In many supermarkets and high street stores loyalty is extremely valuable. The cost of a shopping basket can be significantly higher if the customer isn’t a member of the shop’s loyalty scheme. Essentially, the shop is paying for the customer’s personal data; the information that describes the shopping behaviour of the specific customer. The shopper has a right to privacy, of course, enshrined in international agreements but in this context many shoppers cannot afford the ‘luxury’ of privacy.

Exercising rights

So what is the point of ‘rights’ if people cannot afford to exercise them? The majority of people do not seem unduly concerned about their personal data: they freely pass up information on social media platforms and few people are surprised that ‘relevant’ adverts pop on their screens subsequently. Anyone in business is aware of the importance of ‘Knowing Your Customer’. So, what are people worried about? As Scott McNealy, the former CEO of Sun Microsystems reportedly said to reporters and analysts in 1999, "You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it!"

But if something has value and belongs to a person then the commercial rules under which that value is exchanged will become increasingly important as our world grows ever more digital.

Personal data is used to advertise products and personalise services to target customers, it is used to influence people in their habits and voting decisions, and increasingly we see it used to defraud people, agitate and incite. Aggregated data can be used to draw inferences on demographics that can lead to prejudice. A person’s eligibility for goods and services can be affected. Phew! Personal data is potent stuff.

Safeguarding data

The rules that safeguard data – and enable meaningful privacy - are going to be very important in the digital economy. They will need to be implemented through policies and, unfortunately, in many situations they won’t be simple. There cannot be an expectation that they should be left to government officials and regulators to define. There will need to be good governance structures with sufficient agility so that the rules can be changed as evidence grows on their effectiveness. There will need to be standards that define the specifics on how data is processed and stored in different contexts. Regular independent audits will be required to provide assurance to stakeholders that the standards are being adopted.

Orchestration will be critical

Orchestration services will be a critical function in the data economy. In our previous post we explained how they will be the platforms through which adherence to policies will be enforced. Technologies will automate a complex set of rules. How orchestration services interact with the wide variety of people and their devices will be a key design feature. We will need to avoid the “computer says no” scenario.

To the uninitiated the concept of the data economy is complex and intimidating. However, members of the Smart Data Forum have been considering these subjects for many years and legislation in the form of the Data (Use and Access) Act has been put in place to define the necessary ‘Trust Framework’ governance structures.

Now is the time to understand how the new rules and standards can create value. Too often implementation of new digital innovations is stifled because the key data custodians are unclear on the regulatory implications: incremental value can be wiped out pretty quickly by regulatory liability.

Proof of value

We need to progress through ‘Proof of Value’ projects that implement the rules through clear policies and test them in real life contexts to understand their benefits and disbenefits and enable people to have agency over their personal data and privacy. The projects themselves need to be well governed with representation from stakeholders, innovators and government officials.

As a certified Orchestration Service Provider under the Trust Framework, Orchestrating Identity has developed a sandbox environment to enable rapid, facilitated prototyping of proposed Smart Data policies. If you’d like to know more about our ‘Proof of Value’ process, please contact us.