Public access to official records should not become a tool for competitor analysis

Recently, we have seen a trend emerge in our industry where several companies have sent a large number of requests to municipalities and schools for access to competitors' contracts and pricing.

This is legal. And there is certainly commercial value in understanding how competitors set their prices and operate. We don't publish all of our own prices and contracts openly either, so we understand why such information may be of interest to others.

But for us, a line is crossed when the principle of public access to official records (offentlighetsprincipen) is systematically used for market and competitor analysis, while a large number of schools and municipalities have to spend time locating and releasing documents. Taken together, this creates a significant administrative burden. Time that could have been spent on school development and supporting teachers is instead spent on paperwork.

We want to be clear: Teachiq and our products, Kunskapsmatrisen and Exam.net, are not part of this. This is not how we want to work.

For us, it simply isn't in line with our values of acting fairly and building long-term relationships based on trust.

We believe the situation that municipalities and schools have now been put in is problematic, and we have therefore raised the issue with Swedish Edtech, the industry association for digital services and tools in learning and education, for discussion.