Elias Bizannes is the chairperson and executive director of the DataPortability Project. He is also the founder of the StartupBus, the Silicon Beach community, and works at search engine startup Vast.com, Inc.  Data Portability can be loosely described as the free flow of people’s personal information across the Internet, within their control. It has now become a standard term in the Internet industry in the context of cloud computing, open standards and privacy.  Examples of data portability include:  Your data is exactly that: It’s yours. It should be your right to be able to control what you and others do with it. If you upload your photos to Facebook, why can’t you access them in the community-sharing website Flickr, or edit those same photos without re-uploading them with the online version of Photoshop? No company online should own you. No company offline owns humans, so why can’t you do what you want with your data online?  We are at a point in the Internet’s evolution where there are thousands of services that can reuse the same data. The storage of data is now a separate value function from the processing or output of it. We can now build a world where we have privacy-respecting interoperability and unlock value, in the same way trade agreements between countries have brought a higher standard of living to populations that suffer a comparative disadvantage.  To use another analogy, consider how money is a standard value exchange in all economies. Sophisticated financial systems have been developed that allow money stored in one bank to be transferred to another bank or organization (for instance, when you pay a restaurant with a debit card). This free flow of money in a regulated system has given us more freedom, security, and utility with regard to personal finance. In turn, this has enabled greater economic opportunities in many parts of the world.  So why can’t our personal information work the same way? Why can’t anything connected to the Internet adhere to interoperability standards so that –- with your full control -– data can flow to another system with no extra effort? The answer is that it can, but companies have not yet realized the full benefits of opening their platforms up. Furthermore, it’s clear that consumers want data portability, but they have no way to channel their demand, and as such, companies have not made it a priority.  Data, such as people’s personal information, can lose value over time. For example, a social network that keeps historical data of your occupation, relationships, or city of residence may be inaccurate today if they’ve focused on hoarding your data rather than building a relationship with you that makes you want to keep it up-to-date. Companies that wish to monetize your data or create value (like using your social graph to personalize an experience), will benefit not from owning your data — as so-called “walled gardens” of the past have tried to — but rather by cultivating a relationship with you — one in which they have persistant access to you. The consequences of this way of thinking are profound. Instead of the hostility that comes when users are locked in, it encourages innovation and superior service to ensure that the flow of data doesn’t close off.  Companies can also get a bigger piece of the data pie when embracing portability. If web services could assemble as a “federation” based on trusted data exchanges, they could get access to more timely and relevant data than they otherwise would on their own. The pie is bigger and everyone benefits.  The technology to enable data portability does exist. What we lack in business however, is a cultural acceptance that opening up your data to competing services is beneficial.  What we also lack is broader consumer awareness, or rather, the ability to channel our requests in a way that is understood by service providers. It’s hard to imagine why we needed the Internet before we had it, but now that we do, it has become so crucial to commerce, education and journalism that governments are legislating access to it as a legal right. When it comes to data portability, we as consumers lack a common language for this kind of targeted advocacy.  This is where the concept of the “portability policy” comes in. Whereas a privacy policy discloses what a company can do with your data, a portability policy discloses how a user can access and transfer their own data once it’s stored with that company.  Websites, for the most part, are doing great things for their users, but there isn’t a standard way of communicating what rights they provide. Instituting a uniform portability policy allows us to compare websites side-by-side. It’s a form of disclosure to discharge accountability to a website’s stakeholders, in the same way that capital markets require companies to discharge their accountability through financial reporting.  The incentive for a company to have a portability policy is simple: It builds trust. By disclosing the policy in common terms, you are opening a communication channel with your users and will be able to better manage expectations.  At a minimum, a Portability Policy should answer the questions on the Portability Policy questionnaire created by my organization. (A free tool has also been released that can assist you with this with a proforma.) Not all the questions need an answer; for some industries they may not have relevance.  Take the opportunity to answer the questions and explain why your company has approached the issues of data portability in the way that you have. For example, you might want to explain why you support a specific type of open standard to the detriment of another when answering the question about APIs and documented data formats (e.g., “We support the ATOM protocol but not other RSS standards, because we believe ATOM is technically superior to alternatives.”), or you can give an insight into your future plans (e.g., “We currently allow you to use your existing identities, such as Facebook, Yahoo, and Google, to login into our service. We also support the OpenID standard because we believe in advancing this open effort. However, we do not support authenticating with your Twitter identity because we believe the costs of supporting this authentication outweighs the benefit – few of our users seem to have Twitter accounts. With that said, we are open to changing our policy if demand warrants it.”).  Several companies have already launched Portability Policies. Examples include the .tel registrar, location startup Topguest and media company Tubefilter. As you will notice, each has answered the same set of questions very differently, based on the circumstances of their markets.  The Portability Policy initiative is still in its infant stages and will grow as awareness increases, with more specific questions emerging when issues are identified. In the meantime, you can help by asking companies a simple question: Where’s your portability policy?  - How Data Will Impact the Way We Do Business - How Online Retailers Can Leverage Facebook’s Open Graph - Why You Need to Monitor and Measure Your Brand on Social Media - How Open Data Applications are Improving Government - 5 Ways To Turn Your Traffic Into Valuable User Data  Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Yakobchuk
Most sites already have privacy policies, but with the huge amount of data that social sites are now collecting, a new type of user policy is warranted: the Data Portability policy.