In order to provide incentives for the re-use of specific categories of data held by public sector bodies, Member States should establish a single information point to act as an interface for re-users that seek to re-use that data. It should have a cross-sector remit, and should complement, if necessary, arrangements at the sectoral level. The single information point should be able to rely on automated means where it transmits enquiries or requests for re-use. Sufficient human oversight should be ensured in the transmission process. For that purpose existing practical arrangements such as open data portals could be used. The single information point should have an asset list containing an overview of all available data resources including, where relevant, those data resources that are available at sectoral, regional or local information points, with relevant information describing the available data. In addition, Member States should designate, establish or facilitate the establishment of competent bodies to support the activities of public sector bodies allowing re-use of certain categories of protected data. Their tasks may include granting access to data, where mandated under sectoral Union or national law. Those competent bodies should provide assistance to public sector bodies with state-of-the-art techniques, including on how to best structure and store data to make data easily accessible, in particular through application programming interfaces, as well as make data interoperable, transferable and searchable, taking into account best practices for data processing, as well as any existing regulatory and technical standards and secure data processing environments, which allow data analysis in a manner that preserves the privacy of the information.
The competent bodies should act in accordance with the instructions received from the public sector body. Such an assistance structure could assist the data subjects and data holders with management of the consent or permission for re-use, including consent and permission to certain areas of scientific research where in keeping with recognised ethical standards for scientific research. The competent bodies should not have a supervisory function, which is reserved for supervisory authorities under Regulation (EU) 2016/679. Without prejudice to the supervisory powers of data protection authorities, data processing should be carried out under the responsibility of the public sector body responsible for the register containing the data, which remains a data controller as defined in Regulation (EU) 2016/679 insofar as personal data are concerned. Member States should be able to have one or more competent bodies, which could act in different sectors. The internal services of public sector bodies could also act as competent bodies. A competent body could be a public sector body assisting other public sector bodies in allowing re-use of data, where relevant, or a public sector body allowing re-use itself. Assisting other public sector bodies should entail informing them, upon request, about best practices on how to fulfil the requirements laid down in this Regulation such as the technical means to make a secure processing environment available or the technical means to ensure privacy and confidentiality where access to re-use of data within the scope of this Regulation is provided.