Innovation Driver GDPR

Reasons to look forward to the coming years with the General Data Protection Regulation!

In the series of articles "Unfortunately, the GDPR has only been in existence for one year", we show why the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) makes sense and why you should start implementing it today rather than tomorrow. In the first two posts, we took a closer look at the following topics:

• Part 1: The GDPR protects our fundamental civil rights
• Part 2: The GDPR makes companies fit for the digital future

The second part of our series of articles in particular makes it clear that the GDPR can and should be understood as a driver of digitisation. It is all the more surprising that, according to a BITKOM study from September 2018, around 43 % of the companies surveyed believe that the GDPR is slowing down the digital economy. Even 37 % of those surveyed believe that the GDPR is preventing innovation. We see this completely differently and even go so far as to claim that the GDPR is an innovation driver of digitization. Why this is so, you will find out in this article.

Part 3: The GDPR is an innovation driver of digitisation

From a legal point of view, the GDPR, with its provisions on permissible offences in Art. 6 Section 1, offers sufficient leeway to meet almost all requirements for the processing of personal data. It is still crucial to provide the data subjects with comprehensive information about the processing.

Furthermore, explicit security requirements such as encryption, pseudonymisation or rigorous deletion regulations are driving innovation. They offer providers of IT products the opportunity to conquer new market fields, including, for example, the nationwide availability of encryption technologies in the e-mail sector or the implementation of GDPR-compliant deletion routines. Companies are forced to modernise their IT, which very often represents a sensible investment in the future.

The GDPR even offers the potential to overcome previous hurdles of digitalization. One example is the right to data portability, which simplifies switching between, for example, different music portals, email providers, cloud providers or apps. Data subjects can demand the surrender of stored data in digital form from the respective provider and make it available to another provider.

Conclusion

From our point of view it is clear: the GDPR benefits us all, but has not yet developed its full potential. Be it to safeguard our civil rights, to digitalise processes in companies or as a driver of digital innovation. Of course, the GDPR currently leaves many implementation issues open that will have to be resolved by the courts in the coming years.

Nevertheless, it is a successful framework to limit or at least make transparent the rampant and uncontrolled processing of our data. The improved decision-making possibilities with regard to the processing of one's own data alone will make the Data protection in the network and in companies and strengthen our civil rights.

Thank you GDPR, nice to have you! ♥

Read it:

• Part 1: The GDPR protects our fundamental civil rights
• Part 2: The GDPR makes companies fit for the digital future