The ”Greenbook Digital Platforms (Grünbuch Digitale Plattformen)”, published by the German government in May 2016, is a clear proof that digital sovereignty is recognized as a necessary requirement for a successful digital transformation in Germany and Europe. Important issues with particular reference to the use of data, their economic value and the protection of individual users’ rights are explicitly addressed, looking for solution proposals. A call for action is sent to the public (see https://gruenbuch.de.digital/de/kommentieren/ to contribute and participate actively in the ongoing discussion). Resulting recommendations for follow-up actions are planned for 2017.
Economic Value and Data Sovereignty – do they go together?
The greenbook very clearly recognizes and names the conflicts between the use of (user) data and the sovereignty of individuals over their data. In particular, data ownership is an unresolved issue: “It is widely unknown, to whom the data or parts of the data belong and which economic value should be assigned to them.” (translation by the author). An example from the car industry shows the issues at hand “Who is allowed to dispose of the data, which are created by the driver and the car in an autonomous ride: only the driver or the car manufacturer or a third party service provider? From an economic perspective, even the entity which operates the data for further commercial use should have partial rights and the operations should add value to the data.” (translation by the author).
As with mobile phones, we must ask what rights a customer acquires when he/she buys a car. And which rights I have to give up when I intend to even “drive” the car! This could lead to a completely new concept of a “car”. And could feed back to the car manufacturer: How to calculate the price of a car which possibly drives itself and generates data, thereby opening up new business opportunities for the manufacaturer or providing public services (traffic management). The expected commercialization of data therefore has to go hand in hand with the strengthening of the data owners. As already shown in “Digital Transformation is Based on Digital Sovereignty”, also the greenbook assumes the assignment of an economic value to data to allow the exchange of data and services – this assumption fits nicely to the commercial approach and, in contrast to today, gives more influence to the data producers.
Lots of Data and Privacy – Does This Work?
New services and business opportunities use many data from many individuals. Therefore, anonymization is mentioned as a means to protect the privacy of individuals. Identity Management for managing an individual’s privacy in the Internet should be used when implementing new services. For example, area or application specific identities could be offered, which allow a meaningful analysis of data without uniquely identifying the individuals themselves. This seems to be an applicable way forward if an individual’s characteristics can be kept separate sufficiently well. The effort for such separation may be high and would involve technical and regulatory means, but will be required to avoid making an individual completely transparent in the Internet.
Also, identity management may also provide the means for earmarking data (items) and bind them to specific use cases. For governmental requirements, the assignment of aliases to individuals may be required. In order to exclude misuse, clear legal specifications will be required. Alias management must be separate from other governmental entities – a data trust agency is to be set in place - the greenbook uses the term “digital agency (Digitalagentur)”. Such a concept will only work in democratic societies!
For individuals being able to act as sovereigns over their data (i.e. manage their digital representations) will be heavily dependent upon the design of the man-machine-interfaces (MMI). For example, the greenbook asks “How should the process for acceptance of the use of personal data be designed to assure transparency, understandability, clarity and distinctness?" (translation by author). Identity management must be designed with those goals in mind. As users, we all know that the simple process of mail encryption is already sufficiently complex and is barely applied. Therefore, privacy by design and privacy be default are important design requirements.
Participate! Shape Your Digital Future!
The greenbook website de.digital offers ways to influence and shape. The call for action goes to all of us, if we want to influence the use of our data and not end as “playthings” of economic interests in the Internet. It should be clear to us that already today our physical existence is strongly defined by our virtual existence. The digital transformation is in full swing – we have to become active and shape it in our interests as consumers, users, actors…!
