Digital Sustainability is the logical extension of corporate responsibility strategies
Tags: Sustainability, Open Data, Data, Corporate Responsibility, Wellbeing

“We are sleepwalking into a dystopian digital future of data pollution. If we don’t act now, we risk creating a digital world which will be unfit for our children.” These are the cautionary words of INNOPAY’s founding partner, Douwe Lycklama, and CEO Shikko Nijland. But far from being harbingers of inevitable doom, they are bringing forward a positive message of how we can work together to assume a shared responsibility for our digital future. Just as we are collectively focusing on protecting the physical environment, so we also need to develop Digital Sustainability policies to safeguard the future wellbeing of our digital world.

Data pollution is threatening to overwhelm the transactional ecosystem

The digital age and the exponential growth in data transactions has delivered untold benefits. Transactions — such as sending someone a message, buying something in a store, booking an airline ticket online or logging on to social media — can be likened to breathing. We do it all the time without even thinking. But are we being quietly anaesthetised by the allure of these shiny baubles which apparently come without cost? Douwe and Shikko believe so: “The transactional internet delivers huge benefits but it also comes with some adverse side-effects. We describe this as ‘data pollution’, and we must begin viewing it through the same lens as environmental pollution. But whereas it took over 100 years to reach a crisis in the physical world, we are approaching the tipping point much faster in the digital sphere.”

Data transactions are growing exponentially but there is a worrying lack of agreed governance to manage and safeguard this data. So the data becomes ‘polluted’ — leaking, fragmented, sometimes inaccurate and, most importantly, outside the control of the people and organisations which create the data and who are it’s subjects. And this inevitably leads to a lack of trust because a handful of parties are using this data solely for their financial benefit. Now we must jointly decide on new governance models that will not only protect this data, but also rebalance the data benefits in a fairer way. And critical to that discussion is who should be responsible for the data: what will be the roles for governments, companies and individual citizens?

Shikko continues, “There is a power struggle going on for control of the internet. The balance of power is shifting away from democratically elected governments towards new internet companies which are hoarding our data. And we question whether this is a good thing. For example, consider how Google and Apple are able to dictate whether governments can access their proprietary APIs to create COVID-19 tracing programs. Do we want a limited number of huge organisations to have this level of unchecked power? We believe that power should reside with citizens, and this inevitably leads to a more decentralised data paradigm.”

And this is not just an apocalyptic discussion about societal visions for the future. It also has very practical business implications for the present. With the growing amount of data scandals, we need to realign the ‘data benefits balance’ and put the power back in the hands of the people and organisations that create the data, or we will lose citizens’ trust. This poses a real risk because a decline in trust signals a worsening relationship between businesses and their customers, as well as between governments and citizens. Less data will be shared, and less data leads to less relevance, fewer customers and diminished business success.

We believe it is now time to wake up to this problem, and collaboratively establish new governance models to safeguard our digital environment.

Digital Sustainability policies are the best way to safeguard tomorrow’s digital environment

The clock is ticking but Douwe is optimistic: “We can still change things if we act now. If we do nothing, then others will decide. But we are very positive that we can create a better society if we work together and put in place governance models which will support a more decentralised data future.”

Central to INNOPAY’s strategy is the concept of Digital Sustainability: the idea that we should focus more attention on combating the unintended negative effects of the explosion of data transactions. The cornerstone of Digital Sustainability is the development of Digital CSR policies which will safeguard the role of the people who generate the data.

Douwe continues: “The guiding principle of a Digital CSR policy must be to put the user back into the loop again. If you are a business leader or a public policy-maker, then your focus should be to put the person who is concerned with that data in control. This is called Data Sovereignty, and it concerns your customers, suppliers, employees — anyone from whom you have data. You should provide an overview of what data you have, offer them the possibility to manage that data, and to reuse their data somewhere else.”

Solving this issue requires a deep understanding of the transactional ecosystem, and an openness to considering new ways of doing things. Whilst too many regulators are focusing on the symptoms of the problem (such as trying to fragment organisations like Facebook), INNOPAY proposes a different philosophy which tackles the root causes.

“We support the Open Up, not Break Up meme. Because data is a two-sided market as well; a fact mostly overlooked in any public debate about data, which mostly centres around symptom relief. Breaking up Big Tech is not the way forward. This works against interoperability, which is essential for Data Sovereignty. In the Data Sovereignty world, you know who has your data and how to re-use it elsewhere. So for example you can decide to join another social media platform without ‘losing your friends’.

“Opening Up means that people are able to control their data. So we need an additional layer to the internet infrastructure — we call this a Trust (or Soft) Infrastructure. This will enable the reuse and movement of data in a secure and manageable way. In many ways the GSM infrastructure is already part of a soft infrastructure. If we change telecoms provider, we can still keep our number. The same holds true for payments and banking. You can switch banks and still be able to shop and pay your bills. So why should it be different with data? We seem to readily accept that with WhatsApp you can only call and message people within WhatsApp, while with regular GSM and SMS we would not accept this. Extending this principle to data will give us the missing soft infrastructures which will rebalance the data level playing field.”