Organisations of all sizes have data that is of benefit to users both inside and outside their boundaries (both in the private and public sectors). Therefore having the tools and processes to find and share this data should make things run more efficiently and effectively... hopefully.
In a recent client conversation, we discussed the creation
of a data portal / platform for the easier discovery and sharing of data. This
inevitably led to the discussion about the types of data that the organisation
wanted to share and who they wanted to share it with. Leading to the realisation
that they actually had the need for sharing data that ranged from the very
secure (restricted customer or commercially sensitive information) through to
Open Data (information that they wanted to share for free outside of the
organisation). They also had requirements for sharing data that sat somewhere
in the murky area between those two extremes (information limited either by
license or by access / user) including some they wanted to monetize.
Most data platform projects I have worked on previously have focused on the sharing of particular types of data (e.g. just Personally Identifiable user information or a mix of limited /restricted and Open data), but not the need for sharing different data sources from across The Data Spectrum:
https://www.theodi.org/about-the-odi/the-data-spectrum/
So creating a single data sharing technology platform that
can share any sort of organisation data creates a number of issues:
Privacy and security:
Balancing accessibility and protection is tricky. You want your service to be
easy to use, but with more sensitive data, strict access controls and strong
security measures are vital.
Data standardisation:
Different users across an organizations often format their
data differently. Such a service needs to be able to handle these
inconsistencies or offer tools to convert data to a common format for sharing.
Traceability & reusability:
Data consumers need to understand how the data was collected
and what it can be used for. Your service should provide clear audit trails and
data provenance, as well as ways of licensing and charging for the data -
especially if the data consumer is an external user.
