{"id":33103,"date":"2025-07-03T15:20:24","date_gmt":"2025-07-03T15:20:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/?p=33103"},"modified":"2025-07-03T15:20:24","modified_gmt":"2025-07-03T15:20:24","slug":"the-uk-weighs-up-its-data-assets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/?p=33103","title":{"rendered":"the UK weighs up its data assets"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> \n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for free<\/p>\n<p class=\"article__content-sign-up-topic-description o3-type-body-base\"><span>Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><iframe class=\"article__content-sign-up-iframe close\" scrolling=\"no\" id=\"signUpIframe\" data-prev-url=\"\/register\/in-article-sign-up?ft-content-uuid=7585ed49-3e2c-4863-b0dc-a8a2942e9b9c\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<div id=\"article-body\">\n<p>The UK government wants to sell anonymised public data. That makes sense. There\u2019s lots of it and more is accumulating every minute. Totting up industry revenue, the European Commission <a href=\"https:\/\/digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu\/en\/library\/european-data-market-study-2024-2026\" data-trackable=\"link\">projects<\/a> that UK data companies will garner revenue of \u20ac30bn this year; add in the EU and it\u2019s \u20ac145bn. <\/p>\n<p>As for governments, how might they put a price on information? Data may be this century\u2019s oil, but it doesn\u2019t come in barrels at a daily-benchmarked price. Oil costs the same whether the buyer is an airline or toy manufacturer; data\u2019s value is often dictated by how it will be used. It doesn\u2019t deplete and is \u201cnon rivalrous\u201d, meaning a given data set can be used simultaneously by multiple parties.<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s a time value of data too. One example: data that can be acted on in capital markets has maximum utility \u2014 and profit \u2014 to those who can act on it first.<\/p>\n<p>Either way, it\u2019s profitable stuff. Gartner, a US consultancy which lives off its data and research capabilities, creams off a gross margin of 74 per cent in the segment. That\u2019s the sort of profitability associated with low-cost businesses such as enterprise software, where users typically pay recurring fees and the cost of adding a new customer is negligible.<\/p>\n<p>Fittingly, purveyors tout Data as a Service (DaaS). This works best on a subscription model, the preferred route for industry-specific data providers, such as Bloomberg for finance or the likes of Nielsen for advertising. All but a few percentage points of Gartner\u2019s research revenue comes from this source too.<\/p>\n<p>Some government data may be suitable for selling on that basis as well. Other, less high-frequency data may not \u2014 such as those planned <a href=\"https:\/\/heywoodquarterly.com\/dinosaurs-data-and-digital-policy\/\" data-trackable=\"link\">137mn dinosaur and other specimens<\/a> being digitised at the Natural History Museum. Even seemingly basic data sets incur chunky costs: digitising analogue records, data centre upkeep and using sensors or other tools to capture information.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"n-content-image n-content-image--full\" data-component=\"image-set\"><picture><source media=\"(min-width: 700px)\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/__origami\/service\/image\/v2\/images\/raw\/ftcms%3A9c742672-1398-4b2f-9ab5-d66473d9c0f6?source=next-article&amp;fit=scale-down&amp;quality=highest&amp;width=700&amp;dpr=1 1x,https:\/\/www.ft.com\/__origami\/service\/image\/v2\/images\/raw\/ftcms%3A9c742672-1398-4b2f-9ab5-d66473d9c0f6?source=next-article&amp;fit=scale-down&amp;quality=highest&amp;width=700&amp;dpr=2 2x,https:\/\/www.ft.com\/__origami\/service\/image\/v2\/images\/raw\/ftcms%3A9c742672-1398-4b2f-9ab5-d66473d9c0f6?source=next-article&amp;fit=scale-down&amp;quality=highest&amp;width=700&amp;dpr=3 3x,https:\/\/www.ft.com\/__origami\/service\/image\/v2\/images\/raw\/ftcms%3A9c742672-1398-4b2f-9ab5-d66473d9c0f6?source=next-article&amp;fit=scale-down&amp;quality=highest&amp;width=700&amp;dpr=4 4x,https:\/\/www.ft.com\/__origami\/service\/image\/v2\/images\/raw\/ftcms%3A9c742672-1398-4b2f-9ab5-d66473d9c0f6?source=next-article&amp;fit=scale-down&amp;quality=highest&amp;width=700&amp;dpr=5 5x\" width=\"3500\" height=\"2500\"\/><source media=\"(max-width: 490px)\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/__origami\/service\/image\/v2\/images\/raw\/ftcms%3A54152017-2332-4e2d-abc4-7ba1b3bfd0d3?source=next-article&amp;fit=scale-down&amp;quality=highest&amp;width=490&amp;dpr=1 1x,https:\/\/www.ft.com\/__origami\/service\/image\/v2\/images\/raw\/ftcms%3A54152017-2332-4e2d-abc4-7ba1b3bfd0d3?source=next-article&amp;fit=scale-down&amp;quality=highest&amp;width=490&amp;dpr=2 2x,https:\/\/www.ft.com\/__origami\/service\/image\/v2\/images\/raw\/ftcms%3A54152017-2332-4e2d-abc4-7ba1b3bfd0d3?source=next-article&amp;fit=scale-down&amp;quality=highest&amp;width=490&amp;dpr=3 3x\" width=\"1500\" height=\"2000\"\/><\/picture><\/figure>\n<p>A key challenge will be to create a data exchange that allows data providers and users to find some kind of clearing price. That would ideally factor in variables such as the cost of production, maintenance and the value to end users, allowing for data to be benchmarked.<\/p>\n<p>Efforts to develop such exchanges have yet to gain traction. There are plenty in China, where data is viewed as a factor of production alongside land and labour, but volumes are nugatory.\u00a0The pioneering Guiyang Global Big Data Exchange \u2014 one of about 50 in the Chinese province \u2014 has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.chinadaily.com.cn\/a\/202408\/29\/WS66d02501a31060630b925a73.html\" data-trackable=\"link\">racked up much the same turnover<\/a> in its decade-long history as the Shanghai Stock Exchange trades in a week or so.<\/p>\n<p>Naturally, none are as adept at juicing data as Big Tech. Meta Platforms, for example, is moving on from serving up user data to advertisers to doing the entire shebang itself \u2014 deploying artificial intelligence to write and illustrate ads tailored to users based on their data.\u00a0That option is not open to governments. Still, if you can\u2019t beat them, providing them with the digital picks and shovels is a pretty good second best.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/content\/mailto:louise.lucas@ft.com\" data-trackable=\"link\"><em>louise.lucas@ft.com<\/em><\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/content\/7585ed49-3e2c-4863-b0dc-a8a2942e9b9c\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":33104,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tech","cs-entry","cs-video-wrap"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33103\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/33104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}