Goals

The Open Data Rights API is aimed at improving the status quo of exercising data rights. In this proposal, we clarify the goals of the initiative. Further development, cooperation and implementation efforts are made according to these goals.

Increasing the adoption of systems for data rights by organisations worldwide

Organisations must provide a form of processing data rights. We strongly believe that electronic means for doing so constitute the best way of doing so. By providing common patterns and best practices for creating these electronic means, we aim to increase adoption and widespread use of data rights systems, not only in Europe or companies covered by the GDPR, but universally.

Great ease-of-adoption for organisations

Adoption by organisations should be as easy as possible. The specification must support the 80% use case, while facilitating th 20% use case. Documentation should be high-quality and plentiful, not only covering the specification, but implementation from different perspectives. Moreover, the documentation should provide guides for going through the process of supporting data rights as a whole, not only covering the implementation of a data request API.

Making the exercising of data rights more accessible

Exercising data rights should be feasible for any citizen. Finding out how citizens can exercise their rights and facilitating that should be as easy as humanly possible. The aim of these systems should therefore focus on human aspects of data rights.

Making the data rights process more secure

Personal information should be stored, processed and be made available securely. By providing well-known and tested frameworks for facilitating data rights, we aim to make the process of exercising data rights more secure.

Delighting citizens in the exercise of their data rights

We believe that exercising data rights is an important aspect of digital citizenship. The law allows citizens to verify agreements that are made with an organisation. As this process that is based on trust, we place emphasis on that a delightful process increases this bond of trust that exists between a data subject and data processor. Therefore, increasing ways of facilitating delight in user interaction with regards to data rights is a must-have.

Increasing awareness of data rights with organisations

Data rights provide an opportunity to organisations to demonstrate their commitment to their users privacy. As awareness on the necessity of such rights rises with citizens, the neccessity for organisations to address those rights is evident. By promoting easy, accessible and easy-to-implement standards we aim to facilitate the sorts of conversations in organisations that increase this commitment to user privacy.

Increasing awareness of data rights with citizens

Data privacy increasingly is becoming a right that many citizens are concerned about, but feel increasingly powerless over. Data rights are handles that facilitate better reflection on what actually is happening, as well as providing citizens power to change their situations. By making exercising data rights easy, we aim to stimulate societal discussion on what personal information means to individuals. By making data rights accessible, we aim to increase the awareness that citizens have on what power they have to command their personal information.