Value Proposition

So what? Why bother?
What is in it for; NZ, citizens, scientists, Entrepreneurs, government, data owners? High tech companies? NGOs, others? Realising new kinds of value – Defragmentation, Economies of Scope and Network effects and their effect on value Note: this is at a summary level. The case studies of specific communities of interest will do some of this in more depth.

New Zealand as a whole Multiple interest groups, as detailed below, have the opportunity to derive enormous value from a market for the safe exchange of data, but the potential to deliver value extends beyond individual population segments and business interests to civil society.

Safe sharing of rich and various data presents the opportunity for platforms enabling unprecedented collaboration and dissemination of knowledge, with the potential to change the way we learn and share as a society. Access to public data through a commons-based marketplace would provide the open source community with an unprecedented opportunity to innovate for the public good.

One example of such a platform recently developed in the private sector is AirBNB's Knowledge Repo; a combination of tech and process that aims to eliminate duplication of effort and improved dissemination of insights by emphasising quality, consumability, reproducibility, discoverability and learning. The Knowledge Repo is open source, Equipped with a commons-based market for data sharing, innovators, developers and scientists can develop platforms to deliver similar benefits across the national knowledge economy. These platforms could be developed for private profit, public good, or both.

  • Civil society, tools to improve public engagement in civic affairs
  • public information/media models/accountability
  • platforms for co-creation
  • successful products demonstrate effectiveness of p2p networks to public

Citizens

  • economic growth
  • improved civil society
  • control over personal information
  • ability to derive value from own data
  • opportunity to be actively involved in the management of own personal data
  • opportunity to trade on own data

Scientists Modern science is creating data at an unprecedented rate, yet the publication of this data is most often in the format of summary statistics, filtered through the methodologies and technologies and research objectives of its producers. The lack of a system for discovering the original, raw datasets is a missed opportunity for the support of scientific progress.

Discussions around the sharing of primary scientific data have focused on the limitations of logistics and technology, and issues related to attribution. However, there are many potential benefits, including but not limited to:

Private enterprise

  • data about people
  • data about the built and natural environment
  • internet of things
  • product development
  • learning about markets
  • data-driven products
  • personalised services
  • business models capitalising on data use, instead of ownership

Government The state sector is familiar with the criticisms that it is slow to innovate, doesn’t reward success or respond to failure quickly, isn’t value focused and demonstrates a poor understanding of what works and where to invest. These issues arise from the way the system is organized and run. That is, through centrally planned, highly specified processes for productivity through cost-reduction; an industrial-era model that emphasizes production efficiency and invests in innovation aimed at specialization, line management accountability, and risk management. Business models are structured around deeply entrenched servicing channels, the better to improve operational efficiency for each channel. This makes collaboration, change, coordination and a system-wide view very difficult to achieve. One of the most obvious and severe flaws in this system is that data and knowledge are locked away in silos, with incentives aligned against their sharing and common use.

Instead of integrating data to obtain a rich view of the individual and their pathway across services, the system views the public through the lens of services delivered.

There is work going on in government to change this, to devise a Social Investment system that uses integrated data break down silos and service channels to measure the benefits delivered by social services across the full spectrum of outcomes, foster collaboration and cohesion, and drive innovation at all levels of the system. But this solution is predicated on the assumption that data can and will be joined up and integrated, and in the current state, incentives are not aligned to support this sharing. The system’s structure will continue to diminish the social sector’s ability to drive improved social value. System-level transformation of the sector is required and there are actors seeking this level of reform, but integrated data is the keystone.

The various Social Investment initiatives at work in the social sector rely heavily on the Integrated Data Infrastructure (IDI) for their analytic work. The IDI is a large research database containing microdata about people and households in New Zealand, anonymized and integrated at the level of the individual using unique identifiers that link administrative data from multiple government agencies, NGOs, and Statistics New Zealand surveys including the census. It’s a powerful asset, but there are multiple drawbacks that prevent the state from maximizing the value potential of the resource. The barriers to access are high, due to the highly sensitive nature of the data, and the coercive manner in which it is obtained, and the database itself is unwieldy and difficult to interact with.

The sharing and integration of citizens’ data risks invading privacy, further marginalizing those who are already marginalized, and allowing coercive interests to become more coercive. These risks are the primary reason why the use of the IDI is so heavily monitored and restricted, to the extent that its potential is not realized and users struggle to realize the innovations they conceive.

Thus there is enormous value for government in the creation of a decentralized, publicly owned and operated data commons that divests the central government of much of that risk and makes responsible, respectful use of the data the shared responsibility of all participating actors. As well as divesting much of the risk associated with the ownership of enormous, sensitive data assets, a federated commons would enable the sharing and integration of data held by service-level actors in the various sectors – more and better quality data than what is presently held by government – so that innovation and data-driven decision making would be possible at multiple system levels without the prohibitive risks and costs that currently obstruct the viability of data driven decision making. By the same token, central government would have safe access to more and better data, and a consent-based mandate for its use.

NGOs and service providers The NGO sector is ready and willing to share information both at an operational level and at the level of front-line service delivery. Staff working directly with clients would benefit from having all the information they need, when they need it, to enable staff safety as well as the best care for the client. At an operational level, decision-makers want to see that they are doing well and delivering positive outcomes for the community. Leaders in the NGO sector would benefit from being able to compare the effectiveness of their service with similar service types in other regions and other organizations. NGOs in the Mental Health space have already begun to experiment with new models for alignment and cooperation, using collectively established measures of progress to set common goals and develop alliances rather than competitive relationships. A safe data-sharing infrastructure would support these high-trust models by enabling the development of common measurement systems to support collective action. The NZDFF principles of Inclusion, Trust and Control are very relevant in this space, as the way in which government contracts with NGOs creates a competitive environment for funding. NGOS are more likely to choose to share and participate in a commons-based data sharing arrangement if they have control over who has access to the data. NGOs may be more willing to trust their data to one another in a self-selected commons group than with the government.

Data owners The current monopoly ‘owners’ of data, both public and private sector, need to have their narrow interests overthrown to realize the public value of data that is made available to the commons; the value needs to be transferred from ownership to use; there’s only limited value to owning data, but infinite value potential in using it.

  • value of 'owning' data will diminish once it begins to be treated as a different sort of public good
  • I need to think more about this...

Tech companies

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