Living-in.EU Legal and Ethics subgroup webinar (signatories only event)

Cities are data production hubs. People, businesses, universities, connected devices, sensors and objects produce, collect, and transmit an ever-growing amount of personal and non-personal data in cities. The added value of data for offering and developing quality public services is widely recognised, providing public authorities with valuable insights to improve public transport, make cities greener, tackle epidemics and develop more evidence-based policies.

The Data Act, published by the European Commission on 23 February 2022 and open to feedback until 12 May 2022, aims to provide harmonised rules on fair access to and (re-)use of data, to maximise the value of data in the economy. It should ensure that a wider range of stakeholders gain control over their data and that more data is available for innovative use, while preserving incentives to invest in data generation.

What does this mean for cities that are so intertwined with the data economy? How will the data act help cities access data held by businesses to execute their tasks? Will facilitation of cloud switching influence service provision for and by cities? What does the proposal mean for data collected by sensors and personal use of services, considering other legislation already in place?

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Preliminary agenda

10:00 – 10:05     Opening

10:05 – 10:20    Commission’s perspective on Data Act proposal impact (Maria Rosaria Coduti, Policy Officer, Data Policy and Innovation -DG CNECT G1)

10:20 – 11:00    City’s perspective on the Data Act proposal (Federica Bordelot, Sr. Policy advisor -  Eurocities. Jayan Areekadan, Open data Project Manager - Cologne)

11:00 – 11:15    Expert reflection and suggestions (Luca Bolognini, President Italian Institute for Privacy and Data Valorisation)

11:15 – 11:25    Q&A

11:25 – 11:30    Following up and closing

Context
As part of a set of measures for a European data strategy that aims at making the EU a leader in a data-driven society, the Commission’s proposal for a Data Act seeks to establish rules to facilitate the general access to and (re)use of data held by public, private and individual entities, ensuring fairness in the allocation of value from data among actors in the data economy.

The proposal provides rules to:

• facilitate access to and the use of data by consumers and businesses, while preserving incentives to invest in ways of generating value through data;
• provide for the use by public sector bodies and EU institutions, agencies, or bodies of data held by enterprises in certain situations where there is an exceptional data need;
• facilitate switching between cloud and edge services;
• put in place safeguards against unlawful data transfer without notification by cloud service providers; and
• provide for the development of interoperability standards for data to be reused between sectors.

More specifically, among its main features are measures to provide legal certainty for consumers and businesses to access data generated by the products or related services they own, rent or lease. It sets general rules applicable to obligations to make data available, including conditions under which data should be made available and the compensation for doing so. The Act proposes fair contractual terms in data sharing contracts between businesses, managing imbalances in negotiating power between contractual parties.

Moreover, it sets out to create a harmonised framework for the use by public sector bodies of data held by enterprises in situations where there is an ‘exceptional’ need for the data requested, based on an obligation to make the data available. Introducing regulatory requirements of contractual, commercial, and technical nature imposed on providers of data processing services (eg. cloud), should improve trust and facilitate switching between such services. Finally, provisions for essential requirements to be complied with regarding interoperability for ‘operators of data spaces’ and data processing services should support interoperability of data processing services and data portability.

As public sector bodies with a central role in the data economy, the proposal for a Data Act is highly relevant for cities. Therefore, this session serves to better understand the potential of the proposal and its impact on cities.