SOFIA, May 21, 2024 – The World Bank announced today that it will provide analytical and advisory support to the Bulgarian Ministry of eGovernment to strengthen the strategic, organizational, and technical foundations for data governance and data spaces. This work will support Bulgaria’s efforts to align with the European Union’s strategy for data, which aims to make more data available for use in the economy and for society, while ensuring that European rules for privacy, data protection and competition are fully respected.
The agreement for the provision of Reimbursable Advisory Services for Building a Strategic, Organizational, and Technical Framework for Data Governance and Data Spaces in Bulgaria was signed by Valentin Mundrov, Minister of e-Government and Lasse Melgaard, World Bank Resident Representative for Bulgaria, Czechia, and Slovakia.
Data Governance and Data spaces are central to the European Union (EU) Strategy for data and its ambition of becoming a world leader in a data driven society and economy. A data space is a trustworthy environment where participants share high value data following common rules for exchange, protocols, and formats while providing maximum security, and with the goal of boosting innovation and private sector development. The European data strategy envisages the creation of European common data spaces with the goal of making data more widely available by making high value datasets across the EU publicly available and allowing free reuse of the information.
The EU has announced the rollout of 14 Common European Data Spaces in sectors like agriculture, energy, finance, green deal, health, etc. and has enacted the Data Governance Act and the Data Act to strengthen the enabling legal framework for data governance and data sharing across sectors and Member States.
“Data is an essential resource for economic growth, competitiveness, innovation, job creation and development,” said Lasse Melgaard, the World Bank’s Resident Representative for Bulgaria, Czechia, and Slovakia. “Knowledge is one of the World Bank’s most valuable resources, and we are honored to bring our global expertise to Bulgaria with the goal of building a modern, digitally enabled government that reaps the benefits of new digital technologies and improves efficiency by delivering better services for citizens and businesses.”
The World Bank and the Government of Bulgaria have been partnering on e-Government and digital transformation reforms for many years. Building upon this partnership, a team of World Bank experts will work together with the Ministry of e-Government over the next 19 months in setting up the strategic, organizational, and technical foundations for data governance and data spaces, including conducting an assessment of data governance, data availability and data quality in the public administration, providing recommendations for a National Data Strategy and a National Data Governance Framework in line with relevant EU legislation, and conducting a feasibility assessment of potential dataspaces in strategic sectors in Bulgaria.
Reimbursable Advisory Services are a special World Bank instrument offered in middle- and high-income countries. Under these programs, the World Bank works with countries at their request, providing advisory services, analytical services, and implementation support. The Bank is then reimbursed for the costs of delivering these advisory services.
