Data Strategy Briefing — OECD Recommendation on Enhanced Access to and Sharing of Data

OECD Members adopted the Recommendation on Enhancing Access to and Sharing of Data (EASD) on 14 December 2021. The instrument sets baseline principles for responsible data access and reuse across public and private sectors, giving policymakers and operators a template for lawful sharing, interoperability, and safeguards on accountability, security, and transparency.

What changed

• The Recommendation established nine pillars covering data governance, quality, discoverability, interoperability, and trust, anchoring data-space programs to shared accountability mechanisms.
• It calls for privacy- and IP-respecting sharing with role-based access controls, auditability, and proportionate security measures aligned with risk.
• OECD members committed to periodic reporting and peer learning to harmonize national frameworks for data access and sharing.

Why it matters

• Data-space initiatives in health, mobility, finance, and research can benchmark their governance charters against the OECD controls to demonstrate cross-border readiness.
• Interoperability expectations reinforce the need for common vocabularies, APIs, and metadata standards to avoid vendor lock-in and siloed sharing hubs.
• Trust safeguards (transparency, accountability, redress) provide a defensible foundation for agreements with regulators and data providers skeptical of secondary use.

Action checklist

• Map existing data-sharing agreements and platform controls to the OECD pillars, highlighting gaps in audit logging, consent management, and dispute resolution.
• Align interoperability requirements with open standards (DCAT, schema.org, ISO/IEC 19941) and include them in procurement and platform roadmaps.
• Publish transparency notices describing data minimization, access controls, and user rights to satisfy the Recommendation's trust safeguards and ease cross-border cooperation.

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