Media comment: Mark Taylor comments on the UK's National Data Strategy

The UK Government has published its National Data Strategy to support the UK to build a world-leading data economy.

Mark Taylor, data and digital transformation lawyer, Osborne Clarke said: "It's great to see the government encouraging businesses to consider the transformative power of data.  We're seeing an increase across all our client sectors in the use of data to generate new value, whether that's automated efficiency, new client products or new ways to collaborate.

"Using data in an open, collaborative way often needs a change of commercial mind-set, recognising that opening up data resources may actually be more profitable than keeping everything close to your corporate chest.  Data sharing arrangements need to be carefully structured to recognise the raw value in the data and to allocate the new value generated from sharing it.  Governance and security around shared data also need to be agreed.  There are also layers of compliance to build in, from GDPR to antitrust information sharing constraints, to sector-specific regulation.

"In most sectors, there isn’t yet any standard approach or format for data sharing frameworks or for valuing data.  So as well the government initiatives, there's a lot of commercial and regulatory work needed to build these new data-driven ecosystems – but there's no doubt that data underpins our digital futures."