Do EU data usage and governance laws impact business as usual?

Tech blog topic

Learn how EU data usage and governance laws may positively or negatively impact your organization.

The European Union (EU) must “balance the flow and use of data while preserving high privacy, security, safety, and ethical standards” (von der Leyen, 2019). This statement from the European Commission (EC) president sets the EU’s stance on data governance and data-driven policies. The EC aims to create a single market where data flows within the EU and to other countries. As a consequence, your organization – be it a business, research institution, or public administration – can benefit or lose depending on your compliance or the lack thereof.  

What data laws and proposals have been approved by the European Parliament (EP) or proposed by the European Commission (EC)? The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) was approved on May 25, 2018, and four years later, on April 7, 2022, the European Governance Data Act (DGA) was approved. The EC proposed, on February 23, 2022, the EU Data Act (EDA) to regulate all data.

How does the GDPR affect business as usual?

The GDPR regulates how personal data is shared between two companies. The largest impact is on business models which rely on acquiring and exploiting consumer data at scale. You will feel the pinch if you are a tech firm, marketer, and data broker. You cannot privately hold and process large amounts of consumer data. If you rely on consent to process data, that consent must be explicit and informed. If the use of data changes, you must renew its consent.

How does DGA affect business as usual?

The DGA regulates how industrial, non-personal data should be treated and processed and under what conditions. Instead of entrusting two or more parties to negotiate and agree on terms of use privately, the DGA lays the foundation for their cooperation. Besides, the DGA clearly defines who owns industrial, non-personal data (this was unspecified in the GDPR, and companies collecting personal data claimed the data was theirs and did whatever they pleased with it).

How will it affect the EDA business as usual and affect your bottom line?

If approved, the EDA will complement the DGA. Together, these acts could accomplish four grand goals of the EU. The (re)use of data between businesses is likely to increase. The private and public sectors are more inclined to access each other’s data. Small-medium enterprises can fairly access more data. Business customers can switch between different cloud service providers that perform data processing.

The EDA is bound to create a wider digital ecosystem around the EU and promote a more competitive market for data both within and outside the union. “The new rules…are expected to create €270 billion of additional GDP by 2028 (European Commission, 2022).” Our team at GILO (Garbage-In, Garbage-Out) suggests your organization – especially if you are operating in the domains of health, the environment, energy, agriculture, mobility, and finance – get a better grip on your data and monetize its value.

First, stop looking at your mailbox and cloud storage with abject horror. Know what data you have stored as unstructured data (e.g., documents, presentations, photos, videos etc.). “Data is an untapped potential, 80% of instructured data is never used (European Commission, 2022).” Second, make sense of your unstructured data. Our data scientists and machine learning experts can unlock the value hidden in your text.

1. With topic modeling, we can classify your documents into one of 25 fields (e.g., legal, finance, business, or medical) and extract which of our pre-defined 400 subjects are being discussed.
2. With sentiment analysis, we categorize your reviews as positive or negative sentiment and also state their writing style (i.e., if they are academic articles, textbooks, legal forms, business plans, web articles, etc.).
3. Our named entity recognition goes beyond the standard person, location and organization. We identify universities, laws, organizations, brands, countries, cities or regions.

Our custom-made natural language processing (NLP) techniques will ensure you are positioned ahead of the pack before the EDA comes into effect.

Remember, the EU will hold you accountable for your data and how you choose to share it, so comply with the GDPR, DGA, and EDA to avoid fines. Our security and privacy experts can help you navigate the legal landscape, which began to change with the introduction of the EU’s enactment of the GDPR and now the DGA and EDA.

Besides, exchange your data or take advantage of its deduplication in storage pools over time. Why should you keep a copy of your data when it can always be available to you for use? If your organization prepares before the enforcement of the new data laws, it will be competitive in the emerging market of data as a service (DaaS).

Request a consult today if you want to transform your unstructured text or understand in greater detail how to protect and secure your data.

References:

European Commission (n.d.). Data Act. Retrieved April 29, 2022 from https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/data-act

European Commission (2022). Data Act: Commission proposes measures for a fair and innovative data economy. Retrieved April 29, 2022 from https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_22_1113

European Commission (n.d.). European Data Governance Act. Retrieved April 29, 2022 from https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/data-governance-act

von der Leyen, U. (2019). Political guidelines for the next European Commission 2019-2024: A union that strives for more - My agenda for Europe.