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

The Data Governance Act aims to provide a governance framework to support data access and re-use, facilitating for example the re-use of (confidential) data held by public entities, subject to rights of others. The proposal, adopted by the Commission in November 2020 has entered interinstitutional negotiations (latest political agreement). What (legal) consequences will the regulation have on cities as public sector bodies holding data intended to be re-used under the proposed Act? Practical information

Preliminary agenda

10:00 – 10:05 Opening

10:05 – 10:25 Commission’s perspective on impact and practical examples

10:25 – 10:45 City’s perspective

10:45 – 11:05 Expert reflection and suggestions

11:05 – 11:25 Q&A and open discussion

11:25 – 11:30 Following up and closing

Context

Cities are expanding their use of data, across the data spectrum, about everything from transport to movement of people, to energy usage, security, infrastructure and weather. The potential of these data and the added value of applications requires aggregation across sources to solve local challenges, many cities are pursuing partnerships with public and private providers to develop initiatives that integrate data from multiple sources.

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 Governance Act (DGA) seeks to establish a framework enabling private entities to re-use certain types of data held by public authorities for commercial or non-profit purposes.

The Proposal aims to manage access to data held by public authorities, subject to rights of others, to allow personal data to be used with the help of a ‘personal data-sharing intermediaries’ and to enable legal entities to gather data from individuals for projects of general public interest through ‘data altruism’.
Cities hold a considerable amount of data that may be of substantial general interest, some of which is protected on the ground of commercial or statistical confidentiality or intellectual property rights. The proposed Data Governance Act is a key legislative initiative to safely access such information while promoting trust.
Even though cities have experienced themselves with sharing public data under the Open Data Directive, what would opening-up these new categories of data mean for cities?

What kind of data will parties be interested in? What will be the responsibility for cities to open-up this data, and does the Data Governance Act provide technical and legal assistance to grant access to this data for re-use purposes?