The Data Act: empty promises for business-to-government data sharing? A critical analysis of the Proposal on the Data Act and its implications for the redistribution of data

On 23 February 2022, the European Commission issued a Proposal for The European Parliament and of the Council on harmonized rules on fair access to and use of data, also known as the Data Act. The main objective of the Act is to unlock data’s potential for innovation by providing opportunities for the reuse of data, the regulation will have direct implications for businesses, public sector bodies, cloud, and other data processing service providers, covering private sector data, personal and non-personal data, and co-generated data such as the Internet of Things. It however fails to create rules and principles that boost the sharing of data, introducing only a few mandatory sharing rules for exceptional situations. Furthermore, the proposal has some fundamental gaps that maintain the current obstacles to the sharing of data. The analysis presented in this paper summarizes the Act’s proposal, focusing on its provisions related to business-to-government data sharing, outlining its gaps, and its potential implications for smart cities.