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Local Data Should be Locally Owned

New models of data ownership mean we should champion local ownership of local data

Stuart Mills
Towards Data Science
4 min readAug 7, 2019

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There are two economic conversations gaining momentum which look set to collide. The first is local wealth creation: how do we ensure local investment creates wealth that stays in and is controlled by the local community? The second is data ownership: what are the alternatives to our current laissez faire data ownership model which returns control and oversight to stakeholders?

What is Local Data?

Local data refers to data that generates value primarily when applied to the community that generates it. To an extent, all data is local. For example, your likes and interests are most valuable when used to more accurately targeted you with ads. If your data is used to target someone else, the data may be useful, but it will probably be less valuable. Thus, local data’s value is not exclusively tied to locality, but primarily.

Making Connections

As data becomes the most valuable resource on the planet, much of this value will emerge from its applications at the local level, be it at an individual, municipal or national level.

Local wealth creation is intimately related to data ownership. For example…

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Towards Data Science
Towards Data Science

Published in Towards Data Science

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Stuart Mills
Stuart Mills

Written by Stuart Mills

Behavioural Science Fellow at the LSE. Personal Blog. twitter.com/stuart_mmills

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