How the Web Broke Data Portability
A move from client-server to Web access made portability harder. That is why we at DTI are working on it....
Open infrastructure
Portability works better if the plumbing is shared.
Data portability is a right on paper — but exercising it requires software that different organizations can adopt, standards that allow those implementations to interoperate, and schemas that define what the data actually looks like when it moves. DTI builds and stewards all three.
Why it matters
Open infrastructure benefits everyone
When the technical plumbing of portability is open and shared, the entire ecosystem thrives — from startups to major platforms.
Shared Foundation
Without shared implementations, every organization must build portability from scratch. Open source code, open standards, and open schemas create a common foundation that reduces duplication and accelerates adoption across the ecosystem.
Lowers Barriers
Open infrastructure allows a small startup to participate on equal footing. When the technical foundations of portability are open and shared, the barrier to genuine competition is lower for everyone.
Prevents Lock-in
Platforms that develop portability tooling in isolation — or share it only under restrictive terms — turn a public benefit into a private advantage. Open infrastructure ensures portability remains accessible to all.
The opportunity
Open infrastructure creates a level playing field
When the technical foundations of portability are open and shared, a small startup can begin to participate. Open source, open standards, and open schemas lower the barrier to genuine competition.
The risk
Proprietary infrastructure entrenches lock-in
Platforms that develop portability tooling in isolation — or that share it only under restrictive terms — turn a public benefit into a private advantage.
Case examples
What can go wrong without shared infrastructure
These scenarios show why open source, standards, and schemas matter for real-world data portability.
Data quality
Contact duplication
Do you have contacts on your iPhone and also in an email service? Without standard requirements, companies use export formats that cannot avoid duplication. Your friend "Clona Lisa" ends up duplicated on both services — and the more times you sync, the more she gets cloned.
Interoperability
Photo albums
Photo albums and large media collections online are more complicated than they appear. Asking companies to implement album portability requires each pair of companies to spend months debugging edge cases of unusual size, format, and metadata. When each integration is this expensive, user choice is limited.
User benefit
Taking your AI history with you
A user who has spent months building a conversation history with one AI assistant — preferences, context, prior work — should be able to bring that when they try a new service. DTI's AI Conversation Schema defines a standard format for this export, so the data is portable and readable, not locked inside a proprietary log.
Social benefit
Data Donation
With shared implementations, open standards, and standard data formats, major platforms holding our personal data could empower data donation for research into countless topics in health, sociology, and technology.
About our work
DTI's open initiatives
Active
Data Transfer Project
DTP is an open source project, created in 2018 as an industry collaboration, that uses services' existing APIs and authorization mechanisms to move data directly between platforms. Over a dozen services are connected today. DTI stewards the project and continues to grow it.
Active
AI Conversation Schema
DTI has developed a specification for AI conversation data exports, defining a structured, interoperable format covering messages, context, and metadata. The schema is published openly and is designed to make it possible to switch AI services without losing the history you've built.
Prototype
Pardner
Pardner is an open source prototype data donation platform. A research center running Pardner could allow research participants to donate their personal data directly from the services where that data lives — automating the transfer while keeping users in control.
Standards
Open Standards Participation
Shared schemas and open source code solve the "how" of portability — but the technical specifications that define data formats and transfer protocols need a home too. DTI participates in open standards processes to ensure portability requirements are represented where technical decisions get made.
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