Singapore
The Trusted Data Sharing Framework helps by providing a common language when businesses discuss sharing of data, as well as sample legal templates.
Senior Minister of State for Communications and Information and Transport Janil Puthucheary speaking at Innovfest Unbound on Jun 28, 2019.
SINGAPORE: A new framework to facilitate the ease of sharing data between organisations was introduced on Friday (Jun 28), as a means to increase trust in Singapore’s digital economy.
Senior Minister of State for Communications and Information and Transport Janil Puthucheary introduced the Trusted Data Sharing Framework during his speech at the ongoing Innovfest Unbound tech event here on Friday.
READ: Singapore plans data portability requirement as part of PDPA update
READ: New office for digital industry aims to help create 10,000 tech jobs in Singapore
The Info-communications Media Development (IMDA) said in its press release that it worked with the Personal Data Protection Commission (PDPC) to speak with industry players before developing the new framework to create a common “data-sharing language”.
Some of the challenges businesses face in this area today include a lack of guidance and systemic approaches to sharing data, establishing trust with partners when sharing data assets and concerns that data sharing could lead to exposing trade secrets or loss of competitiveness, it said.
“While it is widely accepted that intangible assets such as data are valuable, organisations face specific challenges such as ensuring compliance with the Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA) or in accurately measuring the value of data assets,” IMDA said.
This, in turn, can impact their ability to maximise the use of data to develop and bring innovative products and services to market, the agency said.
An example could be a retailer and an e-payments service provider that wants to work together to create more customised shopping experiences and deals, but are unsure how much of their customer data to share with each other to achieve the outcome.
The new framework is thus intended to solve these, by incorporating content from existing PDPC guides on personal data anonymisation and sharing.
It also includes new materials like a guide to evaluating data assets for sharing and sample legal templates to enable the sharing process, it said.
Furthermore, the Trusted Data Sharing Framework can also help improve industry norms by enabling better, trusted data flows for the digital economy – both in Singapore and globally.
For artificial intelligence (AI), in particular, the trusted data would mean more accountability and transparency from the beginning, it said.
This is the latest in a series of initiatives by Singapore to boost the development of AI here.
Minister for Communications and Information S Iswaran had earlier this year introduced the Model AI Governance Framework to guide private sector players on how to use AI solutions ethically.
This initiative won a top award at the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) Forum this April.
The government had also said it will double down on its efforts to build the AI sector here. Minister-in-charge of Smart Nation Initiative said in Parliament an inter-agency taskforce will be formed this year to study how Singapore will develop AI as a strategic capability and become a trusted global hub for test-bedding, deploying and scaling AI solutions.
