Wicked Problems Might Inspire Greater Data Sharing

Global public goods are goods and services with benefits and costs that potentially extend to all countries, people, and generations. Global data sharing can also help solve what scholars call wicked problems-problems so complex that they require innovative, cost effective and global mitigating strategies. Wicked problems are problems that no one knows how to solve without creating further problems. Hence, policymakers must find ways to encourage greater data sharing among entities that hold large troves of various types of data, while protecting that data from theft, manipulation etc. Many factors impede global data sharing for public good purposes; this analysis focuses on two. First, policymakers generally don't think about data as a global public good; they view data as a commercial asset that they should nurture and control. While they may understand that data can serve the public interest, they are more concerned with using data to serve their country's economic interest. Secondly, many leaders of civil society and business see the data they have collected as proprietary data. So far many leaders of private entities with troves of data are not convinced that their organization will benefit from such sharing. At the same time, companies voluntarily share some data for social good purposes. However, data cannot meet its public good purpose if data is not shared among societal entities. Moreover, if data as a sovereign asset, policymakers are unlikely to encourage data sharing across borders oriented towards addressing shared problems. Consequently, society will be less able to use data as both a commercial asset and as a resource to enhance human welfare. This paper discusses why the world has made so little progress encouraging a vision of data as a global public good. As UNCTAD noted, data generated in one country can also provide social value in other countries, which would call for sharing of data at the international level through a set of shared and accountable rules (UNCTAD: 2021). Moreover, the world is drowning in data, yet much of that data remains hidden and underutilized. But guilt is a great motivator. The author suggests a new agency, the Wicked Problems Agency, to act as a counterweight to that opacity and to create a demand and a market for data sharing in the public good.