Digital Twin for people made smart (part 1)

Lebeau Frederic
Nov 5 · 6 min read

Personal data records are coming … unifying ledger that includes all of the data we create as a result of our digital usage … Ideally, you will be the owner of your PDR, it will be fully interoperable between systems … We are at the beginning of our transition … to PDRs.” — key takeaways from Amy Webb tech trends 2019.

In the new era of the PDR’s, we (Datavillage) believes in a smooth transition between today’s and tomorrow’s world. On the one hand, to ensure that people recover and retain ownership of their privacy by knowing and managing what is happening with their data and, on the other hand, helping organizations to provide the next generation of services and products.

This article is the first part of a series of three articles explaining how Datavillage puts PDR’s into actions:

  • Part 1 explains the context, our concept and our product
  • Part 2 will explain how we ensure interoperability and privacy
  • Part 3 will explain our technical stack and rationals

A major breakthrough in data-driven digital transformation is the ability of organizations to provide hyper-personalized services. Organizations will move from data to knowledge, as it has already been launched by (digital) giants like Facebook, Amazon, Google, Goldman Sachs a few years ago.

The use of more and more personal data such as behavior and lifestyle data (social, health and sport, interests and knowledge, geospatial, wealth and consumption) combined with anticipatory product design will be essential in the strategy of developing products to disrupt instead of being disrupted.

With the emergence of regulations on data privacy and personal data, such as GDPR, e-privacy, CCPA, etc., the challenges organizations face in this transformation are trust, transparency, simplicity and so avoid some “consent fatigue” with their end users.

Major market players are exploring such opportunities by putting people at the heart of the equation. Sir Tim Berners-Lee with with Solid empowers users and organizations to separate their data from the applications that use it. Microsoft with Identity Hubs put control over personal data in the hands of users.


Digital Twin for people is the new Datavillage’s way to unlock the value of personal data while guaranteeing privacy and ownership.

“Digital Twin” meaning a virtual representation of you using the data you daily produce from infinite sources. The simple and natural method we use to organise data in a lifestyle language simplifies the way people can view and manage the use of their personal data by organizations.

Digital Twin for people is the new way to unlock the value of personal data while guaranteeing privacy and ownership.
Digital Twin for people is the new way to unlock the value of personal data while guaranteeing privacy and ownership.
Digital Twin for people

Digital Twin for people relies on a combination of concepts, technologies and standards that facilitate the use of personal data with the appropriate granularity for organizations. It enables organisations to blend and process personal data from multiple sources by allowing users to control and manage them. The Digital Twin is able to structure the personal data independently from any data sources and connect them as it is the case for real life events. Questions from organisations that simply cannot be asked using other approaches are possible to answer.


1. Our Concept — A user centric data management platform

Looking at the personal data flow, four main actors interact together :

  • The data subject who owns the data and benefits from it.
  • The data provider, a third party that generates behavioral personal data through digital service.
  • The data processor, a third party that cleans, organise, enriches, analyzes data and provides an enhanced/personalized digital experience.
  • The data controller that get consent for a specific set of data and for a specific purpose.
Personal data flow

In today’s digital world, the data provider, the data processor and the data controller are:

  • either fully covered by the same organization. This results in a lack of transparency and a loss of ownership of the data for the end user.
  • Either the data provider acts as a controller to manage the consent when sharing data with data processors. Which leads to permissions distributed among several organizations.

Both models make the interactions between these personal data silos difficult and limit processing between multiple data sources.

We believe in a gradual evolution of this model where the decentralization of different roles must take place to allow the full ownership of personal data, better user experiences and better services.

Evolution to a user-centric personal data management

Tomorrow, the data subject will be at the heart of the management of personal data. Evolving from data subject to data owner, he will be able to obtain a consolidated view of how his personal data are used and by whom. He may give access to his personal data to any Data processors and regardless of any data providers.

From the point of view of Data providers, this gives them the opportunity to give back ownership of the personal data to their customers and to offer new opportunities to Data processors who are currently processing data bilaterally with them.

The data processor gets new possibilities to process personal data in a fully transparent way and to process data from multiple sources connected together.

We call it the user-centric personal data management.

In a user-centric personal data management, the data subject becomes a data controller. He is fully in control of the consent management and the data exchange between the data provider and the data processor. He is becoming data owner.

2. Our Product — The Digital Twin for people

Different aspects must be taken into account to allow the user to fully manage his personal data and give him the opportunity to get the most out of it.

To succeed, the following questions must be answered:

  • How the data owner can easily connect his personal data from multiple data providers?
  • How the data owner can easily visualise and browse his personal data landscape?
  • How the data owner can easily give or revoke access to specific purpose/process from any data processors while keeping control of his data?
  • How the data owner can easily visualise and browse the accesses given on his personal data at any point in time (past and present)?
  • How the data processor can easily enrich, blend (aggregate and connect) and process any personal data to generate insights?
  • How the data processor can trust personal data origin?
  • How the data processor can request access to specific set of data for a specific process/purpose?
  • How the data provider can easily share personal data with others?
  • How to ensure that all stakeholders (data owner, data provider, data processor) agree on the use of further generated data and can not contradict past usage (non repudiation)?

Datavillage creates the Digital Twin for people that is made powerful by combining a set of three key elements:

  • DigitalTwin represents the graph of knowledge of the person. It gathers all his behavioural historical data and connects them to represent the individual digital life.
  • The Linear Consent Management is constituted by the evolving consents given or revoked by end users for a given period, in order to allow companies to process personal data for a specific purpose.
  • DataCage allows organizations to ask questions and get answers to provide insights and hyper-personalized services without having to access and store user data permanently.
Datavillage product

By orchestrating these elements, Datavillage gives to organisations the opportunity to:

  • Be data responsible: Show the world your business respects and values its users most important asset: their personal data by using their DigitalTwin and LinearConsent
  • Understand users better: Query the DigitalTwin of your users in a secured way ensuring that the property of the data remains theirs with the DataPass.
  • Reward your users: Offer them exclusive personalised experiences with the outputs given by their DigitalTwin and win their hearts and trust.

Our team has been working and exploring the use of personal data for over a year. We believe that the ownership of data should be a fundamental right for every human being. Today, most people are digitized and produce tons of data. Having a user-centric approach to dealing with the data ownership problem could actually solve it, but also offer endless new opportunities for people and organizations.

Stay tuned for more or get involved if you’d like contact@datavillage.me

Lebeau Frederic

Written by

The learning cycle must constantly iterate between theory, practices and intuitions. Putting innovation into action.

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade