When novelist Mario Vargas Llosa ran for the Presidency of Peru, the economist Hernando de Soto made a plea for simplification of the 450 regulations and processes affecting new businesses in Peru, stating that the web of bureau-cracy was strangling enterprise.

Europe is facing similar problems of complexity and the need to standardise access to information held by governments is fundamental to the EU's consultation exercise on 'public' information: its Green PaperPublic Sector Information: A Key Resource for Europe[COM(1998)585]. What it amounts to is whether or not the United States of Europe will be able to mount a real economic challenge, post information revolution, to the United States of America.

At present in Europe it is difficult to identify the rights, duties and procedures which allow a company based in one country to expand into other countries in the Union. Obtaining local information is vital for business decisions and can be particularly difficult for the SMEs on which so many economic hopes are pinned. In other words, the current situation goes against the EC's fundamental objective of abolishing internal barriers to trade. Does the EU have the will to compete with the buoyant, can-do culture of the US where there is a will, in principle, to deregulate and streamline the business environment and facilitate access to critical business information? Of course, Europe is disadvantaged not only by internal differences in language and legislation, but also by wranglings about the transparency of public information and how such information might be used by the private sector.

The EU's Green Paper puts forward a series of questions that may encourage EU member states to define or refine their current information policy. These questions cover, for example, what categories of public information need to be included; the issues of copyright and privacy; the distortions created by different conditions for access in member states; the categories of content that should be listed in public sector directories of information sources, and the possible creation of Europe-wide 'metadata' to identify what is available. Pricing, and the impact of price on access to and exploitation of public information, is also covered. The extent to which public sector bodies entering the content market as commercial providers might have unfair advantages is included. As is the need to foster the 'content' industries ? the growing and important economic industry sub-sector which includes media, publishing, marketing and advertising ? by encouraging pricing policies that enable these industries to create competitive new information products.

A driving force behind the consultation exercise is the desire to overcome the barriers created when access conditions to public information vary from one member state to another.

But the policy problems are legion and involve far more than a straightforward standardisation of conditions of access. Europe even suffers from a lack of consensus over what actually constitutes 'public information'. Some countries have begun to address the issues more determinedly than others. In the UK, where much government information is covered by the (unique) Crown Copyright, these issues were given a public airing over a year ago.

Of course, most governments hold the rights for material they have generated and much information is supplied confidentially. But the holding of rights gives a government power to grant or withhold permission for any value-added use of information generated by its activities. Until recently the UK Government refused to allow the digital copying of information and data sets that had been compiled at the expense of the public purse, even by reputable publishers. Much information of potential value thus remained outside the reach of commercial publishers and this led to some furious lobbying by large publishers for the outright abolition of Crown Copyright. At the end of March the Government responded with a compromise likely to upset the abolitionists (seewww.hmso.gov.uk/document.copywp.htm).

During the Crown Copyright consultation process, UK public bodies addressed some of the conflicts of interest that underlie any discussion of copyright in the context of public information. One critical question was if government departments had the right to sell information that had been accumulated in the course of their statutory business. The extent to which services should be enhanced by the agencies themselves, even if that meant additional cost, also became an issue. The UK's Ordnance Survey demonstrates the policy dilemmas that might arise as a result: it has a vastly better product than the equivalent US agency, but charges higher prices to fund this, and it rigorously maintains its monopoly. A pricing policy for public information must consider, among other issues, those of affordable access, the potential for economic exploitation by the content industries, and fair competition.

In the UK, the issues may be no easier to resolve than anywhere else but the incentives for finding answers quickly are compelling. The English-speaking UK is in direct competition with the US and so the DTI has thrown its weight behind efforts to raise the competitiveness and global reach of the UK's digital content industry.

This consultation exercise is a crucial start, but public policy makers, national standards institutes and legions of information specialists are going to be busy for a long, long time if they are to build for the EC the conditions enjoyed by the North American business community.

Elspeth Hyams is Director of the Institute of Information Scientists.