ERU, Alm.del - 2020-21 - Bilag 418: Erhvervsministeriets orienterende notat samt høringssvar vedrørende konsekvensvurderingen for "Data Act", fra erhvervsministeren

Erhvervsudvalget 2020-21
ERU Alm.del Bilag 418
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The Danish Government’s response to the public consultation on the

Data Act

The Danish Government welcomes the consultation on the Data Act and

supports the overarching goal of increasing the access and further use

of data by public and private actors. Availability and use of data are

prerequisites for the development of digital technologies and tools that

can spur growth and innovation. Thus, the use of data will contribute

significantly to the economic recovery after the pandemic as well as

providing innovative solutions to climate change and our common

health challenges. It is vital for Europe to establish a true Single Market

for data, where it is easy for citizens, businesses, and public institutions

to engage in a fair, secure, trustworthy, and transparent exchange of

data.

The Danish Government supports efforts in an upcoming Data Act to

ensure a fair and efficient data economy, especially in regard to busi-

ness-to-government (B2G) and business-to-business (B2B) data shar-

ing. To realise this, there is a need for safe and secure, ethical and func-

tional mechanisms for access to and sharing of data providing added-

value for all actors involved. Key tasks in doing so will be how to:

1) tackle technical challenges for data users and providers in terms

of data access and sharing such as data validation and enabling

interoperability between services through common standards

and formats;

2) provide legal clarity on access to and use of B2G and B2B data.

It is especially important for SMEs to have the right conditions

and incentives to use, process and share data in trustworthy re-

lations with other economic actors.

A well-functioning data economy is a high priority for the Commission,

which has launched several initiatives that aim at realizing the Single

Market for data as well as protecting the integrity of European data. The

Danish Government fully supports these ambitions and looks forward

to contributing to the work on the Data Act.

At the same time, we urge the Commission to carefully coordinate and

align the various data initiatives to avoid overlapping regulation and

take into account the experiences and implementation of existing regu-

lation. In our view, we should be careful to set clear rules, enable and

incentivize data sharing while not create an overly complex regulative

environment for European businesses. Considerations is needed regard-

ing the Data Act’s link to e.g., the Data Governance Act, the upcoming

proposal for the European Health Data Space (Q4), and the Digital

Products Passport.

MINISTRY OF INDUSTRY,

BUSINESS AND FINANCIAL

AFFAIRS

Slotsholmsgade 10-12

DK-1216 Copenhagen K

Denmark

Tlf.

Fax

+45 33 92 33 50

+45 33 12 37 78

CVR-nr. 10092485

EAN nr. 5798000026001

[email protected]

www.em.dk

ERU, Alm.del - 2020-21 - Bilag 418: Erhvervsministeriets orienterende notat samt høringssvar vedrørende konsekvensvurderingen for "Data Act", fra erhvervsministeren

Making data-driven business the norm

The transformation to a data-based economy with the use of business

data is an important driving force for future growth and sustainable de-

velopment. It’s crucial

that SME's are at the forefront and able to take

advantage of the many benefits of digital technologies to new and better

services for the benefit of the whole society. For the SMEs, this involves

better access to public and private data and better opportunities to share

their business data with partners, costumers, public authorities, and

other relevant stakeholders in a secure, simple and transparent manner.

For public administrations, it involves investments in a secure, coherent

and widely distributed digital infrastructure that makes it easier for

SME's to do business nationally and across borders. Therefore, it is im-

portant that the Data Act contributes to promote more accessible, in-

teroperable and user-driven digital services making life easier for the

SME's.

The guiding principle for sharing of data should be creating the right

incentives for businesses to share data. For some businesses value could

be created through eco-systems around their products and sharing of

data within that ecosystem. Other models for data sharing could involve

financial compensation for high-quality data enabling new business

models.

One example of how the values of such an eco-system could be realized

is the project Nordic Smart Government

that aims to realize the huge

potential of business data generated by the Nordic region’s two million

SME's. The goal is to enable the cross-border exchange of standardised

business data (e.g transactional data) to be easily accessible and usable

to benefit both businesses and authorities across borders. This is done

by aligning the digital business systems, i.e., the SMEs’ accounting sys-

tems, with other systems processing business data.

Today, some workflows are still paper-based, which often prevents

SME's from taking advantage of utilizing the potential of business data.

Thus, SME's cannot access their data and use it to simplify and automate

their workflows, or for business intelligence and optimized production.

If SME's adopt the existing European e-invoice format (as well as re-

lated digital business document formats), and business systems and

third-party services adhere to a common model and method for sharing

and transporting structured data from the documents, SME's will be able

to utilize their data in new ways, thus making data-driven businesses the

norm.

www.nordicsmartgovernment.org

ERU, Alm.del - 2020-21 - Bilag 418: Erhvervsministeriets orienterende notat samt høringssvar vedrørende konsekvensvurderingen for "Data Act", fra erhvervsministeren

Thus, the overall ambition to increase sharing of data within the EU is

best reached through a decentralised and broad distributed digital infra-

structure combined with a strong governance structure. That means, that

all actors enter the same infrastructure based on common standards and

semantic models realising interoperability. A strong governance here en-

sures that it is clear for all actors on which standards to follow and what

rules to follow when requesting access to or sharing data, such as in the

Nordic Smart Government model.

B2G

The Danish Government welcomes efforts that seek to enhance the pub-

lic sector’s capacity to access and utilize B2G data of public interest

following a fair, predictable and transparent process of obtaining these

data. Here there are two significant considerations to be taken into ac-

count being 1) the purpose of B2G data collection and 2) a functional

public data infrastructure.

Thus, any rights for the public sector to access certain private data for

purposes of public interest, should be carefully constructed. The public

interest and the purpose of accessing data in this regard should be

clearly defined. It should be clear how, when and why the public sector

may collect such data. This is needed to give businesses predictable

framework conditions while the public sector should only access data

for a specific purpose. Such purposes could be research purposes e.g.

related to Covid-19 or other societal crisis or official statistics in gen-

eral.

It should be easy for businesses to provide B2G data through a func-

tional data-sharing infrastructure. This must be in place before consid-

ering obligations on businesses to share data with the public sector. Fur-

ther, it is important to assess whether the establishment of such infra-

structure would create benefits that would outweigh the costs or whether

existing infrastructure would fulfil the need. Such an infrastructure

should be user-friendly, easy to use, and provide the opportunity for

private businesses to have an easy overview and access to the data they

share with public authorities. A basic infrastructure for B2G data shar-

ing opens opportunities for other data of public interest to be shared

without adding disproportionate burdens on businesses. E.g., by com-

bining e-invoice data with products and services environmental and cli-

mate performance.

B2B

The Danish Government welcomes an examination of the role of the

database directive and the intention of the Commission to improve legal

ERU, Alm.del - 2020-21 - Bilag 418: Erhvervsministeriets orienterende notat samt høringssvar vedrørende konsekvensvurderingen for "Data Act", fra erhvervsministeren

certainty

regarding businesses’

access to and sharing of data among

each other. This is important in many fields and especially when it

comes to co-created industrial data within an ecosystem. At the same

time, we would like to highlight the need for coordination of initiatives

and tools in the Data Act with other data initiatives such as Gaia-X,

common European data spaces and the newly announced industrial al-

liance for data, cloud and edge.

Establishing more competitive markets for cloud computing services

The Danish Government shares the Commission’s

assessment of the

need for an open and competitive cloud market. We look forward to

examining the Commission’s evaluation of

the portability guarantees in

the Regulation of Free Flow of Non-Personal Data. In our view, it could

be an interesting way forward to give users of cloud services a right to

export their data in machine readable format, while not creating unnec-

essary regulatory burdens on providing cloud services.

Safeguards for non-personal data in international contexts

The Danish Government would urge the Commission to analyse in

depth whether European businesses face challenges because of dispro-

portionate governmental access to their data. In general, we do not sup-

port introducing new data transfer restrictions outside of WTO trade

agreements. We see a risk of setting up unnecessary barriers for data

transfers that could potentially limit European businesses’ growth and

innovation.