All public data should be made available to the public for free, as long as they don't threaten national security or the privacy of the citizens. Making public data available will stimulate innovation and strengthen democracy. This is one of the recommendations from a recent report from the Norwegian Board of Technology.

Since the terrorist attacks in Madrid and London, many countries in the EU has wanted to retain traffic data from communications by telephone and Internet - even beyond what is necessary for the operator in order to provide the service. The Data retention directive is meant to harmonise the practice in this field. The data should be stored for a minimum of 6 months and a maximum of 2 years.

Norway has a long standing tradition for making the citizens' tax settlements public. The purpose is to give people an opportunity to check that the tax-system works as intended and that everybody contributes as they should. The information that is published is: Name, Year of birth, Postcode and city, Local tax collection office, Net income, Net wealth and Tax.