Back in 2006 Clive Humby, the British mathematician and the brains behind the Tesco Clubcard scheme was the first to coin the phrase “Data is the new Oil”. Whilst highlighting the inherent value of data, Humby used the phrase to emphasise that, just like oil, data needed to be processed and refined to be a useful resource. It’s a metaphor that has gained steam in the past couple of years as the Internet giants — Google, Facebook, Amazon — have collected vast swathes of user data and built their businesses upon it. However, there are other aspects to the analogy that start to break down. Oil is a finite resource, whereas data can be used again and again. Data that might not have been useful initially may become useful over time when combined with other data or processed with new techniques. In fact, data is more valuable the more it is used, something that is certainly not possible with oil. With this in mind, is it possible to give a value to data?
glass.ai has contributed to new research led by the University of Cambridge and the Open Data Institute (ODI) trying to do exactly that, exploring the value of data. The research found that access to data is intrinsic to its value. In general, the more accessible the data is, the greater value it has. This, of course, has to be balanced against risks to privacy and incentivising investment. Restricting access to data limits who can use it to develop a product or service, or who can interrogate it to make decisions. The report asks the government to make the data it holds more accessible and to explore how it could be possible to broaden access to private-sector data. The data which is coveted most strongly, but the benefits of finding a way to open access to could have enormous benefits.
The full research can be found here.
