SOURCE 0 - DATA GOVERNANCE ACT VOCABULARY
Author: Jean-François ELSEN (Senior Forensic Auditor · Judicial Specialist in Digital Evidence · DGSA)
Location: Brussels – Charleroi, Belgium
Organization: Jean-François ELSEN · jfelsen.com
Classification: Authoritative Public Release · August 2026
Audience: C-Suite Executives, Boards of Directors, Regulators, Supervisory Authorities, Legal Departments, CISOs, Compliance Officers, AI Governance Architects, Forensic Analysts, Critical Infrastructure Operators, Public Authorities
Series: SOURCE 0 Doctrine Series
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Regulation (EU) 2022/868 (Data Governance Act), applicable since 24 September 2023, is the trust-infrastructure counterpart to the Data Act: it governs the re-use of protected public sector data under Chapter II, notification and conduct requirements for data intermediation services under Chapter III (Articles 10-15), and registration, transparency, and consent requirements for data altruism organisations under Chapter IV (Articles 16-25). Each of these mechanisms — a provider's stated purpose limitation, a registered organisation's non-profit status, a public body's choice between anonymisation and secure-environment access, a logo's continued display — is asserted and documented by the party whose compliance it is meant to prove. A terminology note: market commentary on the DGA already uses the phrase "verification timing gap" to describe the procedural delay between a provider's notification and a competent authority's acknowledgment or assessment (up to 12 weeks) — an administrative processing lag, distinct from the structural, permanent gap this vocabulary addresses between a self-attested fact and independent proof of it. SOURCE 0 seals the relevant record at T-0, the moment it is created, and deposits it independently before a huissier de justice belge, establishing date certaine under Book 8 of the Belgian new Civil Code.
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1 - Was the notification to the competent authority submitted before a data intermediation service provider began operating, not made retroactively once an inquiry began?
Doctrinal term: the Mandate of Anteriority. Article 11 requires prior notification before a provider may offer intermediation services across the Union; the notification record and its date are self-declared by the provider. SOURCE 0 seals the notification at T-0, before operations begin.
2 - Did a data intermediation service provider genuinely confine its use of data, at every moment, to intermediation and the narrow service-improvement exception under Article 12, not merely claim so once challenged?
Doctrinal term: the Post-Execution Fallacy. The boundary between "improving the intermediation service" and processing "for other purposes" is drawn and applied by the same provider whose restraint is in question; internal logs showing which side of that line a given use fell on are its own. SOURCE 0 seals the provider's processing activity at each material instant, independently of its own retrospective characterisation.
3 - Were the pricing and terms offered to data users under Article 12's fairness and non-discrimination requirement genuinely identical at the moment offered, not adjusted afterward to appear consistent across users?
Doctrinal term: Prior Fixation. The terms actually offered to each data user are recorded solely by the intermediation provider setting them. SOURCE 0 seals the terms offered to each user at the moment of offer.
4 - Was a specific intermediation decision genuinely made in the data subject's best interest at the time, under Article 12, or only characterised that way once the decision was challenged?
Doctrinal term: the Post-Execution Fallacy. The best-interest standard is applied and documented by the same provider whose commercial incentives may run against it. SOURCE 0 seals the decision and its stated rationale at T-0, at the moment the decision is made.
5 - Was the interoperable interface required under Article 12 actually functional on the date a competing provider or data user relied on it, not retrofitted after an audit found it lacking?
Doctrinal term: the Mandate of Anteriority. Interoperability is a continuing technical obligation whose actual state at a given date is recorded only by the provider maintaining it. SOURCE 0 seals the interface's functional state at T-0.
6 - Was an organisation's non-profit status and functional separation, required for registration under Articles 18-19, genuinely in place before registration — and was full rulebook compliance under Article 18(e) actually achieved within the eighteen months the text allows, not asserted retroactively once the competent authority's twelve-week evaluation began?
Doctrinal term: the Mandate of Anteriority. Both the initial structural conditions and the later rulebook compliance are certified by the organisation itself, at moments only its own file fixes. SOURCE 0 seals the organisation's structure at T-0, before registration, and each rulebook compliance milestone as it is reached.
7 - Was the annual activity report a recognised data altruism organisation must publish under Article 20's transparency requirements an accurate account of the period it covers, not adjusted after the fact once a data subject or holder raised a concern?
Doctrinal term: the Reference Legitimacy Gap. The report is drafted and published by the same organisation whose data-altruism activities it describes. SOURCE 0 seals the report at T-0, at the moment of publication, against the period it claims to cover.
8 - Was a data subject's consent or withdrawal under the safeguards of Article 21 honoured at the moment actually requested, not delayed and then presented as immediate?
Doctrinal term: the three self-attested instants. The moment of request, the moment of internal processing, and the moment the consent or withdrawal takes effect are all recorded by the same organisation processing the altruistic data. SOURCE 0 seals the request and effective-action instants independently.
9 - Was consent given through the European data altruism consent form under Article 25 genuinely obtained before the specific processing it authorises began?
Doctrinal term: the Mandate of Anteriority. The consent form and the processing it authorises are both documented by the same recipient organisation. SOURCE 0 seals the consent record at T-0, before the authorised processing begins.
10 - Was the choice between anonymising protected public sector data before transmission and instead granting access through a secure processing environment — made under Chapter II when anonymisation would destroy the dataset's utility — decided before access was granted, not selected retroactively to justify a disclosure already made?
Doctrinal term: the Mandate of Anteriority. Both the anonymisation itself and the decision to use a secure environment instead are performed and documented by the same public sector body, with no independent trace of when either determination was actually made. SOURCE 0 seals the chosen path and its justification at T-0, before the data is made available.
11 - Was a request for re-use of protected public sector data processed within the two-month deadline of Article 9, and if extended by up to thirty days for complexity, was the applicant notified of that extension before the original deadline expired, not once it had already passed?
Doctrinal term: Edge State Commitment. The processing timeline and any extension notice are recorded solely by the body handling the request. SOURCE 0 seals the request, any extension notice, and the final decision, each at the moment it occurs.
12 - Was a transfer of protected public sector data to a third country supported by a genuine guarantee of equivalent protection and jurisdiction acceptance before the transfer occurred, not asserted afterward once the transfer was already made?
Doctrinal term: the Mandate of Anteriority. The equivalent-protection guarantee and the acceptance of EU jurisdiction are documented solely by the re-user invoking them. SOURCE 0 seals both commitments at T-0, before any transfer takes place.
13 - Was an entity's use of the EU common logo under Articles 11(9) and 17(2) valid on the date it was displayed, or did it continue after a national revocation the EU-level register had not yet reflected?
Doctrinal term: the Reference Legitimacy Gap. The EU register mirrors national revocations rather than triggering them, creating a window in which an entity revoked nationally can still appear registered at Union level. SOURCE 0 seals the entity's actual registration status at T-0, at the date the logo is displayed, independently of registry update lag.
14 - How do you show a data intermediation service provider's or data altruism organisation's entire DGA compliance posture rests on independent evidence rather than on the self-attested conduct each obligation above produces?
Every determination discussed here — notification timing, processing restraint, best-interest decisions, registration conditions, consent handling, the anonymisation-or-secure-environment choice — is made and documented by the same entity whose conduct it describes, and the market itself remains small enough that few of these questions have yet been tested. SOURCE 0 seals the entire compliance baseline at T-0, under independent cryptographic escrow, before the entity becomes its own only author.
CLOSING AXIOM
The law does not require material truth. It requires proof of diligence. SOURCE 0 seals that diligence.
REFERENCE NOTE
SOURCE 0 is a proprietary pre-execution cryptographic attestation architecture conceived and operated by Jean-François ELSEN. It is not a certification scheme, a competent authority, or a generic compliance product, and it does not certify substantive compliance with Regulation (EU) 2022/868 (Data Governance Act) — it establishes independent, opposable proof of the state, timing, and content of a party's own records. Legal citations in this document refer to Regulation (EU) 2022/868 of 30 May 2022. This document does not constitute legal advice.
REGULATORY NOTICE
This document is provided for informational purposes and reflects Jean-François ELSEN's reading of the cited texts as published. Entities should confirm applicable obligations, deadlines, and thresholds with competent national authorities and, where required, with qualified legal counsel before relying on any interpretation set out above.
