How to unleash the full potential of data?

Should countries develop national strategies for data in order to release its full potential? If so, what should they look like?

The British Government is currently mulling responses to its consultation about a new UK National Data Strategy. The decisions it arrives at will affect developments for many years to come.

Mydex CIC provided comprehensive answers to questions asked by this consultation. To help promote debate, we’re publishing edited versions of these answers in a series of blogs.

Other blogs in this series are: Why we Need New Nationwide Personal Data Infrastructure, Achieving Change at Scale, and Common Misconceptions that Derail Progress, and the sheer size of the social and economic opportunity. (Meanwhile, to see some of the practical work we are doing, click here to catch up on progress on the Macmillan My Data Store Pilot.)

We need two strategies, not one

The first point made by our submission is that we need two national data strategies — one for personal data and one for non-personal data. A national data strategy that talks about ‘data’ in the abstract and fails to distinguish between non-personal data and personal data is a sure fire recipe for confusion and error because they require very different treatments. Any attempt to treat them as if they are one and the same is akin to developing an ‘energy’ strategy that treats electricity and gas as the same because they are both ‘energy’. The results could be explosive and very damaging.

Many users, many uses

The second, critical point we made is that our society is at a tipping point in data management — one that can either be managed well or badly.

The consultation paper contained an important insight: a recognition that the “full value [of data] is not being realised because vital information is not getting to where it needs to be.” The big question that follows is ‘what needs to be done to rise to this challenge?’ What follows is a summary of what we said.

To be successful, the Strategy needs to grasp a nettle. The main reason why vital information is not getting where it needs to be is that our data economy has evolved to be an organisation-centric ‘One User One Use’ (OUOU) system — whereas, thanks to the inner logic of data itself, it needs to operate as a ‘Many Users, Many Uses’ (MUMU) data ecosystem.

Characteristics of OUOU

The digital economy first evolved with organisations collecting, storing and using the data they needed to pursue their particular purposes. This resulted in a data landscape that is overwhelmingly organisation-centric, with large quantities of data collected and used almost exclusively by large organisations, operating via a series of separate data silos. The inevitable result of this structure is that the uses of this data are restricted to the priorities and purposes of the organisations concerned. It is a ‘one user, one set of uses’ system.

While this approach has unleashed many benefits, it has also created built-in structural limitations and restrictions on what data assets are created, how they are used, by who. Other parties, including citizens, SMEs, charities, researchers and other organisations cannot access the data they want/need. Key stakeholders, particularly citizens, are effectively excluded from taking part in the workings of the digital economy and from directly benefiting from the collection and use of data.

Characteristics of MUMU

It is in the nature of data that it can be used many times without being ‘used up’. Therefore it can potentially be re-used by many different parties for many different purposes. In this context, the current organisation-centric restrictions on who can access data and what they can use this data for represent a fundamental architectural, structural and infrastructural constraint on the data economy’s ability to evolve and flourish. We need to shift to a Many Users, Many Uses data ecosystem.

A simple analogy sums up the National Data Strategy’s core challenge. So far, the data chick has grown and evolved inside the protecting nurturing shell of OUOU — an organisation- centric data architecture. To mature and flourish, it now needs to break out of that shell.

The importance and nature of this shift from OUOU to MUMU is highlighted by the recent The Future of Citizen Data Systems report by the Government Office for Science, which notes that:

“Data about people, here referred to as citizen data, is increasing rapidly in volume and variety. The effective use and sharing of such data has the potential to bring huge benefits to the economy and society as a whole: boosting productivity and trade, enabling innovative products, improving public service delivery and informing scientific research.

“However, the shifting data landscape is challenging for policymakers to navigate. Data collected for one purpose can be used many times over for a range of other ones, and government policy in one area can have unintended impacts elsewhere. Restrictions of data sharing can sometimes mitigate risks of privacy breaches and misuse. However, the linking together of new types of citizen data — across the boundaries of industry, government, and our personal lives — offers some of the greatest opportunities.”

The big question is how to realise these benefits. The National Strategy for Data needs to recognise that the full benefits of MUMU cannot be realised solely by increasing data sharing between existing organisations. The system itself needs to re-set, to shift from exclusivity (‘organisations only’) to inclusivity (in particular, including citizens whose data it is).

Far-reaching reform

For this to happen we need far-reaching structural, architectural, infrastructural and institutional reform. Key elements of this reform agenda include:

• Structural Add new data actors/stakeholders capable of collecting, storing and sharing data independently of existing ‘data controller’ organisations. This includes enabling citizens to be able to build up their own data assets in their own personal data stores and enabling new data trusts or foundations to access and use data for a broad array of non-commercial purposes, including scientific and medical research. Adding new stakeholders to the workings of the system would turn today’s data landscape of multiple, isolated parallel data silos into an expanding set of linked data nodes in a vibrant data sharing network.
• Architectural Recognise the need for increasing differentiation of functions and divisions of labour in data collection, storage and use, particularly the increasing separation of data storage from use. As specialist data storage services (including personal data stores) develop, they can enable multiple different parties to access the same data for a range of different purposes. The need to separate data storage from data use is recognised in the EU’s new Data Governance Act. The National Data Strategy is the UK’s opportunity to also grasp this nettle. If it fails to do so, it risks lagging behind the EU in the development of a world-leading data driven economy.

The strategy also needs to recognise the need for other specialist support services such as the development of metadata standards to ensure and reassure data users of the nature and quality of the data they are accessing, and data directories to help data users find and access the data they need.

• Infrastructural Develop independent, neutral data logistics infrastructure that achieves the above: that enables the right data to flow to and from the right parties in the right formats at the right times. Personal data stores are an essential part of this. We would go a long way to achieving this if every individual was provided with their own personal data store, where they can collect, store and share their own data under their own control.
• Institutional Build the institutions capable of making and enforcing the rules, safeguards, standards, processes and incentive structures relevant to the types of data in question. This is needed to ensure safe, fair, trustworthy and efficient data sharing between multiple parties.

A job for Government

The creation of MUMU-enabling data sharing infrastructure and institutions extends beyond the remit, boundaries and goals of any particular organisation. It needs Government support and facilitation. In particular, it requires the resolution of collective action dilemmas that arise from the organisation-centric structure of the current system.

For example, it is in the interests of every user of verified attributes (that confirm details about an individual) that organisations holding these attributes enable them to be shared. But it may not be in the immediate interests of each particular organisation holding these attributes to enable such sharing. Result: verified attributes are not shared and all individuals and service providers that could use them lose out. Such collective action issues threaten to block progress towards the goal of increased data sharing and use.

Together, the reforms and developments outlined above point to the creation of a data landscape and ecosystem that is very different to what we see today. In particular they shift the focus of innovation from particular organisations’ uses of data to the structural, architectural, infrastructural and institutional innovations needed to deliver MUMU.

They also point to a new direction of economic growth — opening up all the opportunities for data use that OUOU systems and structures currently stifle.