The KNAW published on 20 June 2019 the report “Hergebruik van publieke data;** **Meer wetenschap en beter overheidsbeleid”. The summary of the report reads:

“Data uit overheidsadministraties leveren een schat aan kennis op voor wetenschap en overheidsbeleid, maar ze worden daarvoor nog niet ten volle benut. Het gaat om data uit administraties van het Rijk, provincies, gemeenten, zorgverzekeraars, waterschappen, scholen en andere organisaties die publieke taken uitvoeren. Deze publieke data kunnen, natuurlijk met inachtneming van alle privacyregels, meer worden gebruikt en hergebruikt voor onderzoek.  De KNAW ziet daarbij een belangrijke rol voor een Chief Public Data Officer. “

KCOD’s Ploeger and Van Loenen see an important role for the notary public in authorising data and algorithms. On June 25, at the Royal Notaries Association in Utrecht Ploeger and Van Loenen presented their paper “De slimme, open stad: de menselijke  maat in de datagedreven stad van 2050”. The paper introduces the concepts of data dictatorship and data democracy in the context of the open city. They see an important role for the public notary as the independent authority to support the citizens in cities to handle the ever increasing influence of data and algorithms in their daily lives. 40% of the audience agreed with the proposition that the Dutch notary public has a role to play in the data and algorithm ecosystem, which is fundamental to the performance of the open city.

The article Scoping Personal Data: Towards a Nuanced Interpretation of the Material Scope of EU Data Protecton Law by KCOD’s Lorenzo Dalla Corte is published in the European Journal of Law and Technology.

The concept of personal data – any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person – is a cornerstone of the European data protecton framework since its very inception. The processing of personal data is a condito sine qua non for the applicability of EU data protecton law. Despite the crucial importance of the notion, the boundaries of the concept are often blurry. Ascertaining whether data is personal frequently depends on each individual processing’s concrete context and characteristics. As a result of the contextual and relative character of the notion of personal data, in cases dealing with indirect identifiability, much is left to the discretion of the interpreter.

On the 16^th of May, Lorenzo spoke at the panel “European Data Economy and Regulation of Data” about regulatory convergences and recent developments in the EU Data Economy at TILTing Perspectives 2019. The other panellists were Dr. Martin Husovec and Dr. Inge Graef, assistant professors as Tilburg University, Prof. Teresa Scassa from the University of Ottawa, and Prof. Estelle Derclaye from the University of Nottingham. The panel discussed regulatory convergence (e.g. “how should the PSI Directive and the Database Directive interact?”) and recent developments in policy (e.g. the Building a EU Data Economy and Towards a Common European Data Space communications from the Commission) and law (e.g. the recast of the PSI Directive). Lorenzo’s main arguments involved:

KCOD organises on Monday June 17 the half day workshop Towards Open Spatial Data Infrastructures at the AGILE conference 2019.

In this workshop, the concept of Open SDI is introduced to describe characterize the development and implementation of more open spatial data infrastructures. During the workshop the ‘Map of Open SDI in Europe’ will be presented, showing the results of three years of exploration of the openness of NSDI implementation in Europe. This ‘Map of Open SDI in Europe’ is developed to provide SDI decision makers, practitioners and researchers with a more comprehensive understanding of the openness of spatial data infrastructures in Europe. During the workshop, several brainstorm sessions will be organized on each of the key dimensions of Open SDIs. The aim of these brainstorm sessions is to develop the concept of Open SDI further especially in the context of the new EU Directive on Open Data and Public Sector Information and its impact on the openness of SDIs across Europe.