Exec Summary
The Aotearoa New Zealand Data Commons project is a collective response to improving data sharing in this country, and a strategy to move towards full data interoperability across all sectors over the coming decade. Over the last four months a small group of 30-40 expert stakeholders have been involved in preparing this blueprint document using a co-design process (designing with the users).
The project was made possible through $100,000 of seed capital contributed by the NZ Data Futures Partnership, Next Foundation, the Bio-Hertitage Science Challenge, Inflection, Enspiral, Noos, and considerable investment in time and knowledge by many other organisations.
The Data Commons project has been created to operationalize the NZ Data Futures Partnership vision of an accessible, high value, high control, high trust data ecosystem for New Zealand. The blueprint describes a strategy for delivering on this vision. The methodology it proposes is a continuation of the iterative and collaborative process employed to develop the blueprint itself. The Aotearoa New Zealand Data Commons project is now looking for a 5 year commitment to implement the blueprint.
Value proposition When we look at New Zealand’s data sharing ecosystem we see the usual sectoral silo’s, operational fragmentation, low trust, growing expectation from government for access to data, and lots of duplication of effort. There are currently a number of groups are working hard to address these issues as they manifest in their part of the ecosystem but these initiatives are not connecting with each other.
Another way of describing the current situation is that data sharing is an ecosystem level problem and it needs to be solved at the ecosystem level. We see enormous value to NZ Inc in resourcing a more coordinated approach to solving these problems in a more joined up fashion. If New Zealand can develop a platform that can defragment the important initiatives already underway, improve trust between actors through a community of practice approach, and move towards greater integration over time we should be able to drive significant value for all.
Case studies To demonstrate this potential this blueprint includes a number of case studies outlining just some of the data sharing initiatives that we discovered during the project. We are sure that there are others that deserve recognition. The case studies make clear the challenges and opportunities facing the sector.
A Commons Based Approach The philosophy behind the data commons combines the best of market based approaches with a belief in a greater good. Eleanor Ostram is the only woman to have won the Nobel Prize in Economics, and she is globally recognized as a thought leader in commons based approaches to economic governance.
The blueprint for a Data Commons in Aotearoa New Zealand is based on central principle that data is a collective asset that needs to be held in a commons. The logic behind this position is that most of our data sharing problems can be traced back to the idea that data is owned by someone. We need to be thinking about how data can be used and sharing can be encouraged, not how data can be owned and how access can prevented. Once we shift the concept from ‘ownership’ to ‘use’ then it becomes much easier to create liquidity in the data marketplace.
Our conclusion is that need to hand back genuine control of New Zealand’s data to an open market that meet’s the principles developed by the NZ Data Futures Partnership and that a commons based model has enough of the general approach to be a sound organising principle – the one we are blueprinting here.