“’As long as you do not fully understand the behavior of your customers, you will not be able to develop any new products,’ said Emily Bell, director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University. Those who develop digital products based on a gut feeling and not on a comprehensive pool of data are flying blindly and can only fail.” —SIIA member Dietmar Schantin of the Institute for Media Strategies writing on the INMA site. Data was one of his five takeaways from a high-profile media workshop he held earlier this year

Yesterday on October 10, 2016 in Berlin, the Aspen Institute/Germany launched “Into the Clouds: European SMEs and the Digital Age.”  SIIA and Thomson Reuters supported the report, which was written by the Atlantic Council’s Tyson Barker.  In connection with the launch, Aspen hosted a lively lunch discussion bringing together academics, politicians, and industry representatives. The report finds lower than optimal cloud adoption rates in a number of European countries, most notably in Germany.  It recommends six policies in order to increase cloud adoption, especially by small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs).

On Friday, June 17th, SIIA hosted a panel that was co-sponsored by the Congressional High Tech Caucus and the Congressional Internet of Things Caucus on assessing the benefits, challenges, and policy implications of the Internet of Things. SIIA has been active on the topic of IoT in recent months both filing comments to NTIA and releasing a white paper on the subject.  David LeDuc, SIIA’s Senior Director for Public Policy gave opening remarks where he said SIIA defines the “Internet of Things” as ubiquitous connectivity where people are not only interacting with their devices, but devices are also interacting with each other. He also touched on the importance of regulatory humility cautioning against an overarching policy framework for IoT to accommodate IoT’s complex ecosystem. The panel consisted of representatives from GE Digital, Qualcomm Inc., and the Center for Data Innovation.  Each panelist touched on both public and private sector oppor ...

At an event in Brussels earlier today, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) released its report titled, “Data-Driven Innovation: Big Data for Growth and Well-Being.” When this happened, SIIA welcomed the report and its findings.

Too often the use of student information by schools and teachers to improve learning is overshadowed by unrealistic and mistaken fears that school service providers are using student information to target our children with digital ads. As I wrote in an earlier blog, current law bans digital advertising based on information that school service providers gather from students and the industry is in compliance with that prohibition.  Unfortunately, these unrealistic fears drive well-intentioned state and federal legislators to consider unnecessary legislation to ban what is already illegal and to stamp out non-existent evils.

The recent FTC workshop “Big Data: A Tool for Inclusion or Exclusion?” posed important questions on whether and how analytics could be used to restrict life chances for people rather than create economic and social opportunity.  The answer lies in the hands of the user of the technology, not in the technology itself.  The critical question is how people use, implement or otherwise act on the discoveries – the indicators, insights and evidence – that data analytics can uncover or reveal.

DOC Announces Creation of Chief Data Officer, Private Sector Advisory Council

SIIA submitted comments yesterday  in response to the White House’s request for information on how the government can best protect citizens’ privacy in the age of big data analysis. We concur with the goals of President’s Obama’s Big Data Initiative to harness the power of data to advance national goals such as economic growth, education, health, and clean energy; use competitions and challenges; and foster regional innovation. Technologists, privacy advocates and policymakers can work together to foster the societal, governmental and business opportunities provided by data-driven innovation, while also meeting the challenge of protecting privacy.