Last October 28, Miquel Estape, managing director of the AOC Consortium, participated as a speaker at the 2nd edition of the European Conference 4D: Democratic Digitalization and Social Rights, an event promoted by Open Accent i Xnet / Institute for Democratic Digitalization which brought together experts, activists and public officials to debate the digital future of our societies and how to ensure that digitalization is at the service of the common good.
During his speech, Miquel Estapé focused on one of the great challenges facing the European Union: access and sharing of data with public value by public administrationsAs he expressed it: “The EU should have regulated the Data Act and the Data Governance Act with more ambition so that the Administration had easy, agile and economical access to data with public value, from both the public and private sectors, for projects of general interest, respecting the Data Protection Regulation."
This statement summarizes a recurring problem: data that could drive innovative and efficient public policies is often scattered, fragmented or in the hands of private operators, and accessing or sharing them is complex, costly and legally convoluted.
From the AOC, specific cases have been experienced that exemplify this difficulty:
- Access to data on the municipal water consumption, despite being public, requires negotiations and numerous procedures with multiple concession companies.
- The impossibility of the AOC to provide anonymized data which manages as a processing order to research or third sector entities without express authorization from each of the city councils responsible for the data.
- The difficulty in negotiating and purchasingit is private data with public value, such as mobility for telecommunications operators, health for smartwatches or economic activity for financial institutions.eres. This is data generated by people, but which is under the control of private companies, and which cannot easily be authorized for transfer to the public sector for projects of general interest in an easy and agile way.
All of this shows that current European regulation is insufficient. Data Governance Act promotes the voluntary sharing of anonymized data, but does not oblige companies to share it with administrations. The DataAct It only allows access to private data in cases of “exceptional necessity”, such as emergencies or legal mandates, but with very restrictive requirements.
Miquel Estapé raised the need for more ambitious European regulation, which recognizes the general interest as a legitimate basis for accessing data with public value, with guarantees of personal data protection, establishing a fair price for the real cost of its management, but without excessive blockages. In this way, we could promote smarter, more inclusive and more efficient administrations.
At the AOC, we continue to work to promote digitalization centered on people, which puts data at the service of the common good and strengthens citizen trust in digital public services.
