Understanding the value of data and how to share it safely
The SAFE-DEED project examines how to gauge the value of data and share it safely between organisations, so that information can be analysed without compromising privacy. The researchers built a set of technologies and procedures, which aims to provide confidence to businesses and boost innovation for data driven economies. We talked to Gert Breitfuss, Stefan Gindl, Petr Knoth, Ioannis Markopoulos and Mihnea Tufis. British Mathematician and
data science entrepreneur, Clive Humbly coined the phrase, ‘data is the new oil’. Indeed, the data driven economy is set to be worth around 700 billion Euros by 2025 in Europe (Lupu, 2018). In this respect, there are huge opportunities in the digitisation of the economy, for innovation and for knowledge gathering and sharing. There are also challenges to face in the digital transformation of business. The Safe-DEED (Safe Data-Enabled Economic Development) Project has been investigating how to comprehend and assign value for datasets and is developing a toolkit that can help organisations work out what value their data has, what risk there is in sharing it and how it is possible to share it ‘safely’ in a digital marketplace. The project also analyses the legal and regulatory framework which governs data exchange. “Safe-DEED provides tools to assist digital transformation,” stated Gert Breitfuss.
A platform to buy and sell data “Different kinds of companies can benefit from our project,” explained Stefan Gindl. “One specific area which the project is focused on is enabling data markets. A data market could be something like Amazon for instance, for buying products. In principle,
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why can’t we have an Amazon-like platform for data? So effectively a data market is just a trading platform, which allows you to buy data. Imagine a world in which companies can trade data on a platform such as Amazon, and other parties are buying the data because, for instance they need to train their models on data. The assumption is that if we could have something like this, it could boost the European digital economy.”
is that datasets trade is done between professionals and usually not for B2C purposes like Amazon. Nevertheless, Amazon and eBay have the knowledge to create data marketplaces should the opportunity mature.” The project has an interdisciplinary approach, relying on expertise around cryptography, data science, business model innovation, and the law.
A dream goal would be to have an automated, quick and easy way to assess and share the value of data without compromising privacy, to empower Europe with organisations and companies that are fully aware of the value of the data they possess and with the knowledge to safely use it. Whilst a comparison to the Amazon or eBay platforms is a useful analogy, data are not commodities in the same way as books or T-shirts, for example. Datasets need to correlate with applications for relevance. “A dataset without a reference to the respective analysis or usage application is probably meaningless,” adds Ioannis Markopoulos, for clarity. “In addition, datasets are used by professionals to create value chains e.g. source the right products for a manufacturing chain. Another point
What’s data worth? Before you can have a trading platform, you need to understand the value of what you are trading. With this in mind, Petr Knoth summarises one of the project’s central challenges: “We are good at understanding and finding ways to understand the value of certain assets. We are able, as a society, to define the value of a property – like real estate, for example. An estate agent will judge the value of a house on bedrooms and bathroom and so on, and
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