Article 5 Available formats

1.   Without prejudice to Chapter V, public sector bodies and public undertakings shall make their documents available in any pre-existing format or language and, where possible and appropriate, by electronic means, in formats that are open, machine-readable, accessible, findable and re-usable, together with their metadata. Both the format and the metadata shall, where possible, comply with formal open standards.

2.   Member States shall encourage public sector bodies and public undertakings to produce and make available documents falling within the scope of this Directive in accordance with the principle of ‘open by design and by default’.

3.   Paragraph 1 shall not imply an obligation for public sector bodies to create or adapt documents or provide extracts in order to comply with that paragraph where this would involve disproportionate effort, going beyond a simple operation.

4.   Public sector bodies shall not be required to continue the production and storage of a certain type of document with a view to the re-use of such documents by a private or public sector organisation.

5.   Public sector bodies shall make dynamic data available for re-use immediately after collection, via suitable APIs and, where relevant, as a bulk download.

6.   Where making dynamic data available for re-use immediately after collection, as referred to in paragraph 5, would exceed the financial and technical capacities of the public sector body, thereby imposing a disproportionate effort, those dynamic data shall be made available for re-use within a time frame or with temporary technical restrictions that do not unduly impair the exploitation of their economic and social potential.

7.   Paragraphs 1 to 6 shall apply to existing documents held by public undertakings which are available for re-use.

8.   The high-value datasets, as listed in accordance with Article 14(1) shall be made available for re-use in machine-readable format, via suitable APIs and, where relevant, as a bulk download.