Digital solutions for regulatory compliance through data

Expected Impact:

The objective is to deliver three to four projects that demonstrate the streamlining of regulatory reporting through automated and trusted sharing of compliance data. Each project will address the governance, technical, legal, and processing aspects of the solution.

Objective:

Specific Objective 2 of the Digital Europe Programme aims to reinforce the EU’s core Artificial Intelligence (AI) capacities as a crucial driver for the digital transformation of the public and private sectors.

The vision is to make Europe an AI continent, thriving on the development, integration and adoption of AI. As one of the financial instruments of the upcoming Apply AI Strategy, SO2 will support the development of world class AI models in the EU and foster the integration of AI technologies into EU’s most strategic sectors, including healthcare, energy and research. It will stimulate new industrial uses of AI and improve the delivery of various public services.

In addition, it will support the deployment of new digital solutions for regulatory compliance through data. The objective is to reduce the administrative burden of enterprises by applying advanced digital technologies to automatise the reporting process.

Objectives

This objective will support projects testing digital solutions for transmitting information relevant for compliance with EU legislation (e.g. regulations on environmental issues) and automate the compliance process for a number of pilot use cases. These projects will target regulatory reporting requirements, from aggregate data (e.g., company balance sheets) to detailed data (e.g., transactions, events, and product registrations). The aim is to leverage advanced technologies, including data capturing technologies, automatic transmission, analysis, cloud storage, and encryption, to ensure data security, confidentiality, and regulatory compliance. The strong focus should be given to privacy-preserving technologies to ensure trust between the reporting entity and regulatory authorities, safeguarding data confidentiality while enabling secure and efficient compliance processes.

Additionally, the projects will identify burdensome administrative challenges in the selected sectors that could be addressed by automated data-driven solutions, while close collaboration with reporting entities will be essential to enable direct communication with regulatory agencies for automated updates and ensure compliance with evolving regulations. The approach will prioritize access controls and audit trails to enhance transparency and reduce the risk of non-compliance and penalties. Furthermore, the projects could incorporate the European Digital Identity Wallet, when available, to securely identify individuals and legal entities in data spaces, alongside trust services like electronic seals and ledgers.

Scope:

The activities funded under this initiative will focus on the following aspects:

Technical aspects:

• Utilize advanced technologies such as privacy-preserving technologies, data capturing technologies, automatic transmission and analysis, cloud storage and encryption for data security and compliance with regulations.

• Implement comprehensive APIs to enable real-time compliance and self-compliance checks.

• Employ machine learning algorithms for automated monitoring and reporting.

• Where possible, use precisely defined concepts available in the data catalogue entries of Common European Data Spaces enabling deterministic data collection.

• Establish direct communication channels with regulatory authorities for automated updates and reporting, keeping the system updated with changing regulations (e.g. by expressing the reporting requirements in machine readable and executable way).

• Ensure robust access control and maintain audit trails for transparency and accountability.

• Minimize the risk of non-compliance and potential penalties through these technological and procedural safeguards.

• Integrate the European Digital Identity Wallet for secure identification of individuals and legal entities, when available.

• Collaborate with providers of data space services and technology, with a particular emphasis on open-source solutions, such as the European Commission's Simpl programme.

• All systems must incorporate robust data privacy and security measures.

• Proposers must ensure that the systems developed are open source, interoperable with existing government data systems and adhere to European data standards and specifications.

• The system must be scalable to handle large volumes of data and high transaction rates.

• The system must be designed with end-users in mind, ensuring ease of use and accessibility.

• A comprehensive data governance framework must be established. This should include policies for data quality management, data stewardship, and data lifecycle management.

• Proposals should target legislations that have clear, quantifiable compliance metrics that can be automatically assessed using data analytics and they should ensure no overlaps with ongoing initiatives (e.g. Digital Product Passport, Customs reform).

• This call aims to explore sectors with significant administrative burden such as agriculture, environment, manufacturing, healthcare and energy.