Statistics Sweden’s open data license

by | Jan 24, 2022

Keywords

Principle 5, open data, licensing, Creative Commons, CC0

Description

The GSGF Europe recommends that licensing terms and conditions for geospatial statistics shall be as unrestrictive as possible.

Statistics Sweden changed its open data licensing policy from CC BY to CC0 on July 1, 2021. The CC0 license apply to all statistical data published in Statistics Sweden’s Statistical Database as well as all open geospatial data and geospatial statistics produced and disseminated by the agency.

The difference between the previous license, CC BY, and CC0, is that attribution is required for the former, but not for the latter. CC0 can be considered as the “no rights reserved” alternative and as such, it is the most “open” among open data licenses.

In Wikidata, the structured, linked database run by the Wikimedia movement, sources are always attributed for larger uploads. Wikidata requires, however, CC0, in order to make it easier for others to come up with creative solutions by using the information in Wikidata.

The decision to move from CC BY to CC0 was guided by recommendations by the Swedish Agency for Digital Government as well as by requests from the open data community to consider a more open license model to enable usage of data in applications where attribution is difficult or impossible.

More information

More information about the CC0 license: https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/public-domain/cc0/

More information about Statistics Sweden’s decision to adopt CC0 license: https://diff.wikimedia.org/2021/07/19/statistics-sweden-adopts-cc0-license-for-open-data/

More information about Statistics Sweden’s open data: https://www.scb.se/en/services/open-data-api/

Search for data in the Swedish national Open data portal: https://www.dataportal.se/en