Introduction
Agencies and organisations often need non-personal data from various sources to help them do various things, like design or improve services or respond to and recover from an emergency. The immediate challenge they can face is having a template to hand that is appropriate for the circumstances and covers a potential diverse array of licensing situations. The licensing situations can be diverse because some data providers may be happy to license their data openly (for example, under a Creative Commons licence), while others may want their data to be licensed another way or to be kept confidential.
The data licensing agreement builder below enables agencies and organisations to select from a range of different licence types. An agency or organisation can:
- select from one of 5 different default licences (four of which are Creative Commons licences, with the fifth being a more specific licence that could be used where the data are confidential); or
- insert another, custom licence, of the agency/organisation or data provider’s choosing (the person filling out the form would draft this in).
The builder also recognises that, in some situations, data will usually be provided to a primary agency or organisation, but that agency or organisation may need to share it with other entities. With that in mind, the builder asks whether there are ‘additional licensees’ to be listed. If there are, those additional licensees are licensed as well. This enables a primary agency or organisation to enter into the agreement, without these additional licensees having to negotiate their own agreements. The primary agency or organisation just has to be sure to show them the agreement when providing them with the data, because they are deemed to be bound by the agreement from the moment they use the data.
Among other things, the agreement also:
- contains provisions on updating of data (if updated/changed, the data provider needs to try to provide it to the primary agency or organisation);
- protects data providers (who often will be providing the data for free) from almost all liability;
- contains some provisions about online access to data (if relevant); and
- allows data to be classified as confidential (where a Creative Commons licence has not been selected), in which case the data cannot be published, or shared with anyone other than the authorised licensees.
Build a data licence agreement
To build a data licence agreement, answer the questions below and press submit. Once you’ve done this, you’ll be shown a button to download your draft agreement (you may need to scroll down the screen to see it). The draft is in docx format so you can edit it as required.