Nassim Nicholas Taleb wrote in his first book, Fooled By Randomness, “The more data we have, the more likely we are to drown in it.” I had a role in a manufacturing company once upon a time that was something like “director of all data.” Drowning would have been a mild word. I see manufacturing companies today entering digital transformation also in danger of drowning in data.

Enter the International Dataspaces Organization. I’ve been following it from afar for at least a year. It must be time to acknowledge it here in the blog. Following is some general information and a link if you also wish to follow it.

Companies hold vast amounts of valuable data that they have been unable to safeguard, share or monetize. The IDSA standard enables data sharing through data spaces characterized by uniform rules, certified data providers and recipients and trust among partners. Data spaces provide the basis for fruitful cooperation, lowered barriers to entry and limitless innovation in the data economy of the future.

One of the problem with all this standardization work is getting followers. They recognize that:

That future truly arrives when more companies implement IDS as their preferred mode of data exchange and when official standards and governance bodies adopt it as the binding global standard.

  • What is data sovereignty? Today, organizations of all types and sizes collect and store huge amounts of every kind of data. IDSA enables you to self-determine how, when and at what price others may use it across the value chain. We call this data sovereignty.
  • Many data providers currently  give their data away or use it as currency in exchange for services and other considerations from large data platforms. For others, data-sharing hurdles create a drag on efficiency or barriers to entry into a market for smaller players. Partners in IDS data sharing relationships are already realizing new efficiencies in the auto industry, and enabling smaller companies to enter the lucrative 3D printing market. The possibilities are limitless.
  • Many organizations collect and store data where there is a significant duty to protect the privacy of clients and other consumers. Think of health care, insurance, legal services and more. Data sovereignty means that these data holders can safeguard user data like never before, and ensure that it is used only in accordance with strictly defined rules. Our Digital Life Journey project is one application where the data sovereignty provided by IDS changes the game in this regard. We bet you can imagine lots of others.
Share This

Follow this blog

Get a weekly email of all new posts.