This article first appeared in Digital Edge, The Edge Malaysia Weekly on April 10, 2023 - April 16, 2023

Sharing is one of the many principles that we teach our children from an early age. It is a value that is part of the foundation of human social development, which we carry with us into adulthood. However, when we start reading that data sharing is becoming a business imperative for organisations, we ascertain that sharing data is not as easy as sharing a toy. While the Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted the benefits of large-scale data sharing to accelerate innovation, data sharing projects in enterprises are still struggling to emerge.

According to the IDC’s Future of Industry Ecosystems 2023 predictions, by the end of 2023, organisations that share data, applications or operations with their ecosystem partners through joint ventures will increase profitability by five percentage points. While we can no longer disregard the importance of data sharing, businesses are still unable to shift the focus away from the risks of data sharing to the risks of not sharing data. Organisations are erring on the side of caution due to the team’s capability to comply with required governance.

In Singapore, a trusted data sharing framework was created to give an overview of the important points of data sharing, mitigate data sharing disputes among partners and stakeholders and support users in planning a structure to their data sharing arrangements. Speaking at the World AI Cannes Festival on April 14, 2022, Minister for Communications and Information Josephine Teo wished to go further and “create an environment that allows stakeholders across different sectors to share and create richer data sets”.

The need for data sharing is essential for businesses to update offerings, cut operating costs, detect fraud and ensure compliance, among other things.

During the pandemic, the Covid-19 apps deployed in different countries in the region were able to illustrate this phenomenon. For instance, using contact tracing apps, citizens were given access to data on the evolution of the pandemic. In addition, by encouraging people to declare themselves in case of a positive test using contact tracing apps, health authorities were able to curb the spread of the virus by alerting those who may have been in close contact.

Serving the common interest is also the goal of the public sector’s open data initiatives, which make data available and free of charge to foster innovation in various sectors, including transport or urban planning. For example, traffic apps such as Waze use published data on roadworks, which were integrated into the app to provide users with a real-time overview of road conditions.

While organisations in the private sector understand the value of a data-sharing strategy, existing barriers make it difficult to operationalise. The problems encountered are common to every data project, which include challenges with the technology and its deployment, trust and data governance and organisational culture. From a technology perspective, the application programming interface (API) is the foundation upon which every successful data sharing strategy will be built.

Public sector organisations typically use and publish open APIs that are available without restriction as part of open data projects. However, private sector organisations will mostly use private (internal to the organisation) or “partner” APIs with specific access rules. API development is the first barrier to implementing a data sharing strategy. Developing APIs requires resources — developers — and time, as developing an API can take three to five days. However, we are now seeing the emergence of technologies and practices to simplify this process.

A few years ago, the Government Technology Agency of Singapore (GovTech) launched the API Exchange (APEX). This self-service API platform acts as a centralised and secure API gateway for the government. For enterprises, API consumers can use solutions that provide standard API libraries, such as an API to share data between SAP and Salesforce. In a matter of an hour, a data analyst can publish an API and have access to the information he needs. Access to the data is then managed automatically from the tool that provides the APIs.

We can unquestionably observe that “sharing” is today associated with challenges for companies, but let’s not ignore the fact that data sharing is also founded on a primordial value, “data”. Without data quality and trust levels, the very principle of data sharing is null and void. Therefore, it is essential that the systems put in place by the one who shares and the one who exploits the data be able to ensure data availability within the organisation. In summary, establish data excellence to deliver trusted data to data consumers.

All this takes shape in a data health approach. Data health allows decision-makers to be confident in making data-driven decisions. Healthy data is critical for any company but keeping data in good condition requires a careful balance between availability, usability, integrity and security. Having an approach that combines data integration, integrity and governance in a single, unified platform is critical for healthy data.

When healthy data is established, the data is trusted and governed, data sharing becomes valuable and can be monetised. According to a recent Talend survey, 49% of business leaders faced data quality challenges. This risks data health and prevents the organisation from taking the next step in the data lifecycle. Data quality must be continuously monitored, data access rights must be defined and data must be part of the governance cycle with the support of data quality and data cataloguing technologies.

Fintech companies have also developed powerful data sharing models. For instance, in Singapore, the government established the Singapore Financial Data Exchange (SGFinDex) to help citizens collect their private financial details, such as deposits, credit cards and loans. This initiative enables people to understand their financial capabilities from a holistic point of view. It also helps create a data sharing mechanism based on common data and API standards.

Regulations like the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), or regulators such as the Personal Data Protection Commission (PDPC), make data providers, data consumers or data service providers accountable for protecting subjects’ personal data. This leads to questions such as, “If there is a breach of personal data, who is accountable?”

Relevant data sharing agreements must be established to ensure accountability and assign clear responsibilities to all concerned parties.

Data governance teams have a significant role in setting up data sharing agreements. They must ensure that legal and compliance teams sign off before any movement of personal data belonging to a citizen from one country to another, from data provider to data consumer or data consumer to a data service provider. Data sharing agreements need to address a few broad themes to safeguard the privacy of personal data, such as:

•    Requiring the entity that processes personal data on behalf of the data provider to have the proper infrastructure and systems in place to protect the personal data of subjects;

•     No outsourcing of personal data by the data consumer or data service provider without the data provider’s consent;

•     Addressing breach scenarios and clarifying roles, responsibilities and liabilities in such cases; and

•    Performing a risk assessment and conducting frequent audits to confirm continued confidence in compliance with data protection standards.

Data sharing agreements can be complex legal documents that should be simplified for broader adoption. These agreements, however, can not only prevent messy situations in the case of a data breach, but also help protect personal data, which is the core objective of data privacy regulations.

In today’s world, the concept of “ownership” of data is pervasive, and the organisation’s data culture remains the most important obstacle. While IT teams provide the security framework and technology leverage, data sharing projects are primarily driven by business units — marketing, sales or finance.

However, business units still need to understand each other and break down silos. Is the role of the chief data officer to drive this new data shift or does it have to come directly from executive management? Will we ever see a data sharing director?

There are no definite answers to these questions yet, but what is certain is that sharing data can help promote data literacy within an organisation. Data sharing can be a way to encourage employees to be more engaged and teach them a little more about data.

While data sharing has become a matter of course for many organisations and projects are starting to emerge, the ultimate success of these projects will depend on the transparency of the data shared with customers and users — and a common understanding of what that data means.

J J Tan is the regional director of Asia at Talend, a data integration and data management platform

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