Who has the data? Mainly private actors.
What they use them for? To increase their bottom line.
Does society as a whole benefit from it? Barely (and I’m being optimistic).
Could society benefit from unlocking currently private-held data? Most definitely yes.
Following my post on the Undivided Attention blog, I was suggested an article by Alberto Alemanno - Unlocking Privately-Held Data to the Benefit of the Many.
In the text the author captures very well the dire status we are in, with our data being owned by a limited bunch of global companies, individuals lacking agency to face them and governments not really focused on untapping the value our data have for social goods.
Few noteworthy points from the article:
How to explain to citizens across the world that their own data – which has been aggressively harvested over time – can’t be used, and not even in emergency situations?unfortunately it is not public authorities who hold this real-time data, but private entitiesToday personal data is widely collected by a panoply of largely invisible parties and generally used without the knowledge or consent of exploited ‘data subjects.’ From the tracking cookies which track our movements on the Web to the flows of data generated by FitBits and other devices, personal data about both our on- and offline activities is harvested, bundled, and monetized daily.by disclosing these data and mashing them up with various data sets, tech companies may enable public authorities to improve situational awareness and response, thus prioritising interventions (e.g. go where people with asthma are or identify where people from areas hard-hit by a disease are moving to), thus saving money and livesit is the purpose pursued by data-driven and datadependent technologies that should draw our attentionwhile companies understand the commercial potential of their data, they lack a comparable awareness about the public utility of those data. Social purpose is not how data is wired into their business models and corporate culture.-data asymmetry feeds into consumers’ lack of agency, and further strengthens the market dominance of a very few tech corporationsDespite the growing acknowledgement of the benefits, we are far from having a viable and sustainable model for private sector data sharingthere is more and more of this big data produced every day, it is only available to the private sector, and it is only being used to boost revenueshow to best “institutionalize” datasharing for public good within the private sector and in collaboration with public sector and philanthropic actors?the guardians guard the guardianshow to move from this emerging, sector-to-sector, voluntary approach to a more universal, sustainable and accountable data sharing modelbig data could be regarded – on a case-by-case analysis – as an essential facility, at least in some specific sectors, and as such could be object to mandatory disclosure
PS: if you want to better understand how the EU works, I can only recommend Alberto Alemanno’s MOOC Understanding Europe: Why It Matters and What It Can Offer You