The digital revolution is here, but not everyone is benefiting equitably from it. And as Silicon Valley’s ethos of “move fast and break things” spreads around the world, now is the time to pause and consider who is being left out and how we can better distribute the benefits of our new data economy. “Data is the main resource of a new digital economy,” says IT for Change director Parminder Singh. Global society will benefit because the economy will benefit, argues Singh, on decentralization of data and distributed digital models. Data commons—or open data sources—are vital to help build an equitable digital economy, but with that comes the challenge of data governance.

This podcast episode was produced by Insights, the custom content arm of MIT Technology Review. It was not produced by MIT Technology Review’s editorial staff.

“Not everybody is sharing data,” says Singh. Big tech companies are holding onto the data, which stymies the growth of an open data economy, but also the growth of society, education, science, in other words, everything. According to Singh, “Data is a non-rival resource. It's not a material resource that if one uses it, other can't use it.” Singh continues, “If all people can use the resource of data, obviously people can build value over it and the overall value available to the world, to a country, increases manifold because the same asset is available to everyone.”

One doesn’t have to look very far to understand the value of non-personal data collected to help the public, consider GIS data from government satellites. Innovation plus the open access to geographic data helped not only create the Internet we know today, but those same tech companies. And this is why Singh argues, “These powerful forces should be in the hands of people, in the hands of communities, they should be able to be influenced by regulators for public interest.” Especially now that most of the data is now collected by private companies.

IT for Change is tackling this with a research project called “Unskewing the Data Value Chain,” which is supported by Omidyar Network. The project aims to assess the current policy gaps and new policy directions on data value chains that can promote equitable and inclusive economic development. Singh explains, “Our goal is to ensure the value chains are organized in a manner where the distribution of value is fairer. All countries can digitally industrialize at if not an equal piece, but an equitable pace, and there is a better distribution of benefits from digitalization.”

Business Lab is hosted by Laurel Ruma, editorial director of Insights, the custom publishing division of MIT Technology Review. The show is a production of MIT Technology Review, with production help from Collective Next. 

This podcast was produced in partnership with Omidyar Network.

Show notes and links

“Unskewing the Data Value Chain: A Policy Research Project for Equitable Platform Economies,” IT for Change, September 2020

“Treating data as commons”, The Hindu, Parminder Singh, September 2, 2020

“Report by the Committee of Experts on Non-Personal Data Governance Framework,” Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India

“A plan for Indian self-sufficiancy in an AI-driven world,” Mint, Parminder Singh, July 29, 2020