The European Union data strategy, towards a data-driven society
Putting people first in developing technology and defending and promoting European values and rights in the digital world
Many are the expectations we have placed on information technologies, and specifically on Artificial Intelligence (AI) in recent years. However, it is essential to bear in mind the fuel that enables AI to operate successfully: it has a voracious appetite for data, which is the basis for generating knowledge and new opportunities.
We are living through the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the 2nd one based on information since the end of the last century, which requires regulations that focus equally on economic competitiveness, privacy protection, and ethics in the use of data.
With the aim of fostering the “data economy”, the European Commission has been developing and raising awareness of the concept of data exchange and its benefits for years. In this regard, the European Commission has developed its own strategy, which seeks to become the leader of a data-driven society, facilitating the exchange of data between sectors and member states.
European Union (EU) single market for data
The European strategy for data aims at creating a single market for data that will ensure Europe’s global competitiveness and data sovereignty. Common European data spaces will ensure that more data becomes available for use in the economy and society, while keeping the companies and individuals who generate the data in control.
The three pillars of this strategy are easily recognizable:
1. Fostering infrastructures for the flow of data in the EU between sectors, promoting a set of requirements for its reuse.
2. Full respect for European standards, focusing mainly on privacy, confidentiality, and protection of personal data.
3. Establishment of fair, practical and clear rules for access and use.
The European data strategy is broken down into concrete initiatives in the context of the creation of European data ecosystems. Some of these initiatives have been in place for some time already: the Open Data Directive and the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), while others are in different stages of the procedure established for their approval: the Data Governance Act, the AI Act, and the Data Act.
First, the creation of the Open Data Directive, in 2019, which promotes the interoperability of so-called “high value data sets”. The directive defines “high value data sets” as those whose reuse is associated with significant benefits for society and the economy, and which have a high commercial potential.
Among them, the directive highlights a list of thematic categories given their importance and socio-economic impact.Thus, the sharing of this information through data catalogs allows access to raw information to be used and applied by companies or individuals. To do this, a complete data catalog must include data sets in open formats and readable by various computer systems that work with AI.
The Data Governance Act
Secondly, three years after the entry into force of the GDPR, the European Commission has published an ambitious new legal framework on data, the Data Governance Act, which aims to promote the exchange and reuse of data across sectors, while protecting Europe’s economic interests and the privacy of its citizens.
It is thus a “European-style” approach to data governance, which is in line with EU values and principles and will aim to ensure that member states’ data measures are aligned to create a true single market, as well as support the development of common European data spaces.
As a starting point for the proposed regulation on data governance, an impact assessment was carried out that considered various analytical criteria, in addition to assessing the cost-benefit ratio of each of the measures envisaged. Specifically, the assessment proposed several regulatory options of varying intensity in relation to the four main challenges identified:
1. Identifying mechanisms to improve the reuse of public sector data.
2. Promoting trust in intermediaries.
3. Facilitating the release of data for altruistic purposes.
4. Promote the horizontal aspects of governance.
The document itself provides for a mid-term review mechanism to check whether, four years after the entry into force of the regulation’s provisions, the measures adopted achieve the expected results based on a series of specific indicators for each of the objectives and solutions finally proposed.
With this regulation, the EU shows clear support for the creation and development of common European data spaces in strategic areas, in which both public and private entities from different economic sectors can participate. For example, good data management and exchange will enable the development of innovative products and services and make many sectors more efficient and sustainable. It is also essential for the improvement of AI systems themselves, as they require reliable, unbiased, and quality data sources.
The Artificial Intelligence Act
In third place, in 2020, aware of this reality and that the era of data and AI requires new rules of the game, several Members of the European Parliament put forward proposals on how the EU can best regulate it to boost innovation, ethical standards, and trust in technology.
The European Parliament has been one of the first public institutions to present recommendations on what AI rules should include on data ethics, liability for potential harm caused by AI, and intellectual property rights.
The legislative initiative, AI Act, calls on the EU Commission to present a new legal framework outlining the ethical principles and legal obligations to be followed when developing, deploying, and using AI, robotics, and related technologies in the EU, including software, algorithms, and data.
The regulation is articulated since the classification of AI systems considering their level of risk, distinguishing between those that pose an unacceptable risk, those that entail a minimal risk and those that, on the contrary, are high level.
Thus the draft establishes that those classified as high risk must comply with certain specific guarantees, which will be voluntary in the case of system providers that are not considered as such:
- Techniques involving the training of models with data
- Certain data governance practices should be considered as well as an analysis of possible biases and gaps in terms of data deficiencies
The Data Act
To end, recently, a new regulatory initiative has been launched by the European Commission: the so-called Data Act. This is a draft of a new regulation intended to promote harmonized rules on access to and fair use of data within the framework of the European Strategy.
The initiative is based on the premise that, despite the progress made, there is still a general problem regarding the lack of data availability in the European Union as a whole. In this sense, it has been found that this is not simply a specific difficulty at the state level, so it has seemed necessary to promote a new European regulation whose main objectives are:
- To increase legal certainty in relation to rights concerning access to and use of data, especially in a technological environment of interconnected objects.
- To address the imbalances in contractual relations between companies whose object concerns the availability of data.
- Establish the conditions under which private entities should provide data to public bodies in exceptional situations.
- Promote a framework for efficient data interoperability from a cross-sectoral perspective.
- Establish minimum guarantees for users of data processing services when changing providers.
Although all these aspects may represent significant improvements in terms of facilitating access to data, the fact is that the proposal has raised some doubts, for example about the possible increase in costs that the new data processing conditions would entail or, the contradiction with the principle of minimization in force about the protection of personal data.
In Conclusion..
What is clear is that we have entered a new era in the use of data, and we must take it into account as a geopolitical tool. To talk about technology is to talk about data and how to improve economic competitiveness. On the other hand, data, which is the starting point and the fundamental basis for the development of all kinds of applications, does not always receive sufficient attention.
