Humans and machines generate increasingly more data. By 2026, global data creation, capture, and replication will have expanded from 33 zettabytes (33 trillion gigabytes) in 2018 to 221 zettabytes.
European Union politicians say firms tightly preserve this information, which might promote innovation and economic progress, but much of it is wasted. The 2022 European Data Act would provide consumers, corporations, and public-sector entities access to portions of this data.
Researchers argue the new act fails to grant them such rights and misses an opportunity to advance innovation in climate change, public health, and disinformation. Some view it as another example of publically sponsored researchers falling behind in big data.
Indirect access
The commission estimates the plans to unlock €270 billion (US$296 billion) of GDP for EU member states by 2028 by liberating underutilized data. Farmers might use the legislation to obtain machine data and provide it to other parties for study. This may find economies or allow cheaper repairs than the manufacturer’s premium.
Some analysts think the EU’s concentration on digital activity legislation ignores the role of publicly financed research in innovation. “The political push behind the data strategy is specifically aimed at industry data and business-driven innovation,” says Helsinki-based personal-data campaign organization MyData Global chair Viivi Lähteenoja. The researchers’ agenda and research-driven innovation haven’t been prioritized.
The proposed Data Act allows public-sector entities to obtain company data in “exceptional need” to respond to or avoid catastrophes like public health, environmental degradation, or natural disasters. These entities could also access commercial data if they needed it to perform public-interest duties for which they were legally required and could not otherwise get it. Small businesses are excluded.
Academics cannot directly seek information from corporations under the Data Act since their institutions are not public-sector organisations, according to legal experts and researcher groups.
Heiko Richter, who researches information and data governance at the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition in Munich, Germany, says researchers normally discover a research topic and technique, then hunt for data to explore their subject. Under the statute, they could only utilize public-sector data for its intended purpose. Thus, the act doesn’t aid researchers.”
Chicot agrees. He argues the new Data Act wording implies public agencies, such health authorities, would have to ask firms for data and share it with academics. Universities and other public research-performing entities must be allowed to request data directly from data holders.
According to commission spokesperson Johannes Bahrke, the Data Act allows public-sector agencies to access and utilize private company data for particular public-interest objectives. Public-research institutes can analyze this data for public-sector agencies.
Lost chance?
The strategy will enhance health care, transit networks, energy efficiency, innovative goods, and public services, according to the commission. Some researchers argue the statute must be modified to allow them to directly seek data from firms in more situations to achieve these goals.
Morten Daehlen, head of the University of Oslo’s Centre for Computational and Data Science, believes the energy transition, biodiversity loss, and environmental degradation are worldwide concerns. “I understand some data must remain confidential for commercial interests and personal privacy, but researchers need more data from companies than the Data Act allows to speed the green transition.”
Danijel Skočaj, a computer scientist at the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia, thinks additional industrial data might speed up his deep learning attempts to enhance problem detection in production processes. Skočaj says they struggle to gather meaningful data sets to test their systems. “The Data Act seems mostly about business-to-business data sharing, but if it focused more on data sharing for research, it could benefit everyone.”
The European Parliament and European Council—representing member states—have offered revisions to the draft legislation. These bodies and the commission are discussing a single position that might become law next year.
Dæhlen adds early versions of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Act, which tries to categorize and regulate AI systems by risk profile, also ignored research. The commission’s 2021 AI Act, updated during talks, is under debate in the European Parliament. Dæhlen argues the new AI Act is better, but the early version may be read as prohibiting study on some AI issues. “It again left research behind and showed a lack of understanding of its importance in society.”
The Data Act alarms researchers after prior examples of publicly supported study being left behind while the business sector profits from big data. One recent study1 indicated that more AI researchers move from academia to tech enterprises than the other way around. Those that went commercial got three times more citations per publication than those who stayed.
Twitter chief executive Elon Musk recently announced plans to end researchers’ free access to the service’s application programming interface, which allows the extraction and processing of large amounts of data from the platform. University researchers will be hardest hit because they lack the funds to pay for access.