The figure below outlines the main steps of this process.
The DGA represents one of the main regulatory interventions that are part of the EU data strategy (Communication of 19/2/2020) and aims to ensure that data can be used by public sector bodies in accordance with current regulations.
The scope of application covers only data subject to third-party rights as “data that could be protected by data protection laws, intellectual property rights, or contain trade secrets or other commercially confidential information.”
This is the difference between the DGA from both Directive 2019/1024 (open data) and Regulation 2018/1807 (free flows of data), in which no third-party rights are involved.
Common European data spaces
The regulation facilitates the establishment of European Common Data Spaces (i.e. “an internal market for data in which data could be used irrespective of its physical storage location in the Union in compliance with applicable law“), which apply the “FAIR data principles” (under which data are Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Re-usable) and of which first example was with electronic health data. European common data spaces-as reiterated in Recital (27) of the DGA-are “sector-specific or cross-sectoral interoperable frameworks of common standards and practices to share or jointly process data for, inter alia, the development of new products and services, scientific research or civil society initiatives.”
Topics of the DGA
The data governance regulation aims to address the following situations:
- conditions for the re-use, within the Union, of certain categories of data held by public sector bodies;
- provision of data intermediation services ( in the proposal called originally “sharing services”), subject to mandatory notification (art. 11) and supervision (art. 14)
- provision of data altruism services (Chapter IV), which are subject to a voluntary registration (Art. 17).
