Statement on the European Commission’s proposal for a Data Governance Act
CSC welcomes the Commission’s proposal and is particularly pleased to note that good practices for managing and fostering re-use of research data, as crystallised in the FAIR principles, are utilised as a source for inspiration. CSC also appreciates the broad definition of data introduced in the proposal as well as the Commission’s approach to support the development of common data management practices in a bottom-up process rather than top-down regulation. At the same time, CSC emphasises that transparency should be the guiding principle in defining the practices.
The Data Innovation Board introduced in the proposal must be informed by existing data management standards, policies and practices as well as be provided with sufficient support and resources to coordinate the efforts to implement the Act across the Union. Services developed in the framework of the DGA must take a user-centric approach, adhere to the MyData principles and ensure mutual interoperability in order to make it as easy as possible for users to change service providers if they so wish.
Data generated at the expense of public budgets should be open both when such data is generated by the public sector itself and by other actors receiving public funding. Should a data sharing service be used, the data user should not incur any additional costs.
Data regulation must be coherent, support the development of new capacities and innovative practices as well as avoid becoming too detailed. It must also be kept in mind that regulation alone is not enough to create a vibrant European data economy. Broad cooperation, data infrastructures and data skills are also needed.