In prefacing the panel for ‘Strategic Priorities for a Data-Driven Partnership Ecosystem’ during the ConnectGov Leaders Summit held in Edinburgh, Scotland last July, Low Aik Lim, CIO Academy Asia’s Director for International Relations noted that the success of data initiatives depends on a cast of partners. But central to any partnership is the notion of Trust which brings special challenges relating to earning, building, developing and maintaining trust.

Key Takeaways

• Eugene Yeo, COO of MyRepublic shared that MyRepublic’s data partnership with infrastructure partners presupposes trust in the accuracy of data and information on service issues that they notify customers with. On this basis, MyRepublic has built internal capabilities to engineer their own systems, ensuring quality of data, customer experience as well as address issues of bias in data.

• Soh Siew Choo, MD, Group Head of Consumer Banking & Big Data/AI Technology, DBS Bank remarked that trust between partners hinges on the alignment of values and culture along with consistent delivery of commitments to each other. In DBS’s context, there is the added layer of having to first comply with and enforce regulations on data use according to the jurisdiction they operate in, which applies to the gamut of partners they work with ranging from telcos to companies providing credit data, e-commerce companies and vendors.

• In CPF Board Singapore, CIO Ng Hock Keong highlighted that trust is engendered by ensuring total transparency on data integrity for individual CPF account holders, which entails accurately reflecting all transactions and ensuring access to data on all platforms.

• From the Bayes Centre’s perspective, Chief Data Technologist Jasmina Lazic shared that as part of a well-established larger institution, their fundamental mission of fostering partnerships between public, private and research sectors brings them into contact with diverse partners and startups.Through internal due diligence processes, prospective partners are assessed on their ability to deliver commitments as well as security and data practices

• Christopher Erikson, Director, ASEAN, Citrix remarked that trust is an overused notion. Strategic relationships and partnerships are really built not on trust alone but also on negotiated terms and conditions that should be clear on who owns what data from the start.

• Ownership or contributor-ship may be construed simply in terms of the market share, but data partnerships must be a win-win-win proposition for the organisation, the data partner, and most important the customer.

• There is value in partners sharing data as this can only provide deeper and better insights on customers that serves everybody’s interests including the customer, especially since the collection of data is premised on customers’ permission.