Data portability and interoperability

See also: computing, gather-weave

Widely seen as key structural changes/requirements to ensure effective competition between digital services/platforms.

Term	Definition
Data portability	The ability of users to move their data between different services/platforms
Interoperability	The ability of different systems (and the users on those systems) to communicate/collaborate between services/platforms

Appears to fall under the fixing an oversight of capitialism.

Literature

Current state - 2023 - GDPR and impact (not good)

Kranz et al (2023) given an over of the rationale and status quo of the right for data portability. Some technical detail outlining possible architectures. Argues that there are limitations in current implementations. Less than ⅓ of users are aware of the right to data portability. 25% intend to migrate due to concerns, but don't.

Echoing Kuebler-Wachendorff et al (2021)

In sum, current research on the user-side of data portability suggests that the RtDP is still rather unknown and mostly appeals to technology-savy users.

Question: wonder how portable more media intensive social media platforms are? Given the greater size of those contributions (not just text)

Distinguishes between

• indirect data portability - portability from provider A to provider B is via the user having to export and then import (if at all possible).
• direct portability - data can be moved directly from provider A to provider B.

It is important to note that direct data portability, as intended by the regulation, requires currently nonexistent solutions that directly connect services of different OPSs. Consequently, users that want to make full use of the RtDP today need to transfer their data indirectly, as a direct, automated export and import from one service to another is not yet feasible (Syrmoudis et al. 2021). Yet, the difficult and time-consuming task of using the RtDP in an indirect fashion acts as an important complication for users as less than a third of OSPs comply with GDPR’s export requirements and 76.8% of OSPs do not offer any import possibilities (Syrmoudis et al. 2021). (pp. ??)

However, to date, OSPs do not provide public documentation about how they export data (Syrmoudis et al. 2021).

Suggestions (Kuebler-Wachendorff et al 2021)

Calls for more studies on

• sound approaches to increase user self-awareness and self-efficacy about engaging in RtDP
• how does availability of data portability tools impact perceptiosn of OSP (online social media provider)
• more work on to evaluate the usabilty and feasibility to reuse data for different services
• how to implement direct data portabilty especially in practice
  • see the data transfer project/initiative

Non-commercial bodies

• OECD on portability, interoperability, and competition examining questions such as

  1. Are these measures effective in promoting competition?
  2. What are different mechanisms for implementing these measures?
  3. What are the legal, technical, and practical challenges in implementing them?

• Brookings Institute primer on data portability and interoperability

References

Kranz, J., Kuebler-Wachendorff, S., Syrmoudis, E., Grossklags, J., Mager, S., Luzsa, R., & Mayr, S. (2023). Data Portability. Business & Information Systems Engineering. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12599-023-00815-w

Kuebler-Wachendorff, S., Luzsa, R., Kranz, J., Mager, S., Syrmoudis, E., Mayr, S., & Grossklags, J. (2021). The Right to Data Portability: Conception, status quo, and future directions. Informatik Spektrum, 44(4), 264--272. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00287-021-01372-w