Private Data and Public Value

This book investigates the ways in
which these systems can promote public value by encouraging the disclosure and
reuse of privately-held data in ways that support collective values such as
environmental sustainability. Supported by funding from the National Science
Foundation, the authors' research team has been working on one such system,
designed to enhance consumers ability to access information about the
sustainability of the products that they buy and the supply chains that produce
them. Pulled by rapidly developing technology and pushed by budget cuts,
politicians and public managers are attempting to find ways to increase the
public value of their actions. Policymakers are increasingly acknowledging the
potential that lies in publicly disclosing more of the data that they hold, as
well as incentivizing individuals and organizations to access, use, and combine
it in new ways.  Due to technological advances which include smarter
phones, better ways to track objects and people as they travel, and more
efficient data processing, it is now possible to build systems which use
shared, transparent data in creative ways. The book adds to the
current conversation among academics and practitioners about how to promote
public value through data disclosure, focusing particularly on the roles that
governments, businesses and non-profit actors can play in this process, making
it of interest to both scholars and policy-makers.