Page 115 - ITU Journal - ICT Discoveries - Volume 1, No. 2, December 2018 - Second special issue on Data for Good

ITU JOURNAL: ICT Discoveries, Vol. 1(2), December 2018

DATA AS ECONOMIC GOODS:
DEFINITIONS, PROPERTIES, CHALLENGES, ENABLING TECHNOLOGIES FOR FUTURE DATA
MARKETS

Yuri Demchenko, Wouter Los, Cees de Laat
System and Networking Lab, University of Amsterdam

Abstract – The notion that data has value is commonly recognized. However, data value is different from
that associated with consumable goods. There is a number of initiatives to create data markets and data
exchange services. Existing business models of paid or commercial data (sets) services such as data archives
are based on service subscription fees. However, emerging data-driven technologies and economies
facilitate interest in making data a new economic value (data commoditization) and consequently
identification of the new properties of data as economic goods. The following properties are leveraging FAIR
data properties and defined as STREAM properties for industrial and commoditized data: sovereign, trusted,
reusable, exchangeable, actionable, and measurable. Other properties to be considered and necessary for
defining workable business and operational models are non-rival nature of data, data ownership, data
quality, value, privacy, integrity, and provenance. The paper refers to other discussions and projects on
defining data as consumable goods and market mechanisms that can be applied to data exchange, such as
data markets, data exchange, and industrial data space.

Keywords – Big data, big data infrastructure, data exchange, FAIR principles, data management, data
markets, open data, STREAM data properties

revenue from big data technologies and services,
1. INTRODUCTION however, is small compared to the value that is
expected to result in sectors such as trade,
The emergence of a data-driven economy, powered manufacturing, finance and insurance, public
by big data and cloud computing technologies [1, 2, administration, and health and social care that now
3], motivates research and exploitation of data have the tools at their disposal to make innovative
market and data exchange models that can uses of data to drive high-value business and
facilitate/enable effective data exchange as societal outcomes [4]. Unleashing the full potential
economic goods and application-specific of data produced by the digital economy will
integration while protecting personal data, data require both the creation of infrastructure to
ownership and intellectual property rights (IPRs). facilitate data exchange and development of new
market models and mechanisms.
Companies, government bodies, academic
institutions and citizens have access to, and are The fact that data has value is commonly recognized.
increasingly using more, data today than could ever However, data value is different from that
be imagined a decade ago. Traditional data sources associated with consumable goods. There is a
such as company databases and applications are number of initiatives to create data markets and
now complemented by a variety of open data and data exchange services. Existing business models of
social media data or sensors embedded in IoT paid or commercial data (sets) services such as data
devices, including mobile devices, smart meters, archives are based rather on service subscription
c a r s a n d i n d u s t r i a l m a c h i n e s . E c o n o m y fees than measurable properties of data. The quality
digitalization and a growing volume of data has of data sets is in many cases assessed by an
created an entirely new market of big data independent certification body or based on peer
technologies and services to help organizations review by experts. Such models are useful for
capture and extract value from all the data. The specific use cases, but they do not provide

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