Paper by Robert M. Groves and Adam Neufeld: “The public pays for and provides an incredible amount of data to governments and companies. Yet much of the value of this data is being wasted, remaining in silos rather than being shared to enhance the common good—whether it’s helping governments to stop opioid addiction or helping companies predict and meet the demand for electric or autonomous vehicles.
- Many companies and governments are interested in sharing more of their data with each other; however, right now the process of sharing is very time consuming and can pose great risks since it often involves sharing full data sets with another entity
- We need intermediaries to design safe environments to facilitate data sharing in the low-trust and politically sensitive context of companies and governments. These safe environments would exist outside the government, be transparent to the public, and use modern technologies and techniques to allow only statistical uses of data through temporary linkages in order to minimize the risk to individuals’ privacy.
- Governments must lead the way in sharing more data by re-evaluating laws that limit sharing of data, and must embrace new technologies that could allow the private sector to receive at least some value from many sensitive data sets. By decreasing the cost and risks of sharing data, more data will be freed from their silos, and we will move closer to what we deserve—that our data are used for the greatest societal benefit….(More)”.