Growing Canada’s Data Economy
Will we get to $1T Value of Data in Canada before 2030? In mid-2019, Statistics Canada estimated that Canadian investment in “data, databases and data science” has grown over 400% since 2005. At an upper limit, the value of the stock of data, databases and data science in Canada was $217B in 2018, roughly equivalent to the stock of all other intellectual property products (software, research and development, mineral exploration) and equivalent to more than two-thirds the value of the country’s crude oil reserves.
As the world continues to rapidly change around us, ground-breaking opportunities are presenting themselves that will shift the fundamentals of how businesses, governments and citizens function. This shift will be supported by enormous amounts of data, regardless of the part of society in which these transformations take place.
The What & Why
See how Canada is creating value in the rising data economy:
What is the data economy?
The amount of data throughout the world has almost doubled in just two years, with growth expected to triple by the year 2025. With data’s unprecedented growth, important decisions will have to be made about how to use it; and these decisions will determine the commercial success or failure of the digital revolution.
The data economy is the social and economic value attained from data sharing. While data has no inherent value, its use does. When it is organized, categorized and transformed into information that can drive innovation, solve complex problems, create new products, or provide better services its value becomes apparent.
While data can solve critical challenges in our society, most of its value is inaccessible due to the siloed and fragmented nature of most data ecosystems. Governments cannot develop effective policies; business leaders are unable to fully tap their resources; and citizens are prevented from making informed decisions. Leveraging data to benefit society depends upon the amount of connections that we can form between contributors and consumers, among enterprises and governments. A prosperous data economy must be linked to intelligent governance, administered for the good of everyone.
Why does it matter?
- Citizens can assume more control of their data, ensuring its appropriate use and security while benefiting from new products and services.
- Businesses can customize their products to align with their clients and better manage regulations.
- Governments can collaborate on national and international strategies to achieve optimum effectiveness on a global scale.
And what can it do for you?
The profound implications of well-managed global data exchanges illuminate the vision of a better world, opening the window to myriad possibilities:
- Fighting disease through shared research on diagnostics and therapeutics
- Identifying global threats and reacting to them quickly
- Deploying advanced applications to solve organizational issues, unlocking innovation
- Harnessing data to promote environmental health, prevent environmental degradation and protect at-risk ecosystems
- Coordinating data to benefit industrial sectors such as tourism or agriculture
Canada has the potential to create a world-leading data economy, positioning us to develop innovations that will allow us to compete globally. We have many advantages in our favour: a highly trained workforce strengthened by our skills-based immigration system; our government’s commitment to accountability, security and innovation; and our unique history, geography and public policies.
Our success will be dependent upon a collective effort to promote engagement and facilitate the transition to a data-driven economy. Together with its financial investment, Canada must focus on cultivating data literacy among its citizens, as businesses increasingly embrace digitized platforms.
Fast-tracked by COVID-19, investment in data science has accelerated, alongside the proliferation of emerging technologies. By leveraging the opportunities in the rising data economy, Canada can unlock a trillion-dollar benefit within the next decade.
A European Perspective
Listen to a European thought leader’s perspective on the Data Economy:
I recently had the pleasure of chatting with Vilmos Lorincz, Managing Director of Data and Digital Products for Lloyds Banking Group in the United Kingdom. Data is a fundamental currency in financial services, and so developing new approaches for banking protocols is critical to formulating progressive solutions for both clients and industry colleagues.
In response to a demand by the U.K. government for more transparency in financial services, the Open Banking Implementation Entity (OBIE) was set up in 2017 to deliver architectures that give customers more control of their data within a secure framework.
Lloyds Bank undertook a decisive transformation by moving their big data to the cloud and advancing data literacy for its employees, upgrading their capacity to provide benefit to clients. “We had to design the new agile operating model for more than a thousand colleagues,” said Vilmos, “helping them land in their newly defined roles, making the right technology investment choices, while engaging with more than 20,000 people.”
Vilmos emphasized that ethical behaviour is absolutely critical to gaining and maintaining client trust, establishing a company’s brand as honest and responsible partners.
When asked about mega trends that are shaping the data-driven economy, Vilmos suggested three fundamentals.
- Customer awareness: As citizens become more digitally sophisticated, they are keenly attuned to privacy and security issues. They rightfully want control of their data, expanding their ability to explore and select personal options.
- Maturing corporations: The corporate world is advancing its ability to adopt new processes that keep pace with emergent technologies to add value to their business models and to benefit their customers.
- Regulatory bodies: Regulators and governments are playing active roles in adjusting to new market realities, both protecting individual rights and positioning their nation to take full advantage of the opportunities of the rising data economy.
“Organizations are realizing that data is a mission-critical competitive factor and a must-have to meet and exceed customer expectations,” Vilmos explained. “They are becoming much better at deploying machine-learning and artificial-intelligence capabilities as an increasing part of their data estate.”
Vilmos advises business executives to prepare for a fast-evolving future by establishing frameworks that can accommodate the growth of the data economy and by planning how to deliver their products within the data-driven landscape.
Data Transformation Roadmap
Learn how you can monetize your data:
So, how can you get the most value from your data? A knowledgeable and phased approach facilitates a smooth transition from legacy practices and products to processes that tap into the advantages of Canada’s data economy. Defining policies and roles, developing data-sharing control mechanisms, understanding existing and potential data across the company and beyond, and planning best use cases will lead to increased profitability, reduced operating costs, expanded products and services, and valuable insights to benefit you and your customers. And efficiently shared data promotes constructive collaboration with partners and stakeholders, both internal and external.
I recommend a three-step tactic of migration, modernization and monetization. Migration moves the data to the most appropriate cloud environment, or target state architecture, where core data models can be rebuilt and modernized, and then monetized through effective data and digital agile ecosystems that are ready for growth.
Here are two examples of the positive impact of data monetization in two very different industries.
International Airline: Launching a Transformative Journey (Internal Data Monetization)
A large international airline needed to transition to a more streamlined technology landscape with an optimized operating model. Analysis of their current data landscape revealed multiple legacy applications that could not yield the insights required for their growth.
With guidance from IBM, the airline launched a Data Platform Stability and Modernization journey, migrating select on-premise data platforms and workloads to the cloud. Within the modernized data landscape, they could create models for customer and passenger data, then expand the insights to different lines of business, such as cargo, loyalty and commercial applications.
Their data modernization journey has realized three significant benefits. Revenue has been increased through their transformed data sources, channels and products. They have developed a data-driven decision-making culture through the resilient, cloud-based data environment. And their data security and governance has been improved, setting a foundation for realizing a good return on investment through further data monetization and data-sharing initiatives in the future.
Yara: From Bushels to Bytes (External Data Monetization)
“Agriculture is one of the last industries that has focused on systematic process optimization.”
— Pål Øystein Stormorken, Yara
Norway-based Yara is the world’s largest fertilizer producer. It has established a solid reputation as a reliable source of information and a distributor of agricultural products, with an ethical and balanced approach to best practices for food production. Yara is dedicated to the exploration of new technologies that promote sustainable intensification to protect the environment, growing more food on existing farmland and avoiding deforestation. With the United Nations estimate that the population will reach 9.7 billion by 2050, along with alarming statistics on climate change and soil loss, Yara wanted to find solutions to the challenges to the food supply.
Yara partnered with IBM to build a digital farming platform with two new products: weather forecasting and crop-yield forecasting, following a pay-as-you-go commercial model. The cloud-agnostic strategy enables consistent data governance and data security, using DataOps to automate data functions so that its scientists could focus on data models and innovation.
The platform provides holistic digital services and instant agronomic advice around the globe, with the ability to reach 620 million farmers and serve up to 7% of the world’s arable land. These accelerators are just the first of many: an open innovation layer will allow Yara to create new revolutionary algorithms and a cognitive roadmap for farmers through constructive decision-making insights.
This is an example of the power of data monetization, generating not only business value, but also societal value in sustainable practices.
Your Opportunity
Canada will generate value for all of its citizens, industries, businesses and researchers by developing a flourishing data economy. IBM can help you understand and monetize your data, guiding you through your journey as you assess and prioritize your needs, select the right governance and operations models, and design a plan that propels you into the exciting future of data-driven innovation.
Learn more from IBM about the Rise of the Data Economy: Driving Value through Internet of Things Data Monetization.
Read the white paper by the World Economic Forum on Data-driven Economics: Foundations for Our Common Future.
Pavel Abdur-Rahman, Partner & Head of Trusted Data & AI, IBM Consulting
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pavelrahman
