Sandboxes for data: creating spaces for agile solutions across borders
This report sets out a preliminary guide for regulators and policy makers on how to design and initiate cross-border sandboxes for data.
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This research report considers existing types of sandboxes, and seeks to apply lessons learnt from them towards the designing and implementation of cross-border sandboxes for data. It was developed by the DataSphere Initiative, which has been incubated by the Internet & Jurisdiction Policy Network.
The report provides an initial typology of regulatory sandboxes, showing that they vary according to the flexibility or leeway permitted by regulators, how directly the findings are used to shape or inform future laws, and if any incentives are offered to innovators to participate. It analyses a range of cross-sectoral innovations — emerging intermediaries, privacy enhancing technologies (PETs), and browser based consent management — to identify areas of regulatory opportunity that sandboxes could address. It also summarises the challenges and opportunities in wider applications of global data-flows like innovation and trade, health data, mobility and biodiversity genomics where sandboxes could be used to tackle friction and bottlenecks.
The report’s roadmap sets out a preliminary guide for how to design and initiate cross-border sandboxes for data, whether they are regulatory, operational or a combination of both. It also sets out key questions that must still be addressed, including how to ensure compliance across borders and what kind of internationally binding commitments innovators and regulators can make.