microdata.no free of costs in 2022 and 2023
Today’s offer of free access to microdata.no will continue through 2023. In the meantime platform owners Sikt and Statistics Norway will prepare a payment model in co-operation with the users.
Sikt and Statistics Norway have decided that access to microdata.no will continue to be be free of costs for as long as the Microdata 2 project is running, ie. through 2023. After that, the access will be charged. Users will receive information about prices and terms well in advance.
Users will be involved
The development of the best possible financing and pricing model is starting this spring as a joint process between the owners and users.
“We need time to include the users as much as possible in this work,” says head of section Guri Kvesetberget in Statistics Norway. Her Section for microdata runs microdata.no in Statistics Norway.
The payment model must ensure day-to-day operations and further development, It must be fair and not disadvantage anyone. Then it must stimulate use, be flexible and suitable for different user groups, and easy to administer.
Users will not have to cover all costs
User payment for access to microdata.no shall cover the costs associated with each individual user, that is cost components that increase when the service gets one user more. Examples can be
- Infrastructure
- Processor, memory, disk
- Increase in user-oriented errors, challenges often related to infrastructure-related errors
- User guide and administration
- Support, guidance, courses (scope of all types of inquiries)
In addition, there are user- and user-independent costs for continuous development work that must be kept going so in order to maintain the value of the service. Examples are work with data acquisition, updates and more functionality.
Should different uses give different prices?
Users such as research institutes, public administration and consulting companies will use microdata.no to increase the value of the institution’s services. They will typically have a small number of users who work on the platform to produce deliveries from the organization to its clients.
For universities and colleges, microdata.no will also be an offer to students. The student users will be many and use microdata.no as part of their own education, not to institutional products.
How should the pricing model take this into account? The model work must find out.
Predictability and information well in advance
Sikt, Statistics Norway and the users will start the joint work with the price model now, before the summer of 2022. The work will be completed in the spring of 2023, so that the users can decide on further use of the platform and possibly incorporate it in their budgets. There will be no obligation to continue access for a fee for users who have used the offer of free use.
