Europaudvalget 2020-21
EUU Alm.del Bilag 771
Offentligt
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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
EUU, Alm.del - 2020-21 - Bilag 771: Orienterende notat og høringssvar vedr. konsekvensvurderingen for Data Act
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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
1
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.
1
www.nordicsmartgovernment.org
2
EUU, Alm.del - 2020-21 - Bilag 771: Orienterende notat og høringssvar vedr. konsekvensvurderingen for Data Act
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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
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EUU, Alm.del - 2020-21 - Bilag 771: Orienterende notat og høringssvar vedr. konsekvensvurderingen for Data Act
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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.
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