Big Data lay at the core of the strong data economy that is emerging in Europe. Although both large enterprises and SMEs acknowledge the potential of Big Data in disrupting the market and business models, this is not reflected in the growth of the data economy. The lack of trusted, secure, ethical-driven personal data platforms and privacy-aware analytics, hinders the growth of the data economy and creates concerns. The main considerations are related to the secure sharing of personal and proprietary/industrial data, and the definition of a fair remuneration mechanism that will be able to capture, produce, release and cash out the value of data, always for the benefit of all the involved stakeholders.
DataVaults aims to address this kind of concerns that pertain privacy, ethics and intellectual property rights , by allowing individuals to take ownership and control of their data and share them at will, through flexible data sharing and fair compensation schemes with other entities (companies or not).
It will deliver a novel framework and architecture that leverages personal data, coming from diverse sources (sensors, IoT, wearables, data APIs, historical data, social network data, activity trackers, health records, demographic profiles, etc.) to help individuals construct their unified personal data hub, collect at a single point all of their personal data in a secure and trusted manner, and retain ownership and control on what to share and with whom, receiving also compensation for the artefacts they place at the disposal of other third parties. In turn, third party organisations (companies, public sector, NGOs, etc.) arrive at a position where they can request and get access to tons of personal data, which can complement the ones they already manage and that can be used for generating more efficient, effective and value added services, engaging with individuals into an entirely new way for data sharing, which generates trust and an increased feeling of collaboration, as the data owners (e.g. individuals) become the centre of attention and the most important partner and collaborator of those third parties.
At the core of DataVaults lies the DataVaults personal data value chain, which could from now on be seen as a multi-sided and multi-tier ecosystem governed and regulated by smart contracts to safeguard personal data ownership, privacy and usage and attribute value to all entities that generate value within this chain and especially data owners.
