and Semantic Web Aspects, in: Saarenpää A., Sztobryn, K. (eds.): Lawyers in the Media Society. The Legal Challenges of the Media Society, University of Lapland, Rovaniemi 2016, pp. 187–205.

2. Biasotti A., Francesconi E., Palmirani M., Sartor G., Vitali F.: Legal Informatics and Management of Legislative Documents, Nazione Unite Press, Roma 2008 (Global Centre for ICT in Parliament Working Paper). (89 pages)
- Directive 2013/37/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 26 June 2013 amending Directive 2003/98/EC on the re-use of public sector information, available at: http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2013:175:0001:0008:EN:PDF.

- DIRECTIVE (EU) 2019/1024 OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL of 20 June 2019 on open data and the re-use of public sector information (recast), available at: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:32019L1024&from=EN

- Consolidated Version of the Directive 2003/98/EC on the re-use of public sector information, available at: http://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/news/consolidated-version-psi-directive-now-available

- Open Data Maturity Report 2019 available at: https://www.europeandataportal.eu/sites/default/files/open_data_maturity_report_2019.pdf

- Commission Notice “Guidelines on recommended standard licences, datasets and charging for the reuse of documents, available at: https://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/news/commission-notice-guidelines-recommended-standard-licences-datasets-and-charging-re-use
/>http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-14-840_en.htm

- DIRECTIVE (EU) 2019/790 OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL of 17 April 2019 on copyright and related rights in the Digital Single Market and amending Directives 96/9/EC and 2001/29/EC, available at: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:32019L0790&from=EN

- COMMISSION DECISION of 22.2.2019 adopting Creative Commons as an open licence under the European Commission’s reuse policy, available at: https://ec.europa.eu/transparency/regdoc/rep/3/2019/EN/C-2019-1655-F1-EN-MAIN-PART-1.PDF

- ARTICLE 29 - DATA PROTECTION WORKING PARTY, Opinion 05/2014 on Anonymisation Techniques, available at: https://www.pdpjournals.com/docs/88197.pdf

Further information

Teachers:
Dino Girardi (LL.M, Ph.D. Candidate, University of Lapland & University of Bologna, dino.girardi@ulapland.fi)

Juhana Riekkinen (LL.D. trained on the bench, University Lecturer in Legal Informatics)

Other
This course is part of the Law and Tech package.