This content was created by the Data Sharing Coalition, one of the founding partners of the CoE-DSC.
The Data Sharing Coalition supports organisations with realising use cases at scale to exploit value potential from data sharing and helps organisations to create required trust mechanisms to share data trusted and secure. Organisations from different domains collaboratively define and realise use cases that create new value by sharing data. Besides new value creation, use cases provide real-life insights into necessary requirements to achieve interoperability between different organisations, domains and/or data sharing initiatives.
In our blog section ‘use case insights’, you learn more about a data sharing use case from one of our participants or from organisations outside of the Data Sharing Coalition. Paul Fockens, Co-founder of our participant Sustainable Rescue Foundation, provides insights.
1. Can you introduce your organisation and use case?
The Sustainable Rescue Foundation is committed to helping organisations disrupt the human trafficking exploitation model by integrating existing business best practices, digital technology, academic concepts and legislation to facilitate collaboration. We accomplish this through active listening and participation within the human trafficking stakeholder ecosystem; continuous and multi-faceted networking that includes interest groups, academia, public, private and civil sectors and the innovation arena.
2. Can you explain the current use case status?
The Sustainable Rescue Foundation is building an ecosystem to fight human trafficking. This ecosystem allows participants from both the law enforcement side as well as participants from the victim care side to exchange sensitive information about the type and size of trafficking in the Netherlands. This data is examined to gain a deeper understanding of the MO (Modus Operandi) of the traffickers, we enables us to enrich available information with new data driven insights thus allowing for earlier prevention and intervention.
The Data Sharing Coalition has been involved since the start and they made a financial contribution. TNO and Data Sharing Coalition participants Roseman Labs (MPC) and Pinsent Masons (legal implications) were also involved.
3. What challenges did you face when developing the use case?
There may be many reasons not to share information and /or data, but the main challenge is a lack of trust. Once the participants in a trust framework understand how advanced technology is actually helping to build trust, the initial mistrust is replaced and allows for much deeper cooperation. This cooperation provides a whole different view of the total human trafficking landscape: organisations no longer have tunnel vision to protect their information. They see the wealth of insight that is created by sharing information (we use Multi-Party Computation, or MPC, which allows an analysis of various data files without sharing the data).
In addition, another challenge was the newness of cryptographic technology. We had to gain the trust of the participants that MPC does what it promises to do. To enhance confidence amongst involved parties in this technology, workshops were organised.
4. Which best practices/lessons learned would you like to share?
A lesson learned is to double the estimated time to execute the use case. Both for individuals as well as for their organisations, it requires a paradigm shift to start cross sectoral data sharing. Furthermore, allow time to make participants aware of the end goal and which steps need to be taken to get to that goal. Workshops are a very good means to this end. And lastly, build a script like a protocol with step-by-step instructions as well as describing the impact of every step. Make it as transparent as possible and demonstrate the legal, technical and organisational impact. Essential is the involvement of legal counsel, with a focus on the Dutch Data Protection Authority (DPA) ruling to ensure that every step of the protocol you created is allowed.
5. What type of use case support or expertise did (do) you receive from the Data Sharing Coalition? How can the Data Sharing Coalition be of assistance in the future?
The Data Sharing Coalition was essential in the success of this use case. By using the Data Sharing Canvas of the Data Sharing Coalition, lessons from other projects could be incorporated. The support in terms of program management, the development of the future phases after the initial Proof of Concept and the insight in governance were most important. Furthermore, the Data Sharing Coalition was able to fund a part of the project, which meant some use of commercial software was possible. The Data Sharing Coalition is continuing its support in the next phase of the project in which we are focusing on the value creation for all participants.
Do you want to know which use cases we are realising within the CoE-DSC? Discover them here.
