Abstract:
Like the revolutions that preceded it, the Fourth Industrial Revolution has the potential to raise global income levels and improve the quality of life for populations around the world. Responding to global challenges, generating efficiencies, prediction improvement, democratisation access to information and empowering individuals are a few examples of the economic and social value created by personal information. However, this technological innovation, efficiency and productivity comes at a price -?privacy. As a result, individuals are growingly concerned that companies and governments are not protecting data about them and that they are instead using it in ways not necessarily in
their best interests. The objective of this research is to investigate the validity and feasibility of a Personal Data Store (PDS) against the developed a priori framework.
Ten qualitative, semi-?structured interviews using the long interview method were conducted with individuals identified as a subject matter expert (SMEs) in the Big Data
analytics and the data privacy field. The findings show that the guiding principles of transparency, control, trust and value, ensures the validity and feasibility of the PDS. Furthermore, user-?centricity provides greater control within the Big Data continuum. However, as personal data should not be trusted in the hands of third-?parties, identity management and security must be entrenched at a foundational level of the model. The remaining elements -? selective disclosure, purpose and duration, signalling and data portability - is in fact value adding qualities that allows for the commodification of personal data. In the age of the Internet of Things (IoT), organisations churn out increasing volumes of transactional data, capturing trillions of bytes of information about their customers, suppliers and operations. However, amplifying the rate of technological disruption with the failure to provide safe spaces where individuals can think free, divergent and creative thoughts will significantly diminish the progress organisations (and society) can enjoy.
