Using the Personal Genome Project (PGP) as an example, Leonard illustrates how complete anonymity is a required ‘sacrifice’ to participate in the Big Data community.
PGP is dedicated to creating public genome, health, and trait data for research, and invites willing participants to publicly share their personal data for the greater good.
While PGP does not intentionally attribute data to any individual, it understands that a surprisingly small amount of data is necessary to uniquely identify a person by name.
Therefore, it does not guarantee privacy, and only collaborates with individuals who are comfortable sharing their data without any promises of privacy, confidentiality or anonymity.
“If you are interested in being a big contributor to the Big Data world, where massive amounts of data can be used by researchers globally for the purposes of finding solutions and cures, you need to accept these terms,” says Leonard.
“Would you put a sensor in your body,” he asks. “I would. I subscribe to the philosophy that the more I know, the better choices I can make.”
Sensors tracking personal health data, if matched against the individual’s genome, can provide critical insight for the individual and his or her health professional.
“More data and insight can tell you what is right for you, so you can make the best lifestyle choices, decide what to eat, what activities you should have in a day,” he continues.
Leonard urges citizens and businesses not to think of Singapore as a ‘Smart City’ but more as a ‘Smart Nation’.
Besides using technology to manage grids and solve other urban challenges, Singapore can look at the bigger picture of how to bring policy, education, regulatory environment, talent together in a way that is much more than technology. Big Data has a huge role in this journey.
He calls on all to ‘#BuildSG’ together, to build talent, companies, and environment that allows Singapore to continue to be a great place to live to work.
Leonard was speaking at this morning’s symposium on Big Data organised by the Wee Kim Wee School of Information and Communication at Nanyang Technological University.
---
Autor(en)/Author(s): Kelly Ng
Quelle/Source: futureGov, 21.03.2014
Bitte besuchen Sie/Please visit:
