Guidance to drive the private sector data sharing in the European data economy

One of the main objectives of the European Union is the creation of a Digital Single Market, where member states can share data in a safe and simple way, without high costs. To achieve this objective, the European Union have carried out different activities, such as the European General Data Protection Regulation or the communication "Building a European data economy", published in January 2017, where the main data-access challenges were described for the first time.

In April, the European Commission launched a new communication with the name "Towards a common European data space", where new measures were collected to drive effective use of data throughout the region:

• A revision proposal of the European Directive on the Reuse of Public Sector Information
• An updated of Commission Recommendation on access to and preservation of scientific information.
• A staff working document: guidance on sharing private sector data in the European data economy. We will focus our attention on this last document.

The importance of sharing private sector data

The European Commission has prepared a working document that includes the fundamental principles to drive access to private sector data, taking into account the current technological, economic and social context. Nowadays, companies manage a large amount of data. Some of these data have been created automatically by machines based on emerging technologies such as Internet of Things or Artificial Intelligence.

These data can be used with different objectives, in different sectors, beyond the owner company.  This is known as the non-rivalrous nature of data, making it possible for the same data to support a range of new products or services or new methods of production. Therefore, it can become more valuable and efficient for companies to share more data they hold with other companies so that the value resulting from the data can be exploited to the maximum.

For this, collaboration and data exchange formulas are important to guarantee a save and quick data availability. These mechanisms can be aimed at 2 types of public: on the one hand, other private companies, which can reuse information to optimize their business and even generate new products and services; and on the other hand, public administrations, which can improve their efficiency or make better decisions based on data. We will see each one of these cases:

Business-to-business (B2B) data sharing

The document determines a series of principles for data sharing between companies, such as transparency, shared value creation or respect for each other's commercial interests, ensuring undistorted competition.

Taking into account these principles, there are different formats to facilitate B2B data sharing, from an open data approach to data monetisation on a data marketplace. The approach to be adopted depends on the specific interests of each company. For example, providers of services that would like to make use of an ecosystem of third party application developers in order to reach the final customers will chose an open data approach. Tom tom or Airbus are some of the European companies that have chosen this approach.

The document also addresses the legal aspects of data sharing. The design of the relevant contract terms for data usage or licensing agreements requires special attention to comply with existing legislation. In addition, a series of considerations should be taken into account, such as what data shall be made available, who can access and (re-)use the data or what technical means are necessary to guarantee security.

Business-to-Government (B2G) data sharing

In this case, the principles are very similar to B2B data sharing: proportionality in the use, transparency, protection of trade secrets, etc.

The document highlights the following formulas for B2G data sharing:

• Data donorship: formula used by Mastercard's Data Philanthropy, as a form of corporate social responsibility. Mastercard shares anonymized data that can be used to carry out specific investigations, as well as reports of conclusions leveraging in-house expertise.

• Prizes: B2G collaboration can also set up prizes that would encourage companies specialised in data analytics to find solutions to a particular public interest challenge. For example, Horizon Big Data Technologies.

• B2G data partnerships: Public sector bodies can enter into arrangements with private companies, which include the mutual sharing of data, in compliance with the current directive. This can also bring benefits for the private company, as it will be able to draw insights from the correlation of the private and public sector data. As an example, the document includes a study carried out jointly by Statistics Belgium and Eurostat that showed the potential of mobile network data from a private company to estimate population density.

• Intermediaries: In cases when there is no previous relationship between a company and a public sector body, an intermediary can be tasked to obtain insights necessary for public interest purposes. 

• Civic data sharing: Individuals may be encouraged to authorise public sector bodies to process their personal data which were previously processed by a private company.

The text ends with some technical and legal considerations to improve these collaborations. Among the technical measures, the authors highlights the example of Center for Big Data Statistics (CBS), a data platform created in the Netherlands to collect public and private sector data for the creation of high-quality data visualizations.

Next steps

A group of experts will analyze the principles and mechanisms of B2G data sharing, taking into account this document. The final objective will be to provide a series of recommendations on future policies and funding initiatives.