We can afford what we can actually do — 3

Increasing financial constraints mean families, organisations and Governments are spending less money on the things they want and need, generating a doom spiral of decline. We need to find ways to expand what we can actually do outside of the straitjacket of ‘we can only do what we can afford’. This third blog in a three part series, looks at how we at Mydex are working to expand what we as communities and as a society can actually do..

In the second blog in this series we looked at eight interconnected ways of expanding ‘what we can actually do’. They were:

• think capabilities (not just targets);
• think genuine productivity (not just cuts and savings);
• think mutual self help (to escape dependencies on external funders);
• think clubs and communities (which provide agency, and not just markets and states, which take it away);
• think institutional innovation (not just working within existing institutional constraints);
• think genuine investment (and not just financial extraction);
• think demonetisation (all the things we can do without money having to change hands); and
• think Fair Process (because that’s the best way to do all the above).

Here is how the work we (Mydex) are doing fits this agenda.

Think capabilities

Mydex’s data sharing platforms are a new form of infrastructure whose whole purpose is to expand what we can actually do with data. This includes expanding what we can do with the data itself (especially in terms of productivity) and, therefore, what we can actually do in terms of the services that this data makes possible. New data capabilities are all about expanding people and organisations’ ability to actually do stuff.

Think genuine productivity

In our work we enable safe, efficient data sharing and reuse so that the right people and organisations can access and use the right, reliable data at the right times. As our White Paper on the Surprising Economics of Personal Data shows, this cuts a huge amount of FERC (Friction, Effort, Risk and Cost) out of existing processes, enabling people and organisation to do a lot more with the same resources. Everything we do is about enhancing genuine productivity.

Think mutual self help

Right now, a lot of the work we are doing is in what we call health and care ‘clusters’. This is where many different people and organisations all come together to better address a particular group of peoples’ particular needs. These clusters are a form of mutual self help in practice: different people and organisations coming together to share data and coordinate activities in order to help each other to produce better outcomes.

Think clubs and communities

The clusters we are working within in health and care are a form of club where everybody contributes their bit and everyone gets their share of the benefits. In addition, we have built an entire platform called Inclued to enable the data sharing that helps people share data and coordinate activities in mutually supportive communities.

Think institutional innovation

Mydex is a Community Interest Company. Yes, we make and spend money like every other organisation, because we live in a world constrained by ‘we can only do what we can afford’. But we don’t do what we do to make money out of it. We make money in order to invest it in our purpose: to advance the community’s interest when it comes to personal data. Everything about our legal form is designed to ensure this happens. CICs are a continuation of the long tradition of institutional innovation we referred to in the second blog of this series [LINK].

Think genuine investment

Mydex exists because, thankfully, some genuine investors still exist (as opposed to multiple ‘investor’ saboteurs who are only interested in financial extraction). We wish there were more genuine investors and fewer saboteurs!

Think demonetisation

One of the things that perplex people about Mydex data platforms is that no money changes hands for data. We are not building a market for data. We enable non-monetised data sharing for mutual benefit. That doesn’t mean it isn’t economically valuable or doesn’t make economic sense. Quite the opposite. Non-monetised data sharing unleashes enormous personal, social and economic value because of the productivity gains it unleashes and the opportunities for innovation it creates. In demonetising data, we are helping to demonetise genuine wealth creation.

Think Fair Process

Everything about Mydex as infrastructure and as an institution is organised around one thing: giving individuals a real say over how their data is used. Because this data is used to provide most services, this extends to giving people a say in how the services they used are organised and delivered. At one level, personal data stores are a technical solution to a technical data problem. But they are a lot more than that. They are also engines of human rights.

Conclusion

Throughout their history humans have wrestled with the paradox of having to work within constraints they are confronted with and cannot avoid while also working out ways to lift these constraints.

Today, increasingly harsh constraints of ‘we can only do what we can afford’ are closing down options for families, organisations and Governments, tipping them into a spiral of decline. That can only mean one thing: the quest to lift those constraints — of finding ways to expand what we can actually do — it also growing in importance as every day goes by. It’s the responsibility of all of us — no matter what circumstances we find ourselves in and no matter what level of responsibility or authority —to look for ways break out of the straitjacket of ‘we can only do what we can afford’ and to find ways to expand ‘what we can actually do’.

This is our quest. We hope you will join us in pursuing it.