An Open Conversation on Data Sovereignty: Reconciling our responsibility to protect student privacy with the critical imperative of preparing our students for effective engagement in a globally interdependent digital economy.
Dr. Carl Janzen recently presented on Data Sovereignty during the School of Business monthly Seminar Series
Dr. Janzen explained that the world is increasingly global, connected, and public. Regulators struggle to grasp how widely our personal data is shared, and are ill-equipped to respond with regulations. The giants in the technology industry now trade personal information as a commodity and rent fine grained access to information to their customers. Individuals everywhere participate in this system, unknowingly revealing far more than they intend, as they participate in what has become a routine and critical digital ecosystem. Educators intent on preparing students to compete in this ecosystem are often similarly unaware of the phenomenon, and consider the many benefits of participation to far outweigh the cost. This remains one of the great challenges in the digital age.
Currently, it is almost impossible to participate in digital life without revealing a permanent record of personal information to multiple third parties. Those third parties in turn become custodians of our online history, our relationships, our ideas, and our preferences. Inevitably, we see that custodians of our information fail in their duty, by circumstance of data theft, by intentional disclosure, and through delegation as part of partnership agreements. Increasingly, our personal information is public, except to ourselves. Regulators across the world have imposed legislation mandating data sovereignty, sparked by concerns of government overreach and exploitation by private entities. These efforts fail to reign in private data sharing in an technology platform that was not designed to recognize the existence of any border. This is further complicated when multi-national corporations hold custody of personal information, and are pressed to share data collected abroad, and are strongly incentivized to monetize tailored access to personal information.
Increasingly, network effects create a situation where private individuals are compelled to participate in this sharing of information. We trust everyone from local businesses to multinational corporations with the care and custody of our personal data, because doing so allows us to connect with our friends and family, to participate in commerce, and to carry on daily business. Educators are faced with a conflicting imperative. We must prepare graduates for participation in the economy, and we must not facilitate their exploitation. As we prepare graduates to excel in the globally interconnected digital economy, we participate in further entrenching the practice of delegating the custody of our personal information to others. Moreover, where jurisdictional limitations such as data privacy laws exist, educators have a very strong incentive to err on the side of participation, because participation in sharing of information has become a requirement for success. While the legal and ethical basis for opting out of information sharing may be strong, the advantages available to those who participate create an overwhelming advantage over those who do not.
Current solutions focus on data sovereignty and data liberation, but at the cost of limiting participation in the digital economy. Perhaps some day we will fully move to data self-custody, though this is opposed by current trends. Private data is simply personal data when it is in the custody of a third party, no matter how well intentioned.