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Data Philanthropy is Good for Business

This article is more than 10 years old.

By Robert Kirkpatrick

Robert Kirkpatrick is the Director of Global Pulse, an innovation initiative in the Executive Office of the UN Secretary-General.

The digital revolution of the first decade of the 21st century now has all of us producing vast amounts of data, just by going about our daily lives. Today we are swimming in an ocean of data, most of which didn't exist even a few years ago. One of the defining challenges of the second decade will be to harness this new "unnatural resource" for both commercial profit and public good.

A great deal of the "big data" out there is user-generated content available on the open web — news stories, blogs, social networks, etc. But a great deal of it isn't. Instead, it's what's called "massive passive data" or "data exhaust." It's the personal data corporations collect about what products their customers buy and about how they use digital services. Corporations today are mining this data to gain a real-time understanding of their customers, identify new markets, and make investment decisions. This is the data that powers business, which the World Economic Forum has described as a new asset class.

Mobile phones — and mobile services — are exploding across the developing world, and that means people in these countries are generating plenty of data. The potential to analyze this data exhaust also has exciting implications for the way we do international relief and development work. In today's fast-moving, hyper-connected, and volatile world, data and real-time analytics can drive greater public sector agility in protecting vulnerable populations from shocks, in order to keep global development on track.

Consider: MIT researchers have found evidence that changes in mobile phone calling patterns can be used to detect flu outbreaks; A Telefónica Research team has demonstrated that calling patterns can be used to identify the socioeconomic level of a population, which in turn may be used to infer its access to housing, education, healthcare, and basic services such as water and electricity; and researchers from Sweden's Karolinska Institute and Columbia University have used data from Digicel, Haiti's largest cell phone provider, to determine the movement of displaced populations after the earthquake, aiding the distribution of resources.

At Global Pulse, an innovation initiative of the UN Secretary-General, we believe that analysis of patterns within big data could revolutionize the way we respond to events such as global economic shocks, disease outbreaks, and natural disasters. Our team of data scientists, open source hackers, and international development experts functions the way an R&D lab does: asking questions, formulating and testing hypotheses, building prototypes and collaborating with partners within and outside the United Nations to develop methods for harnessing real-time data to gain a real-time understanding of human well being.

We're in discussions with corporations about how their digital services could be used as human sensor networks to detect the early warning signs that communities are losing jobs, getting sick, not getting enough food, or struggling to make ends meet. Now we need to find a way for the private sector to share, safely and anonymously, some of what it knows about its customers to help give the public sector a badly needed edge in protecting citizens. It's the concept that has been called "data philanthropy."

The companies that engage with us, however, don't regard this work as an act of charity. They recognize that population well being is key to the growth and continuity of business. For example, what if you were a company that invested in a promising emerging market that is now being threatened by a food crisis that could leave your customers unable to afford your products and services? And what if it turned out that expert analysis of patterns in your own data could have revealed all along that people were in trouble, while there was still time to act?

Data philanthropy could make a real difference, and it makes good business sense as well. To get there, we need to work together to develop a viable approach that contributes both to public good and business continuity, while also protecting both individual privacy and corporate competitiveness. Global Pulse will be talking about big data for the public good at the O'Reilly Strata Summit in New York (being held today and tomorrow). The time has come for companies to recognize the importance of using their data to help the United Nations understand what is happening to the world's citizens — their customers.