GDPR Trends

I just took a look at the recent search trends on GDPR with Google Trends. Please take a look:

The regulation was approved on the 14 April 2016. The enforcement date was last week exactly where you see that big peak in the picture.
For first I thought that the source of the search queries were mostly not companies but people looking for more information on the new regulation. If you take a look at the map below you will see that in some of the cantons the interest is significantly lower than in others. Zug, Basel, Genf and Tessin are with the most search queries.

If I compare the geographical distribution of the GDPR search queries to those of the popular reality show Die Bachelorette we’ll see a distribution that is more typical for queries triggered by bigger amounts of people.

Does this mean that most companies react just after the enforcement data of GDPR? What is your view?

Data = Labor?

Being a “data guy” I’m always fascinated how data changes the world and how the world is going to be more data driven.

I did not know I was a dataist until I read the fantastic book Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari (please find a review and links to buy here).

We think about huge corporations all around the world as perfect data processing superbrains looking at every aspect of our lives. Well, in some cases this is surely the reality: just ask somebody in on-line advertising. (Just check out what dimensions Google offers you in their demographic module, or, check out what Oracle can tell about you by just visiting their website).
We as a society are aware of this: by introducing GDPR we made an important step to set limits what our data should be used for.

I know from experience that not all corporations are this advanced. Also we are far from harnessing the full potential of the data and embedding it in our decisions. (We are too much driven by our “System 1” as you can read in an other must-read.)

In spite of this it is obvious that data is the single central element of the coming years.

One exciting aspect is that just by conducting our lives in the digital world we generate data. This data is then used by the economy to generate money. Would it be fair to treat data as labor? Could we even get a salary for allowing corporations to use our data?

I’m starting to read the book Radical Markets from Eric Posner and Glen Weyl today to learn their opinions.

What is yours?

GDPR

I’m very interested in how the execution of the GDPR will look like in real life.

What is GDPR?

Stronger rules on data protection from 25 May 2018 mean citizens have more control over their data and business benefits from a level playing field. One set of rules for all companies operating in the EU, wherever they are based.

This sounds very good, doesn’t it?

For the companies this means some new challenges: the requirements of GDPR are complex to understand, even more complex to implement and they build on an already implemented corporate data governance framework that in most cases far from being GDPR-ready. For small- and middle-sized firms the investment needs are very high in relation to the company turnover.

This is why it is interesting how the EU members will execute upon the regulation. One example is the Hungarian legalization published yesterday. The Hungarian authorities admit that there are only a few interpretation possibilities left open by the regulation. This however allows them to focus on notifying small and medium sized companies about data breaches, whereas the large international players must pedantically execute the regulations.

Of course after a notification a smaller firm must also implement the missing controls – but a large fine is not the primary goal.

Will this be a pattern followed by most of the member states?