Big Data and Global Trade Law
Author
Prof. Mira Burri
University of Lucerne
What are your project goals and what have you already achieved?
The aim of our project is to map the existing rules of relevance for big data applications, as well as for big data policies in international, regional and bilateral trade agreements. The project will generate comprehensive information on what the legal status quo is – what is permitted and what not, what may be legally contentious and where there is legal uncertainty.
Employing not only legal but also the analytical tools from international relations and political science, the project will also show how certain regulatory solutions have evolved over time and what the political forces driving these choices have been. This will be linked to an analysis of the changes in domestic law triggered by trade agreements and whether they constrain present and future state actions in the context of big data.
Finally, the project will engage in a normative enquiry on the whether and how trade agreements should address questions of data and big data, and how decision-makers should optimally use the instruments of international trade law to reflect the changes in the digital economy in a sustainable manner.
The project has already achieved some important goals. Firstly, we have further developed the theoretical framework of our research topic, through the publication of two articles and one book chapter exploring the regulation of digital trade in trade agreements and the difficulties to ensure appropriate legal adaption in such a fluid regulatory environment. This environment is also increasingly shaped by diverging interests, which on the one hand, seek to enable digital innovation and on the other, to provide high standards of protection of individual privacy and family life.
Secondly, we collected all publicly available PTAs concluded since 2002, which marked the start of the US Digital Agenda and the related endorsement of digital trade rules. We found many more relevant bilateral and multi-party treaties than expected in the estimate of the project proposal, which include also very recent initiatives, such as the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). For the purpose of mapping the specific provisions of these treaties that are relevant for big data, a tailored codebook was developed and applied to each and every agreement. A total 291 PTAs have been collected and coded under our “Trade Agreement Provisions on E-commerce and Data Flows” (TAPED), with the preliminary outputs of such dataset being presented at the WTO Public Forum 2018. This mapping of the existing rules relevant for big data applications includes the creation of a comprehensive data collection, comprising norms in e-commerce, intellectual property as well as other norms through the agreements. The goal is to make this dataset available to the public as well as easily accessible and reusable for scientists and experts.
Our next step in the implementation of the project is an international conference entitled “Big Data and Global Trade Law”, which will be hosted at the University of Lucerne on November 16-17, 2018 (see below). The conference is meant to bridge the disconnected discourses on trade law and policy and data-driven innovation. With leading scholars on board and active engagement from stakeholders and policy-makers, the conference aims at an unbiased, interdisciplinary and future-oriented discussion on the multiple societal implications of big data and on how global trade law should be shaped to appropriately address them. It will result in an edited volume, not as mere conference proceedings but seeking to add on value to the existing literature and inform policy debate.
What are you and your team particularly proud of?
Since the beginning, the project has been very well received in different research and policy networks because of the previous experience of the co-applicants. Leading institutions in the field of digital law and policy, such as the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard, the Institute for Information Law at the University of Amsterdam, the UC Davies Institute for International Law, have shown particular interest in advancing cooperative initiatives. The topic of big data and global trade has become an essential part of the contemporary research and policy debates, so the interest is only growing, and we have been able to get new partners on board, such as the Center for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) in Canada and the NYU Law School.
Furthermore, we have already secured collaborations with key institutions regarding data, data use and policy outreach. The OECD has expressed interest in use our dataset on a project that links trade and investment agreements in the context of global value chains. The WTO is keen on cooperating on methodologies and elaborating policy scenarios with regard to digital trade. We engaged with the European Parliament’s Committee on International Trade and provided recommendations (in the form of a report and a presentation) for changes in the EU external trade policy in the face of digitization.
The project has also attracted a network of young scholars, who wish to specialize in the field. For example, we collaborate closely with Maria Vasquez from the World Trade Institute – University of Bern, who is pursuing a PhD on access to (big) data and intellectual property; with Guillaume Beaumier, a PhD candidate in political science from Laval University, who is writing on ‘Governing E-Commerce as a Complex System’ by looking at the role of private actors in shaping the regulatory environment.