Category: EU data

EU Data and digital strategy

subscribe to this category with rss

Posted on
by

Back in 2022 the Belgian and other data protection boards found that IAB’s ‘Transparency and Consent Framework‘ is illegal, because it is neither transparent nor has any meaningful connection with the word consent. IAB is the industry club for adtech users. Yesterday this verdict was upheld on appeal.

You know the kind of consent form from about 80% of websites, it takes one click to give away everything for the next three generations, and a day of clicks to deny consent. They need to coerce your consent to feed the tracking based real-time-bidding mechanisms for displaying all those ads that you see if you don’t use an ad blocker like a sane adult.

It was always clear that type of behaviour does not result in freely given consent for tracking and is illegal under the GDPR. But it takes time to have such things contested in court and affirmed before adtech corporations will admit it.

The 2022 decision now upheld on appeal (PDF in Dutch) applies immediately across the EU, and will impact such IAB members as Google, Microsoft, Amazon, X, and Automattic (WordPress) (at least they were a member back in 2022). The appeal to the decision was filed in March 2022, and the Belgian court submitted several prejudicial questions to the European court of justice, that were answered in spring 2024, and now lead to a decision.

Excellent work by the Irish Council for Civil Liberties and others.

Ceterum censeo AdTech is fundamentally non-compatible with the GDPR, and needs to die.

Posted on
by

This week at the EU Open Data Days in Luxembourg, Davide Taibi a senior researcher at the Institute for Educational Technology of the National Research Council of Italy, talked about his research into a possible European curriculum for data literacy.

He mentioned how, in the highly multilingual context of Europe, data literacy is an unclear term. In German data literacy translates to data competence, while literacy itself translates to alphabetisation. Other terms like information literacy and data science are used more commonly across countries.

On one of his slides (image) he wrote:

The term data literacy isn’t well known in most of the countries analysed. The most widely used terms are ‘digital literacy’, ‘information literacy’, ‘data competence’, ‘media literacy’, ‘statistical literacy’, ‘computer/IT literacy’, among others. In most countries it is closely related to digital skills.

I usually use Howard Rheingold’s shorthand for literacy as skills plus community. Skills benefit individuals, but for some when you add in the context of a community or network of skilled people in which that skill gets deployed, the value of usage sees a nonlinear effect, a kind of network effect basically. That communal aspect, and the jump in usage value is connected to my notion of networked agency. It works as a multiplier.

Looping back to the lack of clarity around data literacy as a term, I wonder.
Is it because we haven’t yet described clearly enough which _skills_ we mean when talking about data literacy?
Or is it because we don’t really know which communities would see which non linear use value, when deploying the data skills concerned?

Posted on
by

The period of the European Commission that has just finished delivered an ambitious and coherent legal framework for both the single digital market and the single market for data, based on the digital and data strategies the EU formulated. Those laws, such as the Data Governance Act, Data Act, High Value Data implementing regulation and the AI Act are all finished and in force (if not always fully in application). This means efforts are now switching to implementation. The detailed programme of the next European Commission, now being formed, isn’t known yet. Big new legislation efforts in this area are however not expected.

This summer Ursula von der Leyen, the incoming chairperson of the Commission has presented the political guidelines. In it you can find what the EC will pay attention to in the coming years in the field of data and digitisation.

Data and digital are geopolitical in nature
The guidelines underline the geopolitical nature of both digitisation and data. The EU will therefore seek to modernise and strengthen international institutions and processes. It is noted that outside influence in regular policy domains has become a more common instrument in geopolitics. Data and transparency are likely tools to keep a level headed view of what’s going on for real. Data also is crucial in driving several technology developments, such as in AI and digital twins.

European Climate Adaptation Plan Built on Data
The EU will increase their focus on mapping risks and preparedness w.r.t. natural disasters and their impact on infrastructure, energy, food security, water, land use both in cities and in rural areas, as well as early warning systems. This is sure to contain a large data component, a role for the Green Deal Data Space (for which the implementation phase will start soon, now the preparatory phase has been completed) and the climate change digital twin of the earth (DestinE, for which the first phase has been delivered). Climate and environment are the areas where already before the EC emphasised the close connection between digitisation and data and the ability to achieve European climate and environmental goals.

AI trained with data
Garbage in, garbage out: access to enough high quality data is crucial to all AI development, en therefore data will play a role in all AI plans from the Commission.

An Apply AI Strategy was announced, aimed at sectoral AI applications (in industry, public services or healthcare e.g.). The direction here is towards smaller models, squarely aimed at specific questions or tasks, in the context of specific sectors. This requires the availability and responsible access to data in these sectors, in which the European common data spaces will play a key role.

In the first half of 2025 an AI Factories Initiative will be launched. This is meant to provide SME’s and newly starting companies with access to the computing power of the European supercomputing network, for AI applications.

There will also be an European AI Research Council, dubbed a ‘CERN for AI’, in which knowledge, resources, money, people, and data.

Focus on implementing data regulations
The make the above possible a coherent and consistent implementation of the existing data rules from the previous Commission period is crucial. Useful explanations and translations of the rules for companies and public sector bodies is needed, to allow for seamless data usage across Europe and at scale. This within the rules for data protection and information security that equally apply. The directorate within the Commission that is responsible for data, DG Connect, sees their task for the coming years a mainly being ensuring the consistent implementation of the new laws from the last few years. The implementation of the GDPR until 2018 is seen as an example where such consistency was lacking.

European Data Union
The political guidelines announce a strategy for a European Data Union. Aimed at better and more detailed explanations of the existing regulations, and above all the actual availability and usage of data, it reinforces the measure of success the data strategy already used: the socio-economic impact of data usage. This means involving SME’s at a much larger volume, and in this context also the difference between such SME’s and large data users outside of the EU is specifically mentioned. This Data Union is a new label and a new emphasis on what the European Data Strategy already seeks to do, the creation of a single market for data, meaning a freedom of movement for people, goods, capital and data. That Data Strategy forms a consistent whole with the digital strategy of which the Digital Markets Act, Digital Services Act and AI Act are part. That coherence will be maintained.

My work: ensuring that implementation and normalisation is informed by good practice
In 2020 I helped write what is now the High Value Data implementing regulation, and in the past years my role has been tracking and explaining the many EU digital and data regulations initiatives on behalf of the main Dutch government holders of geo-data. Not just in terms of new requirements, but with an accent on the new instruments and affordances those rules create. The new instruments allow new agency of different stakeholder groups, and new opportunities for societal impact come from them.
The phase shift from regulation to implementation provides an opportunity to influence how the new rules get applied in practice, for instance in the common European data spaces. Which compelling cases of data use can have an impact on implementation process, can help set the tone or even have a normalisation effect? I’m certain practice can play a role like this, but it takes bringing those practical experiences to a wider European network. Good examples help keep the actual goal of socio-economic impact in sight, and means you can argue from tangible experience in your interactions.

My work for Geonovum the coming time is aimed at this phase shift. I already helped them take on a role in the coming implementation of the Green Deal Data Space, and I’m now exploring other related efforts. I’m also assisting the Ministry for the Interior in formulating guidance for public sector bodies and data users on how to deal with the chapter of the Data Governance Act that allows for the use (but not the sharing) of protected data held by the public sector. Personally I’m also seeking ways to increase the involvement of civil society organisations in this area.

Posted on
by
Bookmarked Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 13 June 2024 laying down harmonised rules on artificial intelligence

Finalised in June, the AI Act (EU 2024/1689) was published yesterday 12-07-2024 and will enter into force after 20 days, on 02-08-2024. Generally the law will be applicable after 2 years, on 02-08-2026, with. a few exceptions:

  • The rules on banned practices (Chapter 2) will become applicable in 6 months, on 02-02-2025, as will the general provisions (Chapter 1)
  • Parts such as the chapter on notified bodies, general purpose AI models (Chapter 5), governance (Chapter 7), penalties (Chapter 12), will become applicable in a year, on 02-08-2025
  • Article 6 in Chapter 3, on the classification rules for high risk AI applications, will apply in 3 years, from 02-02-2027

The purpose of this Regulation is to improve the functioning of the internal market by laying down a uniform legal framework in particular for the development, the placing on the market, the putting into service and the use of artificial intelligence systems (AI systems) in the Union, in accordance with Union values, to promote the uptake of human centric and trustworthy artificial intelligence (AI) while ensuring a high level of protection of health, safety, fundamental rights as enshrined in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (the ‘Charter’), including democracy, the rule of law and environmental protection, to protect against the harmful effects of AI systems in the Union, and to support innovation. This Regulation ensures the free movement, cross-border, of AI-based goods and services, thus preventing Member States from imposing restrictions on the development, marketing and use of AI systems, unless explicitly authorised by this Regulation.

Posted on
by

Bookmarked Commission opens non-compliance investigations against Alphabet, Apple and Meta under the Digital Markets Act (by European Commission)

With the large horizontal legal framework for the single digital market and the single market for data mostly in force and applicable, the EC is initiating first actions. This announcement focuses on app store aspects, on steering (third parties being able to provide users with other paths of paying for services than e.g. Apple’s app store), on (un-)installing any app and freedom to change settings, as well as providers preferencing own services above those of others. Five investigations for suspected non-compliance involving Google (Alphabet), Apple, and Meta (Facebook) have been announced. Amazon and Microsoft are also being investigated in order to clarify aspects that may lead to suspicions of non-compliance.

The investigation into Facebook is about their ‘pay or consent’ model, which is Facebook’s latest attempt to circumvent their GDPR obligations that consent should be freely given. It was clear that their move, even if it allows them to steer clear of GDPR (which is still very uncertain), it would create issues under the Digital Markets Act (DMA).

In the same press release the EC announces that Facebook Messenger is getting a 6 month extension of the period in which to comply with interoperability demands.

The Commission suspects that the measures put in place by these gatekeepers fall short of effective compliance of their obligations under the DMA. … The Commission has also adopted five retention orders addressed to Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft, asking them to retain documents which might be used to assess their compliance with the DMA obligations, so as to preserve available evidence and ensure effective enforcement.

European Commission

Posted on
by

A final draft of the European AI Regulation is circulating (here’s an almost 900 page PDF). The coming days I will read it with curiosity.

With this the ambitious legal framework for everything digital and data that the European Commission set out to create in 2020 has been finished within this Commission period. That’s pretty impressive.
In 2020 there was no Digital Markets Act, Digital Services Act, AI Regulation, Data Governance Act, Data Act, nor an Open Data Directive/High Value Data implementing regulation.
Before the European elections coming spring, they are all in place. I’ve closely followed the process (and helped create a very small part of it), and I think the result is remarkably consistent and level headed. DG CNECT has done well here in my opinion. It’s a set of laws that are very useful in themselves that which simultaneously forms a geo-political proposition.

The coming years will be dedicated to implementing these novel instruments.