The national and municipal governments collect data to fulfil their various duties. Public services are collecting more and more personal data from their citizens due to digital service platforms. The data collection is also based on novel digital technologies, sensors and personal devices, which people are carrying with them every day. The data generated by people can also be a powerful tool for urban planning, but the knowledge of exploiting the citizen generated data is very poor in the public sector. In addition, people do not understand the power of their personal data in service development and the possibility to co-design new services with the public authorities.

As the importance of personal data in society continues to expand, it becomes increasingly urgent to ensure that individuals are in a position to know and control their personal data. In the EU, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into application in May 2018, which significantly strengthened the rights of individuals. The MyData model is aligned with the GDPR and will, in fact, support the implementation of GDPR.

The partnership organised internal workshops in several participating cities to map their MyData scenarios. The results were presented in My Data conference in Helsinki on September 25-27, 2019. 

This action seeked to promote a human-centred approach to personal data. The outputs of this action are a common understanding of the usage of personal data in combination with concrete practises in personal data usage, such as templates for the terms of use and conditions in sharing data, or models on how personal data is used.

Work on MyData is continuing in various forums beyond this action.