The Atlantic Council and Thomson Reuters released a timely report on “Big Data: A Twenty-First Century Arms Race” on June 27, 2017, at a well-attended event at the Atlantic Council’s Washington, D.C. headquarters.  Policymakers all over the world should be aware of the powerful tools at their disposal such as World-Check to address political and economic threats.  This is something of a theme for SIIA.  Recently, for example, we wrote about how artificial intelligence (AI) can help in the anti-money laundering (AML) fight.   We have also written about how FICO’s AML tool works.  The Atlantic Council report contains many realistic policy recommendations, which policymakers from different regulatory “silos” should review.  This is another theme for SIIA.  Regulators and policymakers should engage in regular dialogue with each other.  For example, financial supervisors and privacy regulators should talk to ea ...

Readers of this blog will know that the SIIA and Thomson Reuters-supported Atlantic Council study: Into the Clouds: European SMEs and the Digital Age” was released on October 10 at Aspen Berlin/Germany on October 10.  We followed up in Brussels on October 12 with a lively DIGITALEUROPE workshop and a well-attended Transatlantic Policy Network dinner.  In addition, I met with German and European Commission officials this week.  A few takeaways from these events and meetings follow.  Cloud adoption rates are variable in Europe and surprisingly low in Germany.  Low adoption in Germany derives in part from continuing surveillance concerns but is perhaps equally caused by a preference for in-house solutions, even by SMEs.  Localization of data in-country remains a preference of many German companies and cloud providers increasingly provide that option to their customers who are evidently willing to pay a premium for that service.   The Commissi ...

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).

The Atlantic Council released “Building a Transatlantic Digital Marketplace: Twenty Steps Toward 2020” on April 5 in Brussels.  Later this month, the Council will host another event in Washington, D.C. on the report.  I was a member of the Atlantic Council’s Task Force on a Transatlantic Digital Agenda. The concept of a transatlantic digital marketplace is something well worth supporting.  The Brookings Institution’s 2014 work on the value of transatlantic data flows helped make the economic case for why this is so important.  The 2015 European Center for International Political Economy (ECIPE) paper on the importance of complementary policy for the ICT sector helps explain what policy environment, including on Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) is optimal for the software sector.  The Atlantic Council Report contains many excellent ideas for building a transatlantic digital marketplace such as promoting cross-border data flows. Ha ...