EXPEDiTE - Exploring opportunities and challenges for Emerging personal DaTa Ecosystems: Empowering humans in the age of the GDPR - A Roadmap for Austria
Personal data have become a primary economic resource in our increasingly digital society and many Internet users are unaware of the extent to which their data can be traced back to them online. The European Union passed the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in 2018 with the aim of enabling more human-centred governance and defining more explicit rules for the handling of personal data in the business sector. This represents a first step towards a fair and human-centred market for personal data in Europe.
Short Description
The EXPEDiTE project examined the online processing of personal data in Austria, including potential drivers for data ecosystems, from an interdisciplinary perspective, involving different theories and methods drawn from IT, computer science, cognitive science, digital law, science, technology and society studies, and other social sciences.
The project consisted of six work packages (WP):
- WP1 project management
- WP2 focused on identifying key data processors as defined by the GDPR in Austria using an online field search. A survey was conducted on a representative sample of Austrian Internet users regarding the persons responsible for the processing of personal data and the protection of users' privacy. This provided a human-centred perspective on privacy and online behaviour and the most appropriate controllers from the users' viewpoint.
- WP3 involved consulting the list of target controllers for further GDPR-oriented studies in which the participants requested their data from different data controllers in Austria.
- WP4 aimed to examine the technical fundamentals of human-centred personal data ecosystems (PDEs).
- WP5 investigated the gaps, barriers and opportunities associated with human-centred data ecosystems in Austria by devising a conceptual model of the key stakeholders based on a theoretical literature search and workshops with citizens and experts.
- WP6 focused on establishing the MyData Hub Austria in order to ensure the sustainability of the project results by building an interdisciplinary community. In addition to publishing scientific works and organising academic and non-academic events, the project results were combined to develop a Human-centric Roadmap for the Digital Economy which discusses the visions, gaps, barriers and opportunities of a human-centred and sustainable digital transformation, and represents an Austrian/European perspective on digital sustainability.
Project Partners
Consortium lead
Sustainable Computing Lab, Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU Wien)
Other consortium partners
TU Wien, Own Your Data
Contact Address
Sustainable Computing Lab
Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU Wien)
Soheil Human, MSc.
Welthandelsplatz 1/D2/C
1020 Vienna