Yogesh MalikFuture is already here, it is just unevenly distributed. Technology Evangelist and Digital FuturistApr 30 · 4 min read

Dealing with Data Democracy and DataDiplomacy in this Age of Data EconomySir Tim Berners-Lee, Inventor of World Wide Web, once said:

Data Is A Precious Thing And Will Last Longer Than TheSystems Themselves

Data has been always there, but now it’s real-time, faster and coming fromeverywhere, getting easier to analyzes, correlate and visualize; and all thiscan be used to transform and innovate current economic and businessframeworks. So much so that today we are standing at the intersection ofdata, human rights, and our future; all governments and policymakers areequally confused about how to handle data-driven interventions? We know allthis is useful to predict, automate and execute many actions and decisions;but all this is prone to error and what if we move away from the humancontext, may be one step away at a time and in coming time humanitybecomes dependent on the autonomous system for all decision making. Newtechnologies are allowing us to embed decision-making in the design of

autonomous system built on various new and disruptive big data and socialtechnologies.

Who is going to measure and control the quality and source of data that willinfluence our evolving human race? How policymakers will come up withdata laws and policies. Will they make their algorithms accountable for whatdecisions and actions they initiate based on some data coming from theirdrones positioned at sensitive geographic locations. How all that data iscollected, stored, secured, transferred and shared?

We may solve many problems with data-driven economy but expect more andmore victims of data abuse in cases where direct beneficiaries forget toimplement local and sensitive contexts to the autonomous supply of decisionstaken by technologies

Data is becoming the global heartbeat of digital society, and always-onsmartphone and other devices enable citizens to report on emerging events,stream ground reports as events unfold, at the same time social platformshave become one of the primary organizing tools for any mass events.

Recently only V-Dem Institute released a new “Varieties of Democracy”dataset. It provides about 15 million data points on democracy, including 39democracy-related indices

What is Data Democracy?Without the need to understand complex technology, all should be able touse, create, model, share and correlate open data for their personal, businessand government purpose.

Why is Data Democracy important? Data is everywhere, and now real-timesocial data enables feedback loop to your business framework, and there areinsights and hidden messages that you want to visualize and use them to yourbenefits, be it feedback from market or missing feature in your product orcreating wider sales funnel

Earlier data analytics tools were used by large organizations but now they areavailable to everybody. These tools are very interactive as well as intuitive; soyou don’t have to be a data scientist to use these tools. Data literacy of 21stcentury has enabled everybody to use raw and open data to their benefits, beit better decision-making power or create new innovative features andproducts for new evolving markets. This constant shift is empowering allpeople to make better-informed decisions by leveraging the power of data.

What is Data Diplomacy?

What is Data Diplomacy?Data is not just for businesses and enterprises, many government policies arebecoming more and more dependent on data, and they are coming up withdata-driven policies and that calls for the strong need for the role ofdiplomacy so that we can define how data will be shared and accessed amongnations and organizations. Data abuse can harm individuals, governments,and organizations. Think of data that is very critical to confidence-buildingbetween two nations getting compromised or leaked and used by any othernation. There is big role that Data Diplomacy has to play so that social andpolitical relationship between two nations or organizations can be maintainedfor the benefits of all

What is Data Economy?Data is an asset today that generates hundreds of billions of dollars for theeconomy, but still there is not enough clarity and maturity on how this datawill be used for benefits of mankind while protecting citizen’s personal data.On the other side of it, there are start-ups putting a value on the personal dataeconomy. While is good that in the open data world , there will be less datadictatorship and this will allow more data-driven decision making evenbeyond organization or nation’s boundaries

Data is like raw resource like oil, and growing very fast. A lot of added valuecan be created if use data creatively and provide a sustainable data valuechain for a healthy data economy. This will benefits governments, businesses,individuals, and technologists to become a part of single self-sustainable datavalue chain

Over to You NowWhat do you think of the future of Data Marketplace?

How about services like Data as a Product?

What about policies and legal frameworks to acquire or sell data?

Source: EmergingTechIndia by @YogeshMalik

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