As already acknowledged by the Vice-President of the European Commission Andrus Ansip in 2011, “data is the new gold”. Indeed, good use of data can bring opportunities for a variety of sectors and domains, transforming Europe’s service industries with a range of innovative and improved products and services, increasing the productivity of all sectors of the economy, optimising processes and decision-making, and helping to address the challenges that our society currently faces.

To fully tap the potential and opportunities that data bring, access to data needs to be improved. For some years already the European Commission has focused on open access initiatives and the re-use of public sector information, also referred to as government data. But beyond the public sector, data sharing needs to be fostered as well in business-to-business (B2B) relations, namely among independent companies. Generating value out of data often means combining data from different sources that are not necessarily generated within a same sector. Encouraging data sharing is therefore key.

Building on previous studies of the European Commission, which sought to identify and understand the obstacles to data sharing among companies, the present study wants to take one step further by getting to the actual figures of data sharing. It will attempt to quantify the dimension and the economic value of data sharing and re-use in Europe and to ascertain the missed business opportunities resulting from the non-sharing.

To collect evidence for this study, the research team prepared a survey that targets companies like you. Answering to the questionnaire should take between 10 to 15 minutes of your time.

The survey can be accessed at: https://ec.europa.eu/eusurvey/runner/DataSharingEurope and it will be available until 30/11/2017. Do not hesitate to participate by filling it in and share it with others who may be interested to leave their feedback. Your input is of utmost importance to collect reliable and representative evidence that can be turned into useful recommendations to our policy-makers.

For a better understanding of the questionnaire, companies can consult a checklist and a glossary before answering the questions. In case you have questions on this study or on the survey please do not hesitate to contact the research team at: data.sharing@everis.com.

everis ensures that any commercially confidential information that you provide in this survey will be protected. Information and data shared through this survey will be anonymised and presented in an aggregated format.