A midstride check-in on DTI
DTI has been around for a few years now, and we’ve had a substantial impact on the landscape for data portability (evidence of which can be found in our annual reports for the past three years). At the same time, it feels like we’ve never been more poised to drive meaningful change. So I want to reflect on where we are and where we’re going, and highlight why you should join us to help shape the future of trust and data in the age of AI.
We started at DTI with a two-fold mandate: build out and grow the Data Transfer Project, and work with policymakers and industry to help portability policy work in practice. To take the latter first, our policy research and engagement efforts are shaping the implementation of regulations to support an interoperable global data portability ecosystem that brings in all stakeholders and works without friction or duplication across borders. Emerging alignment between key UK and EU requirements are early signals of this vision in practice. You can read more on our new policy website page!
Our technology efforts have a similarly clear impact. Since we’ve been stewarding DTP, it has acquired several new contributors and several big wins. It’s now fully in the public domain with clearer contribution paths. DTP includes music playlist portability which was a huge data and semantic undertaking with many wrinkles to iron out. And finally, it now has a public API interface for even broader interoperability: small companies can now interoperate with DTP server instances without needing to run it. It’s more valuable than ever to join DTP and reduce network interoperability barriers.
And our portfolio has grown far beyond DTP: we’ve built a toolkit for data donations to research and a schema repository, and begun digging into portability of personal data in artificial intelligence. The biggest dimension of growth is our work on trust, notably our Data Trust Registry, entirely conceived, built and piloted in the last two years. DTR reduces unnecessary and onerous trust barriers by centering an ecosystem of shared trust criteria and verification processes. More organizations apply to join every week, connecting companies large and small to each other to unlock the trusted execution of user-initiated personal data transfers. Some use this access to deliver value for their users in customized digital experiences; others, like registry participants Supermarketer and Helmit, use it to protect people online.
There’s a running internet meme about how the real treasure is the friends we made along the way. That’s why all of the projects we’ve built or written have been intertwined with our network. Both DTP and DTR have brought us into regular contact with real companies solving real problems — and we help them share wins with each other, too. We work with other nonprofits, associations, academics, and businesses large and small. But the core of our community is DTI’s partners and affiliates. They are the most plugged into our policy and technology vision, and the biggest contributors to and champions of our impact.
What comes next for DTI? Continued success in our work means more tools, more trust, and smoother portability processes for the data ecosystem – and for individual people, more choice, more confidence, and more freedom. Our outputs, such as the Data Trust Registry, will be the foundation of many bridges – between companies large and small, between companies and agents, between agents and users, between companies and regulators. In particular, as I’ve written in other places, our work on data trust and transfers will shape key contours of the future of the AI landscape. We are at a key turning point on this, today.
The data portability party is heating up. And everyone is invited. The value proposition for user-initiated personal data transfers is more apparent and more diversified than ever before. While consumers become increasingly curious and assertive about who collects their data and how, AI agents emerge to remind us once again that access to personal data is the evergreen killer feature. Only data portability can prevent these two trends from coming into conflict. The technology infrastructure is changing constantly, as are policies and practices.
It won’t be this dynamic forever, though, and as normative and practical lines start to solidify, it’s crucial to be at the table and not left behind. DTI is now established as the table that matters when it comes to personal data. And yet, considering the value of personal data in artificial intelligence, and the significance of AI and data in evolving regulatory landscapes, I feel like DTI’s work is just beginning. Reach out if data is as central to your agenda as it is ours.