Policy Work
- Our work on portability policy means that we talk to many policy-makers, directly or via publications and articles.
- Much of our focus right now is on trust frameworks. This blog post is a good introduction.
Events
Current Events
Spring Policy Event in DC — Empowerment through Portability
The Data Transfer Summit — Empowerment through Portability event convenes academics, regulators and industry in DC to discuss difficult policy questions and the future of data portability policy. Agenda, Speaker bios and livestream link available now!
Past Events
The Federated Data Transfer Miniconference
On September 27th and 28th — (08:00 Pacific, 11:00 Eastern, 15:00 UTC) — the Data Transfer Initiative hosted our first online conference for social software developers, the Federated Data Transfer Miniconference.
The full Federated Data Transfer Miniconference Event Report
is now available.
Data Transfer Project - Open Source
The Data Transfer Project (DTP) is an open source project that uses services’ existing APIs and authorization mechanisms to access data. It then uses service specific adapters to transfer that data into a common format, and then back into the new service’s API. DTP continues to be developed and grow today.
The Data Transfer Project was created in 2018 as an industry collaboration with a mission of enabling users to complete simple, fast, and secure data transfers directly between services. Since its creation, the project has built an open source technology framework that powers direct data transfer features within Google Takeout, Facebook’s Transfer your Information, and Apple’s Data and Privacy page, as well as software libraries that connect to over a dozen additional services..
DTP runs as a server in a data exporter’s platform. From there, it makes it easier for the data exporter to offer destinations for porting, exporting or backing up data, even in large volume. In turn this allows people to switch services or try new and innovative products. Without DTP, transferring a copy of data from one service to another can be a time consuming process, requiring a user to download a copy of their data to a local device and re-upload it to a new service. This can be particularly challenging for mobile-only users, those with limited bandwidth, and in markets where people pay-as-they-go for data usage. Direct service-to-service portability removes the need for local device storage and transfer -– enabling users to move their data directly between services.
A third-party trust model for direct personal data transfers
Data portability is a powerful tool to allow individuals to exercise more agency over personal data. While its origins lie in data protection and fundamental rights contexts, and that context remains salient, portability’s nexus to competition gives it new relevance. Portability helps consumers have more choices of services, and it helps businesses both to compete over similar service offerings and to innovate new features and functions. To take full advantage of these benefits, portability is evolving from a tool principally exercised by individual users requesting and receiving their data from a service provider via download, to implementation through direct transfers, where a user requests a data host to transfer personal data directly to a third party.
The question that arises as a consequence of this shift is, how to build trust in these direct transfers. Exchanges of personal data are not without risk. DTI counts privacy and security among its core principles: “Platforms should not be required to substantially threaten the privacy and security of individual users or the platforms. Platforms may require baseline privacy and security standards, including shared certification or accreditation processes, as a condition of enabling data transfer.” This report is an exercise in coordinating the development of such standards.
Learn more about DTI and our work! About DTI