“With more flexible access protocols, public data will be able to constitute a source of value for the 21st century”

Tribune. We are data naive! Although more or less aware that the data are in the XXIe century the equivalent of arable land in the agricultural era or the machine in the XIXe century, we are still insufficiently exploiting the sources of opportunities in this field. Today, in the midst of the Covid-19 crisis, the crossing and sharing of vaccination and test files is still a problem even though the public health issues are glaring. It is therefore a real aggiornamento of policies in this area that we are calling for.

In public debates, the issues are unfortunately often confused: issues of confidentiality, use (the purpose of data analysis), secondary uses (as opposed to the primary intentionality of the data), control of uses (what data, to do what), user control (by whom), sensitivity (what are the potential consequences of interpreting the data). This confusion harms the transparency, the collection, the organization, the valuation of the data. It ultimately undermines the confidence required for economic development to feed on the creation and dissemination of knowledge.

Warding off the fear of Big Brother

A patrimonial, centralized and silo approach still dominates. As the 2013 Trojette report already deplored [rapport de Mohammed Adnène Trojette, magistrat à la Cour des comptes, prônant la gratuité des données des établissements publics], the fluidity of public data in France is not a given. Even between state services: for example, the IT systems of the tax administration and social administrations have very few links between them.

“Especially in times of crisis, increasing transparency and access to information can catalyze innovation to improve existing services or create new ones”

We must be able to free the creation of value without compromise with the confidentiality of data due to the citizen, confidentiality whose principle has been reaffirmed by several European directives. The National Commission for Informatics and Liberties (CNIL) was born in a climate of fear of Big Brother, in particular following the Safari project, [Système automatisé pour les fichiers administratifs et le répertoire des individus] which aimed, in 1974, to interconnect a number of administrative files through unique identifiers.

Today, in the age of Big Data and thanks to new technologies, we must be able to ward off these fears. The stakes are high, it is to deal with the predatory behavior of a growing number of commercial companies, and even terrorist organizations. Blockchain technology can now provide control between stakeholders. As opposed to big data centralized on servers, secure distribution is also possible both for source data and for learning algorithms. Finally, in order for personal data to be limited to personal use as much as possible, synthetic data (aggregated or individual) must be used, which has undergone a transformation ensuring strict confidentiality.

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