Since May 2018, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has been in force, which strengthens the rights of consumers with respect to the collection and processing of their personal data. In particular, transparency and consumer rights for consent in data processing have been improved. Consent as an essential instrument of data sovereignty and self-determination must be voluntary and informed, and differentiated consent must be made possible. Therefore, in order to implement these tightened legal requirements in the online area in a user-friendly as well as legally secure manner, innovative consent management systems are necessary.
Against this background, the Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection commissioned the research project " Innovative Privacy Consent Management", which analyzed already existing models of consent management and developed new solutions for legally compliant and user-friendly consent - right up to the development of a best-practice model.
In order to achieve these goals, the project will systematically work in the following steps:
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Inventory: The first step was to identify and evaluate theoretical and current models and ideas for innovative consent management.
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Expectations and demands of consumers: As part of an online survey with N = 2,029 consumers, who were representative of the German online population, the demands and expectations of an innovative consent management system were collected.
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Recommendations and Criteria for Innovative Consent Management: On the basis of the previous results, recommendations or criteria and minimum requirements for a consent management system were derived.
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Preparation of a theoretical model for innovative consent management: In the next step, a theoretical, best-practice model for an innovative consent management system was developed and concretized in a user guidance concept.
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Testing the theoretical model in practice: The theoretical model was then implemented in practice and tested for its effectiveness.
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Recommendations for action: In the last step, the results of all five work packages were brought together and higher-level recommendations for practice are derived.
The final report (German) and an executive summary (German) were published in September 2020.
