{"id":804,"date":"2020-03-27T13:03:53","date_gmt":"2020-03-27T13:03:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/policy-engagement\/?p=804"},"modified":"2020-03-27T13:03:56","modified_gmt":"2020-03-27T13:03:56","slug":"governance-of-data-value","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/policy-engagement\/governance-of-data-value\/","title":{"rendered":"Governance of Data Value"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Maria Savona<\/a><\/em>
Professor of Innovation and Evolutionary Economics <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At exceptional times of public health emergency such as the\npresent Covid-19 pandemic, Taiwan seems to have contained the spread of\ncontagion better than other countries. The country has managed to digitally\ntrack individuals with symptoms and their contacts to contain the spread, with\na mix of community based app, releasing data on symptoms and positions, and a\nfast reaction by the digital minister who has coordinated the government\u2019s\nresponse. This seems to be an interesting synergy of decentralised and centralised\ngovernance of data for a relevant public purpose. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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However, such initiatives also raise as many challenges as\nthey overcome around personal data collection and storage, user consent, and\nsurveillance and the extent to which individual data tracking is reversible once\nthe emergence is over. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Interest in personal data has been growing unprecedentedly,\nwith issues of privacy and power at the forefront of policy debates. Over the\nlast decade the scale of data generation has reached a dimension that its\nmanagement and control might have already gone well beyond the capacity of the\nvery tech giants we are all feeding. Concerns around data governance, data\nrights, data privacy, and a sense of imminent impingement of our democracies,\nhave been raised, though they might be too little and too late to lead to\neffective and timely action. One of the reasons why it is so, is that they seem\nto overlook the issue of concentration of equity value that underpins the\ncurrent structure of big tech power, and the need to unpack their business\nmodels. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Economists have missed the opportunity to predict the\nmassive concentration of data value in the hands of large platforms and\nunderestimated the complexity of the political economy of data value\nconcentration. Professor Savona proposes a novel data rights approach, that\nredistributes data value to achieve economic justice whilst not undermining the\nrange of ethical, legal and governance challenges that this poses. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Key Findings<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n