“With great power must come great transparency.”
— with apologies to Voltaire and Uncle Ben
First things first. I love the Uber service and wholly support their disruption of the entrenched taxi industry. It’s about time. But, like my family and country, I love them but am not always proud of them. That said, I’m not here to pile on. There’s been plenty of that already. The good news is that Uber is learning important lessons that are actually valuable to us all.
Uber is a sharing economy company. Sharing economy companies — like Airbnb, Lending Club, and TaskRabbit — create marketplaces of providers and consumers. For Uber, it’s drivers and riders. For Airbnb, it’s hosts and travelers. For Lending Club, it’s lenders and borrowers. Well, you get the idea.
Any company needs to “know their customer.” But for sharing economy companies, knowing their customer isn’t just important to their business. Customers are their product. Thus, sharing economy companies have a ton of data on both, the consumer and provider, sides of the marketplace.
The critical, though subtle, lessons for the sharing economy can be found in the governance of all this provider and consumer data. To wit, Uber’s God View app. How can we be comfortable with the data that’s collected and how it’s used? Well, three steps toward greater data transparency would go a long way — simply measure, manage, and mirror.
- Measure
Sharing economy companies are all about the metrics. They know, as well as anyone, that you can’t manage what you don’t measure. What might such measurements look like? Basic metadata usage would do the trick. What queries were used to access the data? By whom? How often? Without measurements like these, the lack of proof becomes an empty vessel for any agenda, whether truth or fiction. - Manage
Armed with usage data, company management can leverage this data to sensitize the company culture to the most vital data usage policies. The company’s governance personnel can manage to a daily “data usage” dashboard. They’d be armed to take swift action when inappropriate or unauthorized data accesses occur.
These dashboard reports should be made available to the board of directors, outside counsel, and (for extra credit) external privacy organizations. In the past, I’ve used external privacy groups — like CDT, FPF, and NNEDV — to get their frank and discreet take on the details of internal data governance. - Mirror
Reflect my own data back to me. As a customer, I’d like reports of when my data is used, how it’s used, and by whom. For many sharing economy companies, customer location data is some of the most sensitive. I’m a frequent Uber user and my expectation of privacy is rather high given that they know where I go and how long I stay. I trust but sure would like to verify.
This episode has shined a bright light on what companies are doing with customer data and why. Outside of occasional data audits, can they prove, every day, that they’re doing what’s legal, ethical, and moral? As I said at a recent talk, transparency disinfects … because it stings.
This post also appeared on LinkedIn.
