“The paradox of the unavailability of data serving the general interest and their abundance for the benefit of commercial interests is no longer acceptable”

Rcollectively meeting the challenges of the fight against global warming, clean mobility and health risks requires collecting and processing the masses of individual data that our digital uses generate.

However, we find ourselves in this area faced with a paradox. The mistrust of sharing this data is considerable, which makes this data inaccessible to those who intend to work for the common good; Voluntary data sharing tools in the general interest are very rare, but the data is nevertheless massively collected and exploited without difficulty by the digital giants.

This is how, for example, Google has, through its suite of applications of which Google Maps is the center, more data on roads and traffic conditions, or on the occupation and activity of centers urban areas, than the communities and States that are responsible for administering them!

On one side we drive on double rubber bands which painstakingly count the passages of vehicles on the roads, on the other our smartphone records our movements, determines our mode of transport, our speed, our habits, and can correlate them with a infinity of other information… All of this is accepted by the users, who, in return, have access to almost unlimited and hyper-personalized services, easy to use, intuitive.

A frame of trust

The paradox of the unavailability of data serving the general interest and their abundance benefiting commercial interests is no longer acceptable. Why couldn’t we share this data under the same conditions, with an equally convincing user experience?

It is therefore incumbent on the national and European public authorities to create a framework of trust which will make it possible to create a momentum for sharing data in the service of the general interest.

This project was started by the European Commission, through its so-called “Digital Decade 2020-2030” program, embodied by a series of regulations.

The “Digital Services Act” regulation aims to make digital platforms responsible, to fight against the dissemination of illegal or harmful content and to regulate targeted advertising.

The “Digital Markets Act” regulation regulates competition and attacks the dominant positions of the largest platforms.

The “Artificial Intelligence” regulation aims to regulate the use of artificial intelligence (AI).

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