The EU law, enacted early this year, offers more opportunities for CIOs to push innovation by creating new business models based on greater access to data, and rights toward cloud service providers. But to fulfil true potential, companies will have to show maturity and an open attitude.
Over the course of this year, CIOs have spent time studying the Data Act, the European digital regulatory framework composed of a set of laws united by the aim to encourage innovation in European companies, and to open up new markets. It came into force in January and will apply from September 2025 to define who can access and use data generated in the EU in all economic sectors. The measure aims to ensure fair distribution of data value among digital actors, stimulate a competitive data market, open up opportunities for data-driven innovation, and make data more accessible to. In practice, it's the framework of rules from which a data-driven company can take flight.
It is, in fact, a law born in the era of big data, including personal and commercially valuable data, with the potential to bring competitiveness to the EU, provided it's managed in a way that protects the rights of businesses and individuals. For this reason, the Data Act gives everyone greater control over their data, allowing businesses to migrate data processing services more easily from one provider to another. The Data Act also implements safeguards against illegal data transfers by cloud providers, and provides development of interoperability standards for reuse of data across sectors.
"The opportunity offered is enormous," says Maria Roberta Perugini, data protection and data governance attorney and member of European Data Protection Board. "The Data Act aims to open the data market by defining certain rules to circulate and enhance data safely. For companies, it supports the data-based business model of the future. And the CIO has a key role, especially in starting this process, and will have to show a great creative spirit in implementing data-related processes, because within the opening of the information market, the CIO will have to find ways to create value."