-
There is a lot of talk about ethics and privacy of data, and these questions are clearly fundamental (great need to engage the public in understanding the value-added and benefits of using data in this way). But I’d see the main obstacles around ownership and commercial considerations. I think we can see this quite clearly in the current pandemic – there are great repositories of data that could dramatically illuminate our understanding of what’s happening and what to do within e.g. financial transactions, mobile telephone traces, but great sensitivity amongst the data owners to the terms under which these data might be shared for public benefit. More groundwork is needed – we can’t solve all these problems in the midst of a pandemic (though of course have started with institutes like Ada Lovelace – Royal Society also very active in this space).