IfG.CC - The Potsdam eGovernment Competence Center

The adoption of cloud computing in the public sector across the European Union is being held back by worries over how sensitive data can be secured, according to a report by the European Union Agency for Network and Information Security (ENISA).

The report notes that, while some EU states have adopted comprehensive cloud strategies and encouraged public-sector organisations to shift services to the cloud, where appropriate, others have made little or no headway.

Read more: Cloud computing security and privacy fears stopping EU from moving to 'government cloud' - report

When the European Union Data Protection Protection Directive was passed in 1995, the concepts of data, data privacy and storage, and the potential for misuse of that data were very different. The internet, furthermore, was still young and the Directive, in any case, was largely based on the UK's own Data Protection Act of 1984.

A lot, obviously, has changed since then. And the challenge of regulating data as those shifts have taken place - the growth of the internet, social media, cloud computing and big data, for example - has been compounded by the different ways in which the Data Protection Directive has been implemented across the 28 countries of the EU.

Read more: Will the EU data protection regulations shoot down cloud social media and big data?

On January 25, 2012, the European Commission presented a proposal for a “Regulation on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data”, the “Data Protection Regulation” (DPR). The Commissioner in charge of justice at the time, Viviane Reding, aware of the complexity of the matter, stated jokingly that she hoped a decision on this proposal would at least be reached by the end of her term, i.e. in October 2014.

Read more: The EU Data Protection Regulation after 3 Years of Negotiation

The forthcoming EU Data Protection Directive will drastically ratchet up the regulation of private data throughout Europe, with laws more tightly harmonised across the continent and even the possibility that they might be applied on an extra-territorial basis.

The proposed Directive will also have an impact along the supply-chain. In the process, the "data minimisation principle" will effectively rule out the use of big-data analytics by organisations operating in the European Union, while fines of up to €100m or five per cent of global turnover will also add sharp teeth to the regulations.

Read more: Warning for big data over EU Data Protection Directive