Artificial Intelligence and Big Data in Fraud Analytics:Identifying the Main Data Protection Challenges for Public Administrations

Fraud Analytics refers to the use of Big Data Analytics to detect fraud. Numerous techniques, from data mining to social network analysis, are applied to detect various types of fraud. While Fraud Analytics offers the promise of more efficiency in fighting fraud, it also raises data protection challenges for public administrations. Indeed, whether they use traditional or advanced techniques, administrations consistently use more and more data to deliver public services. In this regard, they often need to process citizen’s personal data. Therefore, administrations have to consider data protection legal requirements. While these legal requirements are well documented, the concrete way in which they have been integrated by public administrations in their Fraud Analytics process remains unexplored. Accordingly, we examine two case studies within the Belgian Federal administration (the detection of tax frauds and of social security infringements), in order to shed light on the main data protection challenges faced by public administrations in this regard

Limits and enablers of data sharing:an analytical framework for EU competition, data protection and consumer law

Data sharing presents many opportunities in terms of stimulating innovation and creating a level playing field between businesses, but also carries risks by potentially decreasing incentives for data collection and analysis, facilitating collusion between firms or exploiting consumers as well as undermining privacy. The paper maps the limits and enablers of data sharing in the fields of EU competition, data protection and consumer law and illustrates how an optimal regulatory framework for data sharing can maximise the benefits while minimising the risks. The paper sets out an analytical framework for data sharing by outlining how the three regimes complement each other in either limiting or enabling data sharing, and by outlining the tensions within and between these three regimes. Considering their different scope, it is of the utmost importance that the three legal instruments are applied consistently. This means, on the one hand, that any conflict should be alleviated or minimised and, on the other hand, that the instruments should be applied more as complements than as substitutes. Such an objective can only be achieved if the authorities in charge of enforcement of the different legal instruments cooperate closely with each other to ensure consistent and complementary interpretation. The paper concludes that the three horizontal instruments, if implemented effectively, already facilitate or even impose the sharing of data in many circumstances. As a result, the existing horizontal rules should be complemented with new sectoral rules only when they have proved to be insufficient given the particular characteristics of the sector