DTI's Data Trust Registry is now post-pilot
I am delighted to announce the completion of a successful pilot program for our Data Trust Registry project at DTI. We have built and witnessed a full sequence of trust to portability in practice. Our original goal for this phase of DTR was to get ten or more companies into the registry, with one platform incorporating DTR signals into its process for granting access to portability interfaces. We’ve met the latter and far surpassed the former. Through our efforts, new companies have been made aware of the possibilities of portability, have invested in transforming their businesses into trustworthy data recipients, have sought and received access to portability interfaces, and have given their users new features and functions through the ability to transfer and use their personal data.
Portability isn’t something that normal users care about for its own sake, as much as what it can help them do. And DTR participants are helping their users accomplish a diverse range of things. DTI Affiliates Fabric and Koodos, among our very first participants, are building tools to help people manage their digital contexts and put AI to use in new and creative ways, tailored for them. MyLize is building new ways for us to connect with our friends online. Supermarketer is fighting fraud and abuse, and protecting real people in a range of online spaces. Helmit works to keep children safe.
And DTI’s partners are helping to make this all a reality. Meta, one of our founding members, directly applies DTR signals to unlock access to its portability APIs. Matt King, Global Product Management Lead for Access and Portability at Meta, says:
The DTI Trust Registry pilot demonstrates how data portability works best when the ecosystem works together. The pilot program tested a unified approach to onboarding developers for access to multiple platforms - streamlining compliance reviews and ensuring consistent privacy and security standards, while allowing developers to focus on building great products. We support the kind of interoperable ecosystem that maintains high standards for protecting people’s data and makes data portability practical at scale.
DTI began this effort because, in our ongoing work to develop and deploy data transfer tools, we learned that the barriers aren’t always technical. Businesses seeking to help their users access and use personal data face a bevy of disparate review processes, repeatedly answering many of the same questions (and some frustratingly different ones!), often without any support or guidance. Platforms, meanwhile, build bespoke mechanisms to respect and empower the user’s decision to exercise their fundamental rights, while also seeking to protect them and ensure that the basis of information motivating their action is legitimate. The result of this redundancy of slightly inconsistent efforts is frustration, wasted resource expenditure, and, ultimately, fewer users empowered to move their data and fewer developers able to help them find new value in it.
The Data Trust Registry aligns closely with DTI’s Data Transfer Project – our suite of secure and simple end-to-end transfer tools – and our ongoing work as an expert resource on data portability, offered to industry and to policymakers alike. DTR thus directly facilitates DTI’s institutional mission: “Empower people by building a vibrant ecosystem for simple and secure data transfers.”
Jessie “Chuy” Chavez, Technical Lead - Privacy, Safety, and Security at Google, says:
At Google, we’ve been supporting both the Data Transfer Initiative and the Data Transfer Project from the very beginning, and we are working with DTI to help shape the Trust Registry to be a long-term component of the data portability ecosystem. We’re excited to see the Registry progress beyond pilot stage, and are eager to continue collaborating with DTI on trust and data portability going forward.
Now that DTR is out of pilot, the DTI team will develop and execute next steps. The registry is in full availability, and we encourage all businesses working with personal data to apply. You can find more information on the DTR website.
In the weeks to come, we will continue to bring onboard new platforms, large and small, who allow users to transfer data to third parties and who will benefit from incorporating DTR trust signals into their processes. And we will take feedback from all stakeholders on our policies, processes, and mechanisms, and look to refine where we can improve the experience and effectiveness of the registry.
Thank you to all of the organizations who have partnered with us thus far on this journey.