Finding the missing piece of Borges’ Map — it’s personal

The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) recently published an essay entitled Borges’ Map: Navigating the world of digital disruption. It draws an analogy with Jorge Luis Borges’ description of a fictional Empire in which the cartographers were so intensely occupied with producing a map as detailed as possible that they ended up with one the same size as the Empire itself — that is, a map of 1:1 (life size) scale. The report likens this to the digital world we live in now: data of all kinds powers services, guides businesses and aspires to map our life to the most minute detail, just like Borges’ map. This “hyperscaling”, it says, is the “third wave of digital disruption” (3), and “demands a bold, new architecture for business” (4).

But what about the individual? This data ‘map’, unlike Borges’, is not just one large collection of freely-accessible information. Individuals must be able to control their own data, use it to interact with others, prove who they are, express what they want and what they don’t. In a digital ecosystem as described by the paper, constructed of layers and stacks, there is both space and necessity for the individual to be an active participant.

Keeping up with the rush

The implications of such a vast ecosystem of data are exciting. As the paper describes, “each arbitrarily small agent — whether a person, a thing, or a function — reads whatever parts of the map are needed to get to its goal” (10). The potential is huge. The difficulty level for business to participate, however, appears very high. The tendency is to create a ‘walled-garden’, a proprietary infrastructure, database, front-end and so on to bring a business into the digital realm. This may work for a while, but as the amount of data and the ever-increasing demand for it rises exponentially, this stops being a scalable or viable model.

Big, bigger, biggest

The paper points out the vast volumes of data being generated from multiple sources (9). 2.3 billion broadband mobile connections in 2014. 50 billion IP-enabled sensors by 2020.

The volume of data allows huge potential for greater insight. As the paper points out, “since larger data sets yield better insights, big is beautiful. Data wants to be big, and businesses struggle to keep up” (9).

Borges map: putting it all together

But all this data from disparate sources does not end up in one place. “The asymptote is where sensing, connectivity, and data merge into a single system”, says the report (10). An ideal world would see this data come together to indeed create Borges map — to “array the granular in the context of the universal” (10). Data becomes the backbone on which insights are based. The paper importantly differentiates between data and inference. Data is the driving mechanism, the infrastructure, and long term in nature, creating the backbone of the ‘map’ that reflects our reality. Inferences are what we learn from the data as and when we need to. There is an opportunity, says the paper, for everyone: “Polarizing economics of mass are pushing the advantage simultaneously to the very big and the very small, and a new architecture is emerging for businesses of all sizes” (10). There is a huge number of possibilities opening up for providers of infrastructure on a huge scale, and providers of ‘problem solvers’ for specific applications of the data produced.

“The architecture of the stack”

The result? A structure teeming with services large and small, combined and continually learning from one another to solve individual problems. The paper describes a stack as “layers: shared infrastructure on the bottom, producing and consuming communities on the top, and traditional oligopolists competing in the middle” (16). In a stack, it says, “different kinds of institutions coexist in a mutually sustaining structure, each focused on the activities where it has an advantage” (16). The different institutions are summarised by the paper in the graphic below:

The missing piece

The paper cites healthcare as a good example of where this kind of service provision may come to the fore. “Big-data techniques”, it says, “will be used to spot fine-grained correlations in a patient’s genomic data, medical history, symptoms, protocols, and outcomes” (11). And yet, the report also predicts that this will not be an easy ride:

“Of course, progress will be slower than the rush of early expectations. The real hurdle is a profound lack of cooperation […] But even after payers have cajoled providers into addressing that problem, how will all that data be melded when providers […] possess different pieces of the data elephant and view data as a source of competitive advantage? And even though pooled data makes clinical sense, how are privacy and patient rights going to be protected? The fundamental answer is architecture. Health care systems will need an infrastructure of trusted, secure, neutral data repositories.” (12)

Mydex CIC feels both here and in the discussion of stacked architecture that there is a piece missing, a piece that, since we are talking about data generated in an increasingly larger amount about people and from personal devices containing personal information, is quite vital: the individual. Consider the hurdles and necessary elements as stated by the paper — lack of cooperation, (lack of consent and agreement both in terms of use and scope) lack of interoperable data standards, difficulty of data integration, privacy of data, and an architecture that provides ensures trusted repositories for data that are secure. What if the individual became the integration point? An individual-centred, “curatorial platform”, as the paper refers to them (18), that communicates with other, organisation and sector-centred platform offerings and the apps from the layer above it in the stack. This is where and how the individual is integrated into the infrastructure as an active participant, afforded the control they need and are entitled to.

“In many countries, regulators will mandate that consumers (let’s call them individuals, human beings with rights) must have access to their own data” (27), predicts the paper. The assumption is that the individual doesn’t have the data in the first place. If it is the individual’s “own data”, having access to it is not enough. They should be in control of it. This can be achieved via platform providing a secure place to control, manage and — critically — share data from a “neutral / independent person centred repository”, under the control of the individual.

Equipping the individual

Mydex CIC offers powerful pillars of capability that provide the foundation for the the individual’s place in the stack. By providing the individual with a trusted person centred identity that they can use online, they can prove that they are who they say they are without needing to switch to a physical channel to provide evidence. The personal data services that a Mydex Personal Data Store (PDS) enables, combined with the consent and permission management tools built into those services, allow an individual to assert, retain and maintain control over their data in a secure space online. It also enables them to manage and combine datasets, enabling the possibility of an ever-growing, holistic view of their own information. An independent communications layer empowers them to share this data with connecting organisations — integrating with the rest of the stack to achieve a goal or solve a problem, just like the paper’s vision.

The diagram below illustrates where we envisage Mydex CIC’s role in the stacked architecture:

With the individual involved in the ‘curatorial’ layer (where the processes happen), not just accessing services from above the ‘apps’ layer, arrangements around personal data sharing and management are no longer “murky, furtive, undisclosed”, as the paper describes the current dealings (22). “Data sharing will succeed only if the organizations involved earn the informed trust of their customers”, it says. If the individual is directly participating in the sharing and control process, organisations no longer need to earn an individual’s trust; they are interacting with the individual on a level playing field, with data being exchanged under terms defined by the individual, using verified attributes — a process that engenders trust on both sides and streamlines the data sharing process across multiple environments, addressing a major problem cited by the paper. (For more information on verified attribute exchange, see our white paper The opportunity of attribute exchange).

Navigating the map

Mydex CIC believes that the involvement of the individual is vital to the success of the stacked architecture and the digital economy it underpins. Businesses are still able to compete and provide their services, perhaps beginning to “hedge their bets and focus on defensible niches” (26), and yet this incredible, granular map — built upon data — has individuals at its heart, driving the decision making about their own data and how, where and when it is used. As we have referred to in previous posts such as our series on the Citizens Advice Bureau report on personal data empowerment, the imperative in the synthesisation of all the data out there is ensuring the appropriate control mechanisms are in place, as well as a set of guiding principles focussed on the individual and their data.

Introducing a person-centred means of collection, organisation, access, sharing and control enables individuals to interact with the the wider ecosystem on an equal basis with organisations. This could remove the need for organisations to ‘claim’ trust — it would be built in from the ground up. It could prevent the need for constant review of regulation — individuals make the choices about what happens to their data, from a platform built for them, not individual silos governed by large corporations. Using the individual as the point of integration for data, where all their information comes together under their control, solves the huge headache of information scattered across hundreds of databases, difficult to unify, difficult to use and reuse.

We believe this is the missing element in an otherwise extremely promising and necessary stacked, open ecosystem, and we think Mydex CIC has just the right attributes to complete the puzzle and navigate the map.

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