Valuing public data in Scotland and Europe post-Brexit

Valuing public data in Scotland and Europe post-Brexit

Authors: Angela Daly – University of Dundee, Esperanza Miyake – University of Strathclyde

The public sector gathers large amounts of data about us as we interact with the government in our daily lives and use its services. What happens to this data once it is collected? How is this data used and governed? Who benefits from it? Post-Brexit, how is Scotland addressing these issues and how does that compare to the rest of the UK and to developments in the European Union (EU) and beyond?

These questions guided the Scottish Universities Insight Institute (SUII)-funded knowledge exchange programme we led in 2023-2024, bringing together academics, policymakers, industry and civil society representatives from Scotland, the EU and beyond  to discuss what public data is, how it is governed and how it can be better used – or not – for economic, environmental and social development. Our final project is now published in English, French and Spanish.

Background

Our initiative grew out of the Independent Expert Group (IEG) on Unlocking the Value of Public Sector Data for Public Benefit (UVOD) programme to the Scottish Government (2022-23) in which we were both involved. The IEG focused on private sector use of public sector personal data in Scotland, and produced a final report in August 2023. We wished to continue exploring the issues which arose from the IEG, and to widen their scope by considering how these may play out beyond the context of Scotland, and beyond just the question of personal data. We did this by addressing the following questions:

• What is public (sector) data?
• How is it used?
• What value/s is/are derived from it?

Our SUII programme was motivated by the fact that the gathering and use of public sector data for government objectives in research, innovation and development, as well as service delivery, are key issues internationally. This data is often very rich and comprehensive and therefore has important potential onward value to transform communities, technologies and our environment. However, there are important challenges which arise too, including government access to data held by other actors, especially the private sector.

EU and UK divergence

These issues are highly relevant to the Scottish Government UVOD programme, as well as recent developments in the EU, notably the Data Governance Act and Data Act which create a framework for the development of sectoral data spaces involving data from the public and private sectors and from the public. Since these laws, along with other relevant ones such as the new EU AI Act, have been introduced since Brexit, the EU and UK approaches to governing data are diverging, notwithstanding the UK has implemented the GDPR which remains part of domestic law.

The new UK Labour government has introduced a new Data (Use and Access) Bill to the UK Parliament which would among other features streamline access to data within public services. Within the UK, complications also arise with devolution and local government also collecting data. In areas of devolved competences, devolved administrations sometimes make policy choices to manage and govern the data they hold in different ways to the central UK government. This means there is a lack of harmonisation over the various data collected at local and national levels, making it difficult to understand and analyse how data is managed and governed.

What is ‘public’?

Further complexities exist around what constitutes the public sector itself. The distinction between the public and private sectors differs from country to country and can be deeply contextual and ideological. Specifically in the UK, as Ferguson puts it:

there is ‘a tension at the very heart of the public-private distinction, arising from the fact that we still do not have a clear answer to the question of what makes public services ‘public.’

This is compounded by the fact that a lot of data about members of the public is collected by large, transnational ‘Big Tech’ companies, which can be larger and more economically powerful than some countries. Is this data also ‘public data’? Should it be? The public in any case can also be heterogenous and diverse, and this is not always well-understood or reflected in public (sector) data. To acknowledge this, we used the term ‘publics’ instead of the singular ‘public’.

Valuing data

Finally, how and by whom should data be ‘valued’? If public data is and can be used to create financial value, including by companies, can the public and not just the government benefit from that? What about other forms of value beyond the economic or financial? Our programme looked at social and environmental value arising from public data use, as well as the costs of using the data.

AI

These questions become even more important as we move towards artificial intelligence (AI) which requires large amounts of data on which to train its models. From where does this data come? How is it governed? Does it reflect the diversity of the publics? Who gains, financially and politically, from it? How do such questions further complicate issues around public data for social, economic and environmental development? These are key topics for policymakers and society at large to reflect on, as the EU AI Act is implemented and as the UK considers its own AI regulation.

Themes

In discussing these notions, and drawing on laws, policies and practices from different actors across Scotland and the EU (notably the aforementioned Data Governance Act and Data Act), several cross cutting themes emerged from the workshops we ran:

• Definitions of ‘public data’
• Public understandings of data use
• Digital literacy
• Health data
• Data sharing
• Perception of data in objective terms

Recommendations

In considering the themes and discussions, we devised the following 7 recommendations for policymakers in Scotland, the EU and elsewhere on public data:

1. Definitions of ‘public data’ – we recommend that policymakers recognise the challenge in defining public (sector) data, including who is part of the public/s, and issues of control and ownership over data
2. Public understandings of data use – policymakers should seek to better understand public perceptions of public data and engage with these perceptions around informing publics’ about how their data is actually being used
3. Value- policymakers should identify and assess the meaning of the ‘value’ of

public data, also taking into account how different publics value data.

1. Digital literacy – of both publics and those working in the public sector needs to be increased to augment their capacity to understand and properly contextualise data relevant to their areas and needs.
2. Health, financial and criminal justice data – in these sensitive areas, there is a need to properly acknowledge the complexities and challenges around balancing the ‘opening up’ of data for other purposes (in the public interest) and keeping this data private
3. Data sharing – policymakers and practitioners should acknowledge the tensions here, including vis-a-vis power and resources imbalances between publics and the state, and between publics and companies, and should encourage more, appropriate, data sharing by the private sector with the public sector and publics
4. AI considerations – the increasingly widespread use of AI in the generation (making), analysis and use of (public) data needs acknowledged and its implications considered, . including the costs and benefits of AI, the appropriate role of public data in AI ecosystems and questions of ownership of and control over AI.

Conclusion

Our findings and recommendations inform our activities in engaging with policy processes in Scotland, the UK and the EU, and form the basis for more research, including on notions of value and processes for valuing data, along with the concept of public (sector) data and public interest considerations. To that end, we are in the process of editing an open access book with international contributions from authors situated across different disciplines, sectors and geo-political contexts, which should be published in late 2026.