Data is a Product

25th May 2018 - it's just over a year until the General Data Protection Regulations come into force. From this point on, organisations who provide products or services to EU citizens will need to abide by the new  rules (regardless of where they are based) or face the rather scary consequences. I'm not going to talk about the Principles or Rights here (attend one of the events run any good data specialist consultancy if you don't know about them yet). What I am going to do here is think about how 'consumers' could react once the rules come into force. Firstly, do people even care about data protection regulations? You can look in any newspaper and read stories of data breaches, lost laptops, hacks and so on to get an idea of the possible level of knowledge. Everyone who is even a little bit savvy about modern business practices will know that sometimes their data could be lost or stolen. However, how many people actually react to these events? Were you one of

Happy New Year! 2017 is well underway and as things in Politics and Society continue to go in uncertain directions, data is perhaps one area that can be more certain: More data (open, shared & closed) More hacks & security issues More awareness of the law More challenges to fact based decision making Hopefully a focus on schemas & infrastructure Instead of regurgitating my views from an earlier article , check out my thoughts given to Data IQ (note: this was done as part of my day job). I'd also recommend a look at these Open Data predictions from the Guardian . Have a great 2017!