ITI Submits Comments to the consultation on the EU’s Data Governance Act (DGA) proposal
Brussels – Today, global tech trade association ITI submitted comments to the Data Governance Act (DGA) proposal, welcoming the proposal’s goal to enhance the re-use of sensitive public-sector-held data while also ensuring compliance with third parties’ rights.
“A robust and innovation-friendly framework for data governance is a key element to achieve the fundamental goal of facilitating data re-use and data sharing under clear EU wide rules, which can in turn unlock a tremendous potential for innovation” said ITI’s Vice President and Director General for Europe Guido Lobrano. “As the European Parliament and Council begin the discussions on this file, we are suggesting ways to ensure that data re-users can count on a solid and unambiguous legislative framework providing clear, proportionate and non-discriminatory obligations.”
Among its recommendations, ITI proposed more harmonisation in the conditions for accessing data from different public-sector bodies throughout the EU and additional clarifications and safeguards on the protection of commercially sensitive information. ITI also suggested a clearer definition of what constitutes a data-sharing-service provider. The corresponding obligations should be proportionate and consistent with existing legislation, in order to ensure legal certainty and avoid disincentives to data re-use.
In addition, the proposed mechanism for the transfer of the non-personal data to third countries seems to be disproportionate to the risk connected with the transfer of non-personal data, and may become a bottleneck for the transfer of this data outside of the EU.
ITI also called for a more streamlined process for companies to comply with third countries’ access requests to non-personal data and the specific measures that re-users would have to put in place.