A recent World Economic Forum (WEF) report titled Personal Data: The Emergence of a New Asset Class proposes that your personal information is very valuable. In fact it quotes Meglea Kuneva, the European Consumer Commissioner as saying “Personal data is the new oil of the internet and the new currency of the digital world”.
Clearly Google and Facebook understand this as they make their money of the personal information you enter into their services. They analyse and mine this information and gain the vast majority of their revenue from helping advertisers match their messages to people interested in their products and services. In turn these revenues are driving the high valuations of these companies and making their shareholders rich from your information.
People are starting to realise not only the value that is being derived from their information, but the issues with privacy related to their information being on the internet. One of the reactions we have seen as a result, is a significant number of people deciding to stop using social media sites like Facebook (In the USA alone 6 Million Facebook users cancelled their accounts in May this year).
So if our information is an asset how do we get value from it? There is no silver bullet here and this will take a lot of thinking from individuals, governments and private companies to find the right mix of controls and incentives to find a new balance.
The WEF report proposes a vision of the future as follows:
• Individuals can have greater control over their personal data, digital identity and online privacy, and they would be better compensated for providing others with access to their personal data.
• Disparate silos of personal data held in corporations and government agencies will be more easily exchanged to increase utility and trust among people, private firms and the public sector.
• Governments need to maintain stability, security and individual rights will meet in a more flexible, holistic and adaptive manner.
What is clear to me is that there needs to be change from how things work today and there will be solutions that emerge in the market that will contribute to the new models going forward. Clearly the Personal Data Ecosystem Consortium (PDEC), of which I am part of, will be one pare of the solution.
For those interested in this area click here to visit the PDEC Website. The WEF report can be downloaded from the "About" page on this website.
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