Facebook is stalking you! More specifically, Facebook is using data about you to make money. For example, Facebook uses your interests and your personal information, such as marriage status and job title, to tailor advertisements shown to you. Facebook understands the value of data about its users and exploits it to make its advertising more effective.
Facebook is only one of many online services that use data about their users (or generated by the users) as the central product in their business model. In fact, data is quite popularly considered to be the 21st-century oil. The use of data is also not limited to a business environment, but it has become an essential part of products and services throughout all sectors of society.
Exploiting the true value of data will enable businesses to become more competitive, for example by having greater knowledge of their customers, by taking more informed decisions, by finding new innovative uses for the data, by controlling risks and cutting costs, and also by innovating upon this data.
The importance of data usage and exploitation is also highlighted in local efforts. On March 21, an Artificial Intelligence (AI) strategy for public consultation was released, in an attempt to establish Malta as a leader in AI innovation. This document indicated the evident and highly vital role of data within any AI approach.
There is a problem, however.
The issue is that many businesses or companies are now hoarding data without appreciating or understanding its true value and potential.
Across the globe, governments and public institutions – which generate huge amounts of data across different sectors - are publishing their data as open data, in an effort to enable its exploitation. Such efforts not only enhance their transparency, but they can also discourage corruption, provide social and commercial value, and enable participatory governance. For example, the See UK application uses public sector information (published as open data on data.gov.uk) to visualise statistics about crime, transport, and education around the UK. This application enables its users to find a low crime area for buying a house, or to find an area that is well serviced by public transport. Another example is Mastodon C; a company who used open data to identify unnecessary spending in prescription drugs, saving the UK NHS millions of pounds per year.
Unfortunately, in the overall maturity of open data, Malta only scores third from last from 31 analysed countries (28 EU Member States and EFTA countries) in the 2018 European Open Data Maturity Landscaping report. Data produced by Malta’s government and public institutions is currently quite inaccessible, and its value is being lost.
It is undeniable that data usage has exploded, however this has brought about a fresh wave of challenges. The boom in the availability of data has resulted in many companies and businesses that hoard data with the aim of exploiting it, but which do not use its true value. Such data can exist in a duplicated, fragmented, and isolated form, and the sheer volume of available data further complicates the situation. Data having similar issues may lead to additional risks, increased costs, non-efficient processes, and therefore potential business losses. Moreover, although there might be the general understanding that high-quality data leads to more benefits when the data is exploited, there might be a lack of understanding on the process of managing and governing this data, as well as the resulting business impact of using it.
What can we do about this issue?
Since investments in data are on the rise, it has become increasingly relevant to identify the economic value of data and the potential return on investment. It is also vital to manage the data, whilst taking into consideration the value of the data (value-driven data governance). Billion-dollar data governance companies are already investing in new value-driven approaches.
How do we measure data value?
This is not a simple question and accordingly it does not have a simple answer. The value of data depends on a number of aspects, including its quality, its cost, and its domain. The ideal approach here is to identify the data aspects that are relevant to the use case at hand, and monitor them consistently throughout the data usage process. For example, the quality of the data will change (presumably for the better) after some maintenance is done to remove incorrect data. This monitoring of data value will enable any data exploitation effort to be optimised and tailored to the use case in question. Using better quality data will give more accurate results.
Why is it important to measure data value?
Failing to understand the value of data will result in a number of negative consequences. For example, a business might retain information that has little to no value, therefore spending money on storing the data without getting any return on investment. Another possible consequence is getting rid of data with high value due to the business not understanding how valuable it is. Yet another example is paying a high price to acquire data with low value.
As data has been established as a requirement for most businesses to remain competitive, it has become vital to constantly be aware about the changing value of data. This will enable effective management and exploitation of the data, therefore allowing the business or company to achieve competitive advantage that provides both short and long term value, and ensuring business success and sustainability.
Dr Judie Attard is an EDGE Marie-Curie Research Fellow within the ADAPT research centre in Trinity College Dublin, Ireland.
This is a Times of Malta online opinion piece.
