The following is a guest post and analysis from Trevor Koverko, Co-Founder at Sapien.
The emergence of internet-enabled tech has transformed global trade and economics, as citizens, governments, and companies participate in borderless exchanges. Subsequently, data has become the lifeblood and primary fuel of businesses and societies worldwide, driving economic growth through shared values.
In this digitally connected world, data sovereignty has emerged as a critical concept for organizations, state actors, and internet users to control data collection, storage, and utility systems. Although data sovereignty determines global trade rules, it must not hinder industrial growth and innovation while protecting individual data privacy rights.
Protecting National Interests
As global trade relies on data sharing and processing across nation-state borders, multiple intra- and extra-territorial legal instruments control data flows. Some countries deploy localization methods to restrict cross-border data exchanges or conduct extensive assessments before outbound transfers, thereby obstructing international trade, industrial output, and foreign direct investment (FDI).
Such a data sovereignty measure bolsters the national market and helps mature industries to offer high-performing services within the state jurisdiction. It especially helps countries with large populations, where companies can maximize revenue generation streams by harnessing the vast data reserves.
But an over-reliance on national data sovereignty can negatively impact the domestic economy, with an estimated 1.7% decrease in GDP, 2% fall in employment, and up to a 3.4% contraction in FDI. This translates to siloed global economic ecosystems and a detrimental effect on international trade.
While localization of services is necessary, hyper-localization can prevent companies from accessing international services for data processing, labeling, and analysis. This particularly affects the emerging AI industry, which heavily depends on large datasets for model training, thereby increasing overhead costs.
Hyper-localization of data-dependent industries like AI and cloud service providers can affect free cross-border trade and hinder scaling operations. Simultaneously, it can reduce revenue diversification channels, cause disruptions, and generate suboptimal yields for companies relying on foreign data storage units and overseas processing facilities.
Besides requiring additional capital reserves to manage workloads, hyper-sovereign data management can undermine cross-border trade agreements and data-sharing treaties. Thus, governments and organizations must find an equilibrium to balance their digital economic ecosystems and data sovereignty measures.
Balancing Innovation and Sovereignty
Some countries facilitate cross-border data exchanges when they receive reassurance of optimum data protection levels bound by legal contracts. These bilateral or multilateral contracts help nations maintain data sovereignty of their citizens by setting out specific conditions for data usage.
Such a data sovereignty model can boost international trade, global industrial productivity, and cross-border collaborative projects, leading to a vibrant domestic economy. Data shows a 0.6% rise in GDP and a 1% increase in employment rates due to free data exchanges across countries.
Since digital-native companies depend on large aggregated datasets, access to foreign data reserves helps them build innovative and customized services for international customers. Besides catering to global markets, cross-country exchange of proprietary data facilitates researchers and scientists to work on new data-driven products.
Subsequently, an estimate shows that a lower data restriction on the International Technology and Innovation Foundation data index can decrease overhead costs by 0.6%. This can open the global and domestic markets to more competition, helping companies improve user-oriented services through high-quality data accessibility.
Due to free data flows, national markets can become attractive destinations for data-led companies, with more domestic and foreign firms offering SaaS and AI solutions. During business diversification, companies and governments must remember the centrality of citizens and user-generated data in running the global markets.
The Individual is Sovereign
User data forms the core of the global digital economy. So, protecting user data sovereignty is supreme for building market confidence and generating long-term value. To begin with, personal data protection laws must protect citizens’ data during cross-border transfers.
For example, the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation’s (APEC) Cross-Border Privacy Rules System, and the Privacy Enforcement Arrangement (CPEA) are necessary regulations to maintain individual data sovereignty. Despite such legislative measures, the Schrems II decision invalidating the EU-US Privacy Shield agreement has posed major challenges for transatlantic data transfers.
Currently, the EU-US Data Privacy Framework offers provisions for EU citizens’ data protection measures within the US jurisdiction, limiting US intelligence from accessing European users’ data. However, with an impending Schrems III case, a better transatlantic data transfer approach is necessary to balance data protection, innovation, and cross-border information flows.
In a data economy, trust and reliability are key for encouraging users to participate in data-sharing systems. Consequently, a user-centric data sovereignty model initiates a trust-building exercise by implementing robust data usage policies and agreements to instill confidence among stakeholders.
When users are confident to share their data due to strong security measures, it will lead to more innovative products, knowledge sharing among nations, collaborative exercises, and global economic growth. A user-focused data sovereignty thus enables interoperability, as organizations and governments can seamlessly share data across national domains without regulatory hurdles. As data-intensive industries like AI continue to evolve, data sovereignty will ensure responsible and sustainable growth in the long term.
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