Rethinking Personal Data: Trust and Context in User-Centred Data Ecosystems

As part of its multi-year Rethinking Personal Data initiative, the World Economic Forum, in partnership with Microsoft, collaborated to understand the impact ofcontext on individuals’ attitudes towards personal data, and how to practically leverage this information to develop context-aware systems that can empowerindividuals. The research undertaken identified seven variables, both objective and subjective, that influence individuals’ perception of a given personaldata-use scenario. The study also examined individual demographic variables such as age and technological sophistication. Individuals were found to beparticularly sensitive to four of the factors: collection method, data usage, trust in service provider and value exchange. Additionally, cultural and geographicalfactors influenced the relative importance of each variable. With a better understanding of the elements of context, data governance systems can be more user-centred and reflective of individual preferences. For example, “recommender systems” can help individuals with context-sensitive data settings by either allowing for expressed preferences on certain data settings or by making a recommendation on the individual’s behalf.