Impact Assessment report and support studies accompanying the Proposal for a Data Act

Impact Assessment

• Impact assessment report (.pdf)
• Executive summary (.pdf)
• Opinion of the Regulatory Scrutiny Board (.pdf)

Studies supporting the Impact Assessment 

1. Study to support an Impact Assessment on enhancing the use of data in Europe

The study was carried out in 2 phases.

Task 1 provided input to the impact assessment accompanying the proposal for a Regulation on European data governance (Data Governance Act, adopted on 25 November 2020). It focused on elements to stimulate the availability of data for use and to strengthen data governance mechanisms in the EU, such as:

• facilitating secondary use of sensitive data held by the public sector;
• establishing a certification scheme for data altruism mechanisms;
• establishing a European structure for governance aspects of data sharing; 
• establishing a certification framework for data intermediaries.

Task 2 provided input to the impact assessment accompanying the proposal for a Data Act. It focused on issues that affect relations between actors in the data-agile economy, including:

• business-to-government (B2G) data sharing for the public interest;
• measures supporting citizen empowerment (‘human-centric data economy’);
• measures clarifying and potentially further developing rights on co-generated data and business-to-business data sharing; 
• measures supporting companies in cases of conflict of laws at international level.

For each task, the study explored the state of play in Europe and determined the impact of a number of possible policy options. 

•    Final report (.pdf)
•    Executive summary (.pdf)
•    Résumé (.pdf)

Data set

The datasets containing the results of the cost-benefit analyses are available on the EU Open Data Portal.

2. Study on model contract terms and fairness control in data sharing and in cloud contracts and on data access rights 

The study focuses on business-to-business (B2B) data sharing and cloud computing contracts. Concerning B2B data sharing, the study examined four potential policy interventions in particular: 

• the promotion of voluntary data sharing through model contract terms;
• the introduction of a legislative framework for fairness controls in data sharing contracts;
• the introduction of a legislative framework for standardising data access modalities in cases where a data access right is granted under applicable EU level legislation;
• the introduction of a horizontal (non-sector specific) legislative framework establishing access and use rights for specific re-use situations.

The study also examines the role of cloud computing services and the practices surrounding them, and the impact they have on fairness towards cloud users, with specific attention to SMEs.

• Final report (.pdf)
• Executive summary (.pdf)
• Résumé (.pdf)

3. Methodological support to impact assessment of using privately held data by official statistics

The focus of this study was on the domain of private data sharing for official statistics. This provided input in the context of access and use by public sector bodies of data held by the private sector that is necessary for specific public interest purposes (B2G).

• Final report 

4. Study to support an Impact Assessment for the review of the Database Directive

The study explores certain aspects of the Database Directive (96/9/EC) relevant for the data economy and mainly focuses on different policy options that could bring more clarity on the status of machine-generated data under the sui generis database right. The aim of the explored interventions is to facilitate access and trading in such data, so that the Database Directive supports the data economy and the main objective of the Data Act.

• Final report (.pdf)

5. Study presenting assessments of codes of conduct on data porting and cloud switching

This study presents three independent legal assessment reports of the SWIPO codes of conduct on data porting and cloud switching, as well as the SWIPO governance agreement. The individual reports were performed by three independent law firms, which also developed a joint introductory section that points to a number of significant shortcomings of the SWIPO codes of conduct. The study exclusively adopts a legal perspective. Procedural aspects regarding the self-regulatory process and market uptake of the codes of conduct are not covered. 

• Final report

Other relevant studies

• The Cloud Switching study 
• Study for developing criteria for assessing reasonable compensation in the case of statutory data access right