COVID-19 has irrevocably changed the world – how we work, how we learn, how we communicate, how we govern.
But the world was changing even before the pandemic. The Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) was ushering in a new era, at breakneck speed, with potential to address some of the world’s most critical challenges – from food security, to reducing congestion in big cities, to increasing energy efficiency, to accelerating cures for the most intractable diseases.
The pandemic and resulting economic crisis fast-tracked the need to deploy 4IR technologies. Already predictive analytics technologies are helping us understand how the virus spreads and how to best implement lockdowns. Robots have decontaminated hospital wards and delivered food, medical supplies and lab samples while minimizing human contact. However, their use has been limited because of lack of access, and the need for people to show up for tests has put enormous burden on existing healthcare systems. The pandemic further amplified the gap between those who have access to resources and those who do not. It amplified the need for transparent and trusted supply chains. And finally, it amplified the importance of the use of data to address common challenges.
If deployed equitably and ethically, there is a tremendous potential for the Fourth Industrial Revolution to ensure everyone benefits from it, and not just the few.
What if we could use data collected from sensors and variable devices to monitor people’s breathing patterns and vitals and use Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning (AI/ML) techniques to detect possible infections (or any other diseases for that matter), formulate AI/ML machine assisted medical recommendations, and contact people remotely for consultation without them having to go to a clinic or hospital? What if we could then deliver the necessary medical supplies using drones as needed? What if we can combine environmental, lifestyle and personal medical data to come up with solutions for the most intractable diseases? What if we could use similar data sets to help farmers decide what to plant when and for the most profit? What if the owners of data can receive economic benefit anytime their data is used for commercial purposes like musicians do for their music? Yet how do we do all of this while we protect the privacy of the owners of data, and ensure they consent to the use of their data.
There is an opportunity to expand on the current privacy and penalty- oriented approach to data governance mechanisms to one that provides for the use of data for agreed upon purposes and provide economic benefits to the owners anytime it is used in a trusted and transparent manner. To address the potential, the Forum has created a framework called Data for Common Purpose Initiative (DCPI).
Before we get into the specifics of DCPI, we need to address where the data is coming from and how do we ensure that it is used for consented purposes.
Where’s the data coming from?
In 2017 people connected to the internet generated more than 2.5 quintillion bytes of data every day. Double that amount was generated by connected devices (Internet of Things – IoT). In 2018 there were 7 billion IoT devices worldwide. In 2019 this number reached 26.66 billion compared to 4.1 billion people connected to the internet. Every second 127 new IoT devices are connected to the internet and at this rate the total number of IoT devices is estimated to reach 30.6 billion. It is obvious that we cannot store all of this data in one place. The emerging “edge computing” concept allows for the storage of data at the point of collection with the potential for the data to be deployed for different purposes when called upon. This requires the need to create the protocols to ensure that data is coming from trusted sources and is being used for the consented purposes.
How do we ensure trusted and transparent mechanisms?
Blockchain’s peer-to-peer security architecture, transparency and rapidly evolving features such as smart contracts and tokens make it an ideal platform to build a system of trusted and transparent protocols to enable such use cases. We need to ensure that the data is coming trusted sources and can be used only for consented purposes. Yet there are performance, security, complexity and interoperability concerns that need to be addressed.
Who owns the data, what can you do with it, and who gets the benefits?
A key concern for governments and citizens has been data privacy – especially in an era of highly personal symptom tracking and contact tracing. Currently, every jurisdiction regulates data in a different way, singularly indexed on privacy. This mosaic of rules creates friction at each step when collaborating and sharing data across borders as amplified during the COVID-19 crisis. It also creates an untenable burden for multinational companies to have to deal with numerous, and often incompatible, privacy laws with heavy penalties for non-compliance, and getting in the way of small and medium enterprises, including startups, to leverage the technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. To address the potential, the DCPI focuses on reimagining governance and consent models, economic valuation of data, and responsible use of data. In January 2020, Japan took the lead in shaping the DCPI framework with Authorized Public Purpose Access, an innovative framework focused on healthy living that calls for balancing the need for privacy along with public purpose use of data, and economic value to stakeholders. The use of blockchain smart contracts can ensure that the data is used only for the consented purposes, much like digital right management (DRM) is used in the online music industry. Commodities exchanges could provide a useful framework for the valuation of data through an open market mechanism. Anytime someone wants to use different data sets, they can pay for them based on the market rates and the owners can keep receiving residual value from the use of their data, and the governments can tax the use of data at the moment and jurisdiction of consumption. To protect the privacy of the data owners, data can be tokenized by a government agency using blockchain which would also allow for authentication and transparency. And finally data trusts can be set up to prevent misuse of data of vulnerable populations.
Sharing data globally for common purposes
In the absence of any other means of control, governments tend to prohibit the movement of data outside borders, or they apply the laws of the jurisdiction in which the data is collected if it is taken across national borders. While this may reduce misuse of data, it also obstructs us from combining global data sets to accelerate innovation in critical areas such as health, agriculture, environment, traffic, and energy. It also prevents multinational companies from combining data sets to support global operations. A decoupled architecture would address concerns while maximizing potential.
The Forum has taken an initial step with the publication in June 2020 of a Roadmap for Cross Border Data Flows: Future-Proofing Readiness and Cooperation in the New Data Economy in collaboration with Bahrain and the UAE. The DCPI framework would allow for cross-border data sharing for agreed upon purposes across national boundaries while providing for cross-border payments for the use of data.
The next steps
It is important to lay the foundations for this new global operating system, to facilitate delineation between the rights and responsibilities of different stakeholders. Moving forward will require public-private cooperation. Governments, private citizens, businesses and NGOs all need to be involved to ensure that these technological advances benefit everyone, and harm no one.
And in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis, it’s even more important to ensure this new phase of civilization is human-centric – driven not by the imperatives of technological development but driven by a necessity to serve all of society.
This article is an extract taken from the Parliamentary Network publication ‘Just Transitions’. You can download a pdf version of the full document here.