Digital collaboration! When are we going to "really" start doing this?

Digital collaboration! When are we going to "really" start doing this?

Data is the new gold, we need to move towards data-driven working, IoT, digital twinning, Industry 4.0, ChatGPT, the metaverse etc.. Embracing digitization in the right way is one of the biggest challenges or perhaps a headache of almost all organizations I encounter. The technological developments in this area are going super fast, which makes it difficult to make good choices that are difficult to bet on, while it concerns serious investments that are important for the future of these organizations. At the same time, we as humanity face the greatest challenge of keeping the earth habitable. Not least by keeping climate change as limited as possible, and where that is not possible by being adaptive and improving biodiversity, but also by continuing to offer people housing and mobility.

The eternal death eater therefore remains in force even in this digitization violence: Technology should be a means at the service of these tasks. Within the domain of mobility, this is of course perfectly possible. Digitization creates an ever-increasing amount of data that offers the opportunity to better understand and optimize the mobility system. Optimization at strategic, tactical and even operational level. For specific (local) challenges, the availability of data, and thus the possibility of optimization in practice, is also shown.


However, when our goal changes towards multimodal system optimization that includes where we live, work and engage in activities or even the prevention of travel, which is expected to bring great social benefits, we are faced with various challenges in the field of data.

Daring to put together a puzzle

Many public and private stakeholders (such as road authorities, logistics companies and mobility (service) providers) have access to parts of data or information about the system, but also have an increasing influence on the use of the mobility system. If these stakeholders shared their data with each other, they would gain more insight into the total system, optimize their own activities, develop additional services and (research institutes) accelerate knowledge development. With positive individual business cases, it is easy to work together. But what if collaboration in a complex ecosystem of stakeholders is needed to solve social challenges, where the costs and benefits are distributed very diversely? This requires good organization and value exchange between parties (value case). And that is difficult to achieve, especially if the data itself is seen as the golden egg that we prefer to keep incubating ourselves.

Digital infrastructure needed

If there is still a willingness to share data, it is important that this data is shared in a secure manner while retaining its own sovereignty, you can automatically identify and authorize to access data and, for example, settlement can take place. One of the goals within the data strategy is to create data spaces that ensure that data is available for use in society, but where the parties and persons who generate the data remain in control. This is technically a complex task, but a feasible one. In other fields, such as aviation or finance, good examples of this can already be found and the necessary technical components and mechanisms have already been invented. Data security and safeguarding our privacy have plenty of attention, which leads to well-thought-out principles (for example, 'data at the source' and 'algorithm to data'). Steps are being taken in this area within many different domains and at different levels of government, which strongly stimulates the development of the necessary technology.

Technology is not the biggest challenge

Greater than the technical challenge is the organizational challenge of building an effective ecosystem in which stakeholders are willing to share data and collaborate. Already 10 years ago, the roadmap 'Better informed on the road' was presented by the government. This resulted in the data top 5 and the governments at least started to put their own more operational data in order and share it. So yes, technology moves fast. But this also illustrates how long processes take, let alone that there is still no proper regulation of how we are really going to share that data in the triple helix and certainly arrange it from a value case.

Triple Helix

Encourage willingness to share data

Data sharing and collaboration should preferably not be enforced through legislation and certainly not only about government use cases. This would mean that it would become a data platform of the government and you can ask yourself what value you can attach to that data. Thus, there should be sufficient incentives for stakeholders to partner and share data in such an ecosystem. For example, data should be provided by common layers of information available to all members of the ecosystem. And successful use cases must be developed that provide visible incentives. This introduces a complex interdependence and uncertainty in the willingness to invest in such an ecosystem.

Governance and organization of an ecosystem needed

As a result of all this, it is all the more important to determine the governance of such a system in which the role of public parties, private parties and research institutes becomes clear, as well as the conditions and the way in which value exchange between parties is established and settled. These exchanges may differ and facilitating the creation of new value cases requires a set of common rules and infrastructure within the ecosystem. The realization of such an ecosystem and associated digital infrastructure that belongs to all of us is precondition and not valuable in itself. But it does require a serious investment in developing standards, agreements, legislation and the infrastructure itself. This infrastructure needs practical use cases in which the real value is created, which is necessary to maintain such a system.

Growth fund helps, but it's about the mindset

More than two years ago, this was the reason to take the initiative for a growth fund proposal, in which the threshold to regulate these preconditions could be taken and we could actually use the value of the data to make a significant contribution to the social challenges we face. I hope that we will really work to achieve the above and avoid falling into the traditional cramp where we limit ourselves to a cooperation that serves one or a few specific purposes and remains dependent on a sustaining public finance for its existence. How fantastic it would be if we kept the mindset in mind to create lasting social value in collaboration.


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