Do we still think this defines personal data ecosystem?

14 November 2012 by

Did you see this whiteboard? The definition showed up at the 14th IIW unconference in May 2012. 

Untitled

“PDEC Consensus Definition. Interoperability is not about swapping massive amounts of data semantically unchanged from one provider to another, but to easily get authorized by a user to grab specific pieces of information on their behalf from lots of sources (often non-PDEC sources), process it and perform actions as desired by the user. e.g. providing input to yet other sources”

This feels too… small. So far it says:

  • Semantics shouldn’t slow getting data. 
  • Authorizations should be easy. 
  • Actions and auths are granular. 
  • Somebody is acting on the user’s behalf (isn’t everyone?). 

This definition doesn’t answer: 

  • Who is the user? Non-person entities like a corporation? Collective entities like families? 
  • What does authorized mean? What does it mean to be authorized? 
  • Is “moving and doing things with data” just a little too broad? Or is this about some context not described here? 
  • Why does this matter? To whom? What is this for? 
  • What constitutes the ecosystem? Service providers? All service providers or just some? Are people in the ecosystem too? 

What’s a better definition? 

Filed Under: PDEC Blog Tagged With: ,
About Phil Wolff

Phil Wolff is strategy director of PDEC, the Personal Data Ecosystem Consortium, a Small Data NGO. Wolff is a director of the DataPortability Project and co-author of the project's model Portability Policy. He's had management, technology, and marketing roles at Adecco SA, LSI Logic, Bechtel National, Wang Laboratories, Compaq Computer, the City of Long Beach, the State of California, and the U.S. Navy Supply Systems Command. On LinkedIn, ORCID 0000-0002-7815-4750, Quora top 250 of 2012. He holds the PDQ Bach Inauthentic Identity Fellowship at the University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople. Phil lives in Adams Point, Oakland, California.