Smart Data is data that is securely shared, with the customer’s permission, to third parties. The most obvious example of Smart Data is Open Banking, but other sectors such as energy & finance are now looking to follow suit. The term should not be confused with other similar terms such as “Open Data” – e.g. public transport fares & timetables (defined as freely available data and typically published by public sector organisations for wider societal benefit), with each type of data sitting in a different part of the Transport & Mobility Data Spectrum.
The Open Transport Initiative was set-up to create and support the adoption of customer account data sharing across the transport & mobility sector.
Our view is that Smart Data has many benefits including:
- Providing organisations with a standardised approach to GDPR data portability*, a GDPR right of the individual to obtain and reuse their personal data for their own purposes across different services.
- Putting customer’s in control of their own transport & mobility data by providing an Open Standard API specification for account data integration regardless of software or database technologies.
- Being an enabler of growth and innovation, by providing an interoperable way for an entire sector to share transport & mobility customer account information with third parties.
*The right to data portability allows individuals to move, copy or transfer personal data easily from one IT environment to another in a safe and secure way, without affecting its usability. It is seldomly considered when designing and building any sort of data storage, let alone enforced in the same way other GDPR rights have been.
If you would like to join or know more about the work of the Open Transport initiative please contact us: contact@opentransport.co.uk
Open Transport - Transport & Mobility Data Interoperability 