A fair data marketplace for all

This marketplace is reshaping how people interact with and use information, leading to new opportunities. Yet, it confronts these people and policymakers alike with new questions of the trade-offs between privacy, convenience, and access to information.
In chapter 4 of our latest Information and Communications for Development report, we started to frame what this marketplace (or places) might look like. We sought to understand what the costs and benefits were for people—the producers of much the data, the most valued commodity in this new economy. We tried to abstract from the now almost (worryingly regular) news of leaks and hacks to get a better sense of what might be ways to think about public policies that lead to a more balanced and fair data marketplace. We thought about the opportunities and the risks that are emerging, but also about what might be ways to make data marketplaces fairer in their functioning.