S2 Use and disclosure of information

Bus open data is intended to be freely available, without charge and without restrictions on its use, so that it benefits passengers and supports technological innovation of services and applications, such as third party journey planners.

Bus operators and local transport authorities who provide and maintain the data must not place additional restrictions on its use or disclosure beyond any set by Scottish Ministers and must provide the legislated data openly and for free. Scottish Ministers similarly cannot set charges for data users to access that data.

Data users may include Local Transport Authorities, Regional Transport Partnerships and bus operators themselves as well as potential passengers. Bus operators may choose to incorporate the data into their own software and services to present passenger travel information in innovative ways to better inform their customers. Operators would be required to acknowledge that the data used originated from the Scottish Government (Transport Scotland) but would not be able to present their innovation as a ‘Scottish Government’ product, which might be considered misleading and could lead to confusion.

Data kept by the Scottish Government (Transport Scotland) will be kept in line with existing data retention policies. We intend to keep for reference all static and some real time information around services, to support analysing information about services in the past, in accordance with section 40 of the 2019 Act.