Abstract

The Global Data Regulation Diagnostic provides a comprehensive assessment of the quality of the data governance environment. Diagnostic results show that countries have put in greater effort in adopting enabler regulatory practices than in safeguard regulatory practices. However, for public intent data, enablers for private intent data, safeguards for personal and nonpersonal data, cybersecurity and cybercrime, as well as cross-border data flows. Across all these dimensions, no income group demonstrates advanced regulatory frameworks across all dimensions, indicating significant room for the regulatory development of both enablers and safeguards remains at an intermediate stage: 47 percent of enabler good practices and 41 percent of good safeguard practices are adopted across countries. Under the enabler and safeguard pillars, the diagnostic covers dimensions of e-commerce/e-transactions, enablers further improvement on data governance environment.

The Global Data Regulation Diagnostic is the first comprehensive assessment of laws and regulations on data governance. It covers enabler and safeguard regulatory practices in 80 countries providing indicators to assess and compare their performance. This Global Data Regulation Diagnostic develops objective and standardized indicators to measure the regulatory environment for the data economy across countries. The indicators aim to serve as a diagnostic tool so countries can assess and compare their performance vis-á-vis other countries. Understanding the gap with global regulatory good practices is a necessary first step for governments when identifying and prioritizing reforms.

Geographic coverage

80 countries

Analysis unit

Country

Kind of data

Observation data/ratings [obs]

Sampling procedure

The diagnostic is based on a detailed assessment of domestic laws, regulations, and administrative requirements in 80 countries selected to ensure a balanced coverage across income groups, regions, and different levels of digital technology development. Data are further verified through a detailed desk research of legal texts, reflecting the regulatory status of each country as of June 1, 2020.

Mode of data collection

Mail Questionnaire [mail]

Research instrument

The questionnaire comprises 37 questions designed to determine if a country has adopted good regulatory practice on data governance. The responses are then scored and assigned a normative interpretation. Related questions fall into seven clusters so that when the scores are averaged, each cluster provides an overall sense of how it performs in its corresponding regulatory and legal dimensions. These seven dimensions are: (1) E-commerce/e-transaction; (2) Enablers for public intent data; (3) Enablers for private intent data; (4) Safeguards for personal data; (5) Safeguards for nonpersonal data; (6) Cybersecurity and cybercrime; (7) Cross-border data transfers.

Response rate

100%