Cities should mandate access to private sector data for public good, report says

European cities should implement policies that make urban data available by default and use their legislative and bargaining power to require private companies to share data in the public interest. This is one of the key recommendations in a report from The New Hanse, a collaboration between The New Institute and the City of Hamburg.

The Governing Urban Data for the Public Interest report is the result of a two-year programme exploring business-to-government-to-society (B2G2S) urban data-sharing.

Francesca Bria, Director of The New Hanse and former Chief Technology Officer for the City of Barcelona, said that as cities are investing in areas such as clean transport, renewable energy, more efficient buildings, and the circular economy, they need data on electricity and heat consumption, mobility, water management and pollution.

She writes in the foreword: “It is a vision of the smart city that starts from citizens and the major urban, social and environmental challenges to be tackled, rather than from the technology itself: sustainable mobility, the fight against climate change, ecological transition, education, and health.

“At the centre of this vision is the question of democratic control over the data. Data is the raw material of the digital economy, which is changing power relations in our society. Data in cities is a critical infrastructure, such as roads, air, energy, and water. It should be considered a public good because it is necessary to access collectively produced information while preserving citizens’ right to privacy to make better decisions.”

According to the report, cities can require private data-holders to share their data in the public interest through the terms of licences and procurement contracts and as a condition of public funding.

This has proved challenging in the past – the Los Angeles Department of Transportation’s requirement for e-scooter firms to provide real-time data to the city resulted in legal challenges by both Uber and the American Civil Liberties Union, which were ultimately unsuccessful.

Hamburg experiment

As part of the project, The New Institute and the City of Hamburg launched an urban data challenge. It invited ideas for solutions using shared private and public data to help the city better understand  micromobility flows to inform infrastructure decisions. Through this challenge, companies shared data with others for public interest purposes and it was also the first time the city had used the challenge format.

Legal uncertainty was identified as a key obstacle in the experiment and one which could limit data-sharing more widely due to the existence of many and often conflicting laws.

The report recommends that cities should balance privacy and confidentiality needs with the public interest in data accessibility and work with national and EU authorities to gain legal clarity.

To streamline data-sharing, cities are urged to establish a standardised use case repository with common technical frameworks, procedures, and contracts.

Another recommendation is to “institutionalise data-sharing by building urban data intermediaries” to address complexities. These intermediaries would follow agreed principles and could range from a contract between the city and other parties to a fully fledged organisation focused on data-sharing.

“Embrace experimentation as a vital step, even if outcomes are uncertain, to adapt processes for future innovations,” a statement from The New Hanse said. “Experiments at the local level can inform policy and scale nationally and across Europe.”

Delicate balance

Jan Pörksen, State Secretary and Head of the Senate Chancellery of the City of Hamburg, writes in the report. “In many policy fields, decision-making could be further strengthened if we were able to not just use the data we hold ourselves but also access privately produced and held data from companies and organisations.

“Accessing this valuable private urban data for the public interest in a reliable and constitutionally sound way is an intricate challenge though. We must delicately balance the legitimate interests of data holders on data protection, trade secrets and IT security whilst demonstrating the envisioned purpose for the public good and fostering an innovative environment.”