Tag: gaia-x

EU Commission proposes “Data Governance Act”

27. November 2020

The European Commission (“EC”) aims for an ecosystem of cheap, versatile, and secure EU-internal data transfers, so data transfers into non-EU-regions are less needed. For this goal, the EC proposed the “Data Governance Act” on November 25th, as a part of its “2020 European strategy for data“.  These strategies are intended in order to open up new ways of sharing data that is collected by companies and the public sector, or freely shared by individuals, while increasing public trust in data sharing by implementing several measures, such as establishing “data sharing intermediaries”. Combined with the Gaia-X project and several measures to follow, the Data Governance Act sets the basis to create a domestic data market that offers more efficiency of data transfers to the businesses, while also ensuring that GDPR standards are preserved. Key industries in the focus of this agenda are the agricultural, environmental, energy, finance, healthcare and mobility sectors as well as public administration.

During her speech presenting the Data Governance Act, Margarethe Vestager, Executive Vice President of the European Commission for A Europe Fit for the Digital Age, said that there are huge amounts of data produced every day, but not put to any productive use. As examples she names road traffic data from GPS, healthcare data that enables better and faster diagnosis, or data tracking heat usage from house sensors. The amount of data produced is only going to increase exponentially in the years to come. Vestager sees a lot of potential in this unused data and states the industry has an interest in using this data, however it lacks the tools to harness it.

EU based neutral data sharing intermediaries, who serve as safe data sharing organizers, are a key factor in this project. Their role is supposed to boost the willingness of sharing personal data whilst preserving the initial owner’s control. Therefore, intermediaries are not allowed to use the data for themselves, but function as neutral third-parties, transferring data between the data holder and the data user. Furthermore, intermediaries are to organize and combine different data in a neutral way, so no company secrets can be abused and the data is only used for the agreed purpose. Before they start operating, intermediates are required to notify the competent authority of their intention to provide data-sharing services.

New laws are going to ensure that sensitive and confidential data – such as intellectual property rights – can be shared and reused, while a legitimate level of protection is maintained. The same applies to data shared by individuals voluntarily. Individuals will be able to share personal data voluntarily in so-called “personal data spaces”. Once businesses will get access to these, they benefit from large amounts of data for low costs, no effort and on short notice. Vestager introduces the example of an individual suffering from a rare illness, who could provide data of his medical tests into such a personal data space, so businesses can use this data to work on treatments. Further examples are improvements in the management of climate change and the development of more precise farming tools.

To ensure the trust of potential participants, each EU-member-state is supposed to implement new competent authorities that are tasked with implementing and enforcing the Data Governance Act. A new EU-institution, the “European Data Innovation Board”, will be implemented and tasked with informing the EC about new data innovations and working out guidelines on how to implement these innovations into practice.

A more fluent exchange between different kinds of technical expertise is the hoped-for outcome of these changes, as a means to diminish the influence of big tech companies from the U.S. and China.

The Data Governance Act now needs to go through the regular legislative process. A timetable for when it is supposed to come into effect has not yet been set.