Fair Data Society Days - Sille Sepp: Making MyData happen in Cities

hello so um sila is the program leader in my data global and i think i can safely say that she is one of the driving forces behind my data also active on many areas but her interests include the data in connection with cities and she will present some cases of personal data in connections with cities next so um please thank you i will share my screen and can you confirm that you also see this light yes i can very good so hello everyone and and really um big thanks uh to the for the invitation to this uh event and and also thank you for um for the fellow uh presenters for the great talks already really interesting and and relevant points shared uh already and i hope that my presentation can also build uh on top of that um so my name is sila zepp and as church already mentioned i'm the programs lead at at my daytona global um and in my talk i will be sharing a little bit more about the bigger picture around the idea of my data human-centric approach to personal data and how to also make it happen in the context of cities where we might live or as it is where we might but we might a visit um i will go through uh four main points um share a little bit about why are we even talking about this why is this a relevant question um then shared a little bit more about what is even my data and what is my data operators as infrastructures for those who might have not heard about my data then to look at a little bit also for the use cases um and and who is putting it in practice um especially for the cities as as entities and also look into the future of of what's next what still needs to be developed so without any further ado let's drive in uh right away into the first part which is why are we even talking about this um so when you're thinking about the cities that you're living in or that you visited you surely right away also noticed and realized and that cities are much more than just the built environment around us um cities as ecosystems consist of many different services and bring together the different stakeholders to to make those services happen those services are becoming increasingly much more digital cities are building deploying different sensors different devices and technologies and that make it possible to collect more and more data about the surrounding environment of course but also data about people living in the city and the practices that happen on a day-to-day basis and we can say that cities are building a so-called digital twin uh with whom or on based uh what's uh to to deliver then services much faster much more efficiently and much of this data is also personal data and the sharing and the reuse of uh personal data is also becoming increasingly important for cities in or in order to provide um digital services to their citizens uh in a much more personalized and better way and yeah due to also the the recent developments in data analytics ai machine learning all this uh makes it possible also for the paradigm shift that like ivan roomba mentioned that there is a need for being from reactive to become more proactive and cities want to do that as well to serve their citizens in a much more personalized way cities are particular though that when they're doing that they are usually working together with private sector entities that would then build those uh services uh for for them and um private sector entities are also often much more technology than technologically developed their business logic might be around um yeah capturing as much of the market as as possible and one of the strategies to do that is to provide end-to-end technologies which can leave cities dependent on on certain standards certain products and also locked in with with certain private sector entities for those tech companies for many many years and with that in mind there's also a quite urgent need to for cities to become much more capable to ensure that the infrastructures that are built the tools that are used the services that are developed are built responsibly and sustainably and that the citizens interests are are well protected and they remain in control over their own data a couple of examples from the around the world uh you might be aware of the case in toronto from a couple of years ago when the city started or wanted to collaborate with sidewalk labs a a part of the company called alphabet a brand company of google and they decided to have this vision for a really high-tech utopian uh future city and that would deploy a lot of sensors technologies to and that would gather a lot of data around about the citizens that caused a lot of alarm in the city among the citizens privacy and governance activists etc and and that's uh concern these concerns ended up um um or resulted that the city uh stopped the project um of course this is just one case um but it showed how important is that the citizens are involved and there's a great uh good governance around how these projects are are implemented a much better example can be brought for example from the city of barcelona in europe where it's the city has for many years already worked to renegotiate this power from the tech companies and they do it in in a way that they would deploy certain um yeah provide even certain incentives for the for the companies and the procurement logic to use open standards better governance models that also make it possible for the citizens to understand how their data is being used and for one example is that the ethical digital standards that the city is has been put forward there are of course other many many other cities also uh working uh on this and putting their strategies into um effect um and i would say that this is only increasing in the world to figure out how to make sure that the cities are much more data driven but while they're doing that also be ethical and unsustainable in that so what are the opportunities for cities and why are they also well positioned in um for developing human-centric solutions we could look at cities as entities um cities as public administrators hold a lot of data and by sharing and reusing that data with also citizens they can make and develop quite good innovative services they can generate meaningful insights for the government as well as for the citizens and and yeah provide services in a much more proactive way cities are also responsible for the economic development of the innovation and they're well positioned to bring all those stakeholders together and one of the key things is that cities are also responsible to ensure that they are stay accountable to their um citizen citizens and when they are successful in that they are of course also much more trusted because they are close to to them and by providing services well to them citizens might be eager to also work with cities more another way to look at it though is cities as areas as environments and with that cities are great testing grounds sandbox areas and to bring all those stakeholders together and facilitate and convene those interactions and build a trust framework around this and so with that they are a good and trustworthy partner for um for piloting and developing those services one of the key things is also that cities realize that just they're just one city among many others and in order to provide value to to its citizens to its employers visitors and they see a need to remove friction when the citizens are moving between cities and constantly also develop and incentivize the creation of more interoperable services in the wider ecosystem especially when those citizens would move even across borders and one important thing that i would like to also highlight is that this is not only a issue of public and private partnerships the ppp model but also adding one more p which is the people and um when we would uh even um and and with that making sure that the people are involved in those developments that their voices are heard and when we would zoom into the last p and then it would could be even the issue of how community initiatives can be built based on data about them how can they build for example data commons etc for uh yeah for providing value to the local communities and and the individuals there living there so all of these opportunities and potential are of course great but it doesn't come without challenges um so that's why we talk about the issues around trust around sovereignty ethics governance etc about whose voices are heard when those developments are made uh how how to ensure that the partnerships that are created are done responsibly and uh and ethically which then brings me to the second point uh of uh of today uh which is uh what is my data and how can it uh help those um uh tackle how to tackle those uh issues and also uh together with the idea of my data i would like to introduce a little bit at the work around my data operators so for those who haven't heard about the my data model or my data vision and the core idea really is that individuals like you and i should be in the con in control of data about them and while the notion of control is of course also challenging um many people don't even like that the idea is that individuals should have a meaningful way to know what data is collected about them have a say also how it's being used reshare it and generate insights based on it and and also take it back from companies if they don't want that anymore um the minded approach aims with that to strengthen the digital human rights of individuals while then also opening new opportunities for businesses to develop innovative services based on personal data and mutual trust so it looks um on this issue from both sides both from the individuals as well as businesses and for the context of cities and this is important because the mighty division could be deployed across different domains and across sectors and then when you look at even the my data logo on the left there are different sectors uh like for example the the train uh representing mobility and transport energy their health retail education etc so you could start thinking about how the vision is implemented in this particular domain minded vision of course needs to be looked at also across uh different perspectives uh it's not only a matter of technology it's not only a matter of regulation it needs to be a combination of business legal tech and societal aspects and that's why we even call this a blts sandwich in the my data community the medical vision is developed implemented practiced by by different individuals and organizations around the world whom we call the mydata community and the community is facilitated and supported by the mighty the global organization so just a few words about the organization as well that you are familiar with it the mighty the global organization is an international non-profit um it consists of both individual members as well as organizations and we work really hard to keep that balance also represented in in the organization so that the interest of both people and organizations are are represented the organization is also present in over um yeah 30 local hubs on on six different continents we're missing only antarctica and and also the thought leadership of my data is continuously developed by the inter international thematic groups um and of course all of these ideas uh come constantly together on the international conference where some of you might have been also been the mission and the really the core vision of mighty the global organization is to work towards a fair sustainable and prosperous digital society and we see that this is possible only through a human-centric approach to personal data and this as i mentioned looks at both sides people get the value from their data and set the agenda on how it is used and on the other hand organization for organizations they can use the data and the ethical use of data is always the most attractive option and in order to reach that vision we need to have three main shifts in the societies we need to move from just merely having formal regulatory rights um for it to be also actionable and meaningful for individuals on a day-to-day basis to exercise those rights and secondly to move away from the understanding that the individuals as data subjects need to be just uh protected from misuse uh to the point that the data is also used in a way that can meaningfully empower those individuals and communities and then finally the ecosystems where this data is used and shared opens up so that there would be meaningful competition meaningful innovation and for example i could change between different services when i want to in order to get a better value so as i mentioned my data is a vision it's an idea but how to make it real and who's making it real so one of the key things how to make it real is through the my data operators my data operators are are the kind of infrastructure level um entity uh in the in the mydata model and it was introduced already back in 2014 in the first white paper and in the declaration shortly mentioned as well together with the roles of data sources data using services and the individual of course as well but in order to even understand better what is this operator really about the thematic group was emerged in last year and they started studying different real-life services that provides him these type of services for indiv to the individuals and um yeah based on that work published a white paper last may i think it was the core idea around my data operators is really that they connect the individual with those roles of the data sources the data sharing the services the yeah and the many different sources and data using services in that ecosystem the operators need different partnerships to for this relationship to to happen and operators also secure the activity in a way that all of those entities also follow the my data guiding principles and what those guiding principles are are described in the mighty declaration there are six of them and my data operators help to put these principles into practice so they help to ensure that human-centered control of personal data is possible that the individual is a point of integration in those data flows that they really empower individuals with those insights scattered that data portability is possible and accessing and reusing the data they ensure also that those services and the ways how the data flows are happening are transparent and they remain accountable and uh lastly but not least that all of those entities become also intro interoperable and here i think the last point is really key that there might be many many different types of my data operators and like i used today might have the proper need to change the delco operator when i want to get a better service i might also decide to have a different kind of infrastructure for sharing my data if if that becomes a need as the field of my data operator type services is still very much also evolving and it has been developing of course around the world for for many years and there might have been made described with different types of terminology different types of descriptions the thematic group also made sure that we don't define it very strictly right away and and instead it may started describing the reference model for a operator type service which um kind of revolved around the nine core functional elements what the operator type service might deploy so some of these functionalities are like identity management permission management service management value exchange data model management personal data transfer personal data storage governance support and logging and accountability and different types of services might implement or provide a different combination of different kinds of functionalities what is important though is that yeah depending on how what kind of functionalities are are used it also affects how the human centric approach to personal data then is put in in practice in the end i won't go through the elements in detail right now due to time but i do encourage you to go through the white paper and and study the the functionalities um a little bit more and this work is not visionary this is happening in real time and in order to really work bottom up there was many interactions together with different services from from asia to to america and to to figure out how are these different services building their infrastructure how are they providing value to their to the individuals and what kind of for example governance models they are also providing um and these um services went through a self-description process last year they studied also other um services models and they were all at 27 of those uh then were awarded as the minded operator um last year um if you are even thinking about that your service for example are similar to the operator type there are new calls opening up this uh this summer so i definitely also encourage you to look through this this work and and if you're interested it would be good to also go through this process um as i mentioned throughout during the principles inter interoperability is really important uh in terms of the my data idea and uh and my data operators and one of the things that we have been working quite closely or much quite much is to ensure that the work that we do really contributes to the journey of interoperability together with those services that all of those services themselves also commit to striving towards it and this is important because uh by uh providing a kind of ecosystem um look to this uh to this work and providing meaningful choice to the individuals this uh these services themselves need to be also um interoperable with each other what does it really mean though like what does it mean in terms of technology technological aspects governance aspects uh business model and aspects this is yet to be uh defined and and here your contributions of course are also very important and welcome so with that i will move now to the point of who is putting the ideas of my data and minded operators into practice um in the in the cities and also we have the understanding of why this is even needed so let's say i put this two puzzle pieces uh together so um last at the third point uh today is the some of the use cases that we've seen in the world like i mentioned there are many many different cities and trying to innovate trying to pilot different services based on the ideas around or similar to my data i mentioned already barcelona there has been a great uh project around of of the code and that also amsterdam was involved and there has been [Music] a lot of work around for example the civic tech aspects the ceo of of kent in belgium has been working closely with the project of tim berners-lee a solid that you might be uh be aware of that is also quite close to the ideas of of my data there's the city of helsinki in finland which i will talk a little bit more right right away i mentioned already toronto brittany runs and and france trenton italy um and leon in france which i will also mention uh a bit more um so let's zoom into those two um and first off leon and and in france um the city of lyon has been working quite closely with the think tank called thing in france that uh went through a a project of messenger's territorial in english it's called self-data cities and one of the results of this research was that it's really important for for cities to start from use cases and to start from the strategic goals that are anyway important for the cities so for example for the city of lyon it was really important to develop goods social services and to make sure that the citizens who are needing those social services and get a better understanding of what opportunities they are they have and so they developed a a my social dashboards a 360 viewpoint kind of about the data that is about them that also uh gives an understanding of what kind of possibilities they have for for example different social services another example then is from the city of helsinki um that's uh that have a data strategy and the data strategy has put forward that by by 2025 um data produced by helsinki is world's most usable and used city data and they have been advocating quite much about the idea of becoming a proactive versus reactive and they want to make that based on my data principles so they're committing to that uh also throughout their work and one example of how they're doing that is uh through a procurement launch last year i think that was looking for a operator service that could build uh the cds operator service to their uh to the city of helsinki and they just launched or announced the winner for uh for it in uh earlier this year and now it's going to be um developed and put in put in practice so i will be i'm very very interested to see how it will be also implemented and how the citizens will be receiving it one of the entities to look at is also networks like for example the open and agile smart cities that have been doing a lot of work in the background and to help cities become more open to become more interoperable with each other and that their services are interpretable so they're developing together with different partners at the minimum interoperability mechanisms they call it mims and the there have been already three mems adopted at the marketplace common data models and context information management and two of them fair ai and personal data management is yet in the works and of course from my data perspective the personal data management the mem4 is really important for us what they're doing is that they're building it or developing it on the base of basis of really the city of helsinki how they're also deploying the the these services in order to then inform uh also how these kind of mechanisms should be should be designed um what is important that the cities uh themselves and the communities are involved in that pro process uh so that they can really uh practice and inform how these should be implemented later on and provide cities them really the minimum common ground to to to implement those mechanisms later on this is just a snapshot there is a lot of work happening also elsewhere for the sake of time i'll keep it here and go towards looking into the future what still needs to be happening in order to put really my data into practice and while there's many different pilots and innovation going on anyway in the ecosystem i would like to highlight a couple of of next steps when you're working with with the city i think it's really important that you also commit to the journey of interoperability to make sure that whenever the services are are rolled out they become possible to also build on top of each other that they're providing a meaningful choice for them for the citizens and for the communities um next up i think it's important to work uh on top of other uh work that is already been rolled out and so keep on using the mem's minimum interoperability mechanisms and develop and build on top of those it's important to figure out better and appropriate data governance models that was also advocated uh i think for from ruben's presentation and to to figure out how the different collab governance models like even data collaboratives cooperatives data fiduciaries traditional governance models all fit together and how they can exist side by side it's important to continue raising awareness and and competencies between or among the data professionals as well as policy makers in the city to help them also even ask really good and tricky questions when they're engaging into or kind of going into those partnerships but also raise awareness among the individuals and citizens themselves to ask and demand for better services and as i was mentioned by the work of a thing in the in the playbook really look for use cases and start from the important goals that are relevant for the city because there's more more value to be to be gained so let's uh continue to make it happen i think it's been already said by both jana and ruben and the host today that collaboration is is key so i look forward to stay in touch with you um and not only to make it happen but that's my data slogan says and to also make it uh right and keep that balance um well i leave you here also some key resources where to read more about my data and i would be of course very glad to see some of you joining us are our members either individuals or organizational members and most of all i hope to stay in touch thank you for your time today thank you silla for that insightful presentation of what is happening in cities and in my data so um yes questions please i have a couple i have to choose the most difficult one i guess yes this data in cities so how do cities tackle the question of data commons data trust storage of this data and is this moving towards the idea of uh european data spaces yeah so like it really depends also the quiet um the level of digitalization in cities i believe that this is one of the risks that cities are the the kind of understanding of those issues among different cities of uh are very different um and there's a risk this divide is only increasing but uh this is a bigger cities can really be the kind of um what is it called the lighthouse um projects or kind of lighthouse cities to steward also other uh work in other cities and um and yeah what they're trying to support also communities to uh to [Music] use the data about them to make it accessible to the individuals to the communities and then make sure that they can generate those insights but what is of course tricky and what can stay as a stopper is the when there's friction coming from the regulation itself or the need to protect data and there it seemed that any kind of use of over sharing of data is a stopper forever or potentially is a risk for misuse of data and breaches of that so i think that's uh is one of the key things to be developing that needs to be developing and and in the work of cities that how can we make sure that it's not either or um but we can build on top of uh protected ways of sharing data and and still make use of that um as well thank you so this is a very interesting topic but unfortunately we have to move on to the next one due to time so thank you stila