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A pilot project which successfully set up the island's first 'Data Trust' last year has "brought in a lot of attention from outside of Jersey" – and could have "economic value" for the island in the future.
Computer scientist Dame Wendy Hall – a Digital Jersey Non-Executive Director who was last year appointed to United Nations high-level advisory body on artificial intelligence – explained that Jersey is well-positioned to lead the way in the world of Data Trusts due to the island's "autonomy".
Speaking to Connect Magazine for the March edition, which is out this week, she explained: "The interesting thing for me is that that one can trial and experiment with things on Jersey that, in a way, I couldn't do in the UK.
"You have a small island with 100,000 people and you have autonomy over most of your laws and regulatory environments – so what you do, how you handle data, and how you'll handle AI and everything to do with the digital world, you have autonomy over.
"One can actually get to talk to people in Government [of Jersey] about these sorts of things quite directly."
WATCH: Dame Wendy Hall explains what data stewardship is.
Last year, Digital Jersey successfully launched the island's first Data Trust – LifeCycle which saw data collected by cyclists in Jersey through special bike light sensors.
This data was then used to the viability of using a trust structure to explore the concept of data stewardship.
The LifeCycle pilot project was the first time that a legally valid and duly established trust structure has been used to establish a data trust.
Dame Wendy said: "The concept of a Data Trust is that you put some data – it could be your personal data or data from an organisation that's been collected from various places – and put it into a trust that looks after it for you.
"Not necessarily for a financial asset, but actually as a service that that negotiates on your behalf what can happen to that data, who can use it, and what they can do with it."
She explained that Jersey Trust Law lends itself to the creation of Data Trust as it is "softer" than UK Trust Law.
"It's not less effective, but it's less onerous on the trustees," said Dame Wendy.
"Jersey has a big history of building things on its Trust Law, including the financial world, and we looked into it with the lawyers," she continued.
"So Digital Jersey funded this project to establish a Data Trust under Jersey Trust Law. It took about a year, but we did it."
Pictured: Rachel Harker, Technology Development Consultant for Digital Jersey, and Gordon Porter, cycling advocate, being introduced to the gadget that was used in the LifeCycle pilot project.
The computer scientist praised Jersey's "track record of doing things are ahead of their time, in a way that other people haven't been able to do".
Dame Wendy spoke about how Jersey "forged its way ahead" in the world of Financial Trusts, and "grew its economy around that expertise and exported that".
"I think we can do the same with the whole concept of data trusts," she explained.
The Digital Jersey Non-Executive Director said that the success of the LifeCycle pilot project had "brought in a lot of attention from outside of Jersey, in particular in the UK, but other countries, too".
WATCH: The Data Trust concept was launched at Digital Jersey's 2022 annual review.
Dame Wendy added: "I can't talk much about the follow-up, but we're currently talking to law firms and potential commercial customers for setting up Data Trusts in Jersey with their data – not personal data, this is commercial data.
"It could be a city centre, for a smart city – the idea would be that the Trust would be hosted in Jersey, but the data would stay where it's where it belongs, with the people that generate it.
"That's where we are at the moment. It’s very exciting for me because we've done this proof of concept, and we're now going through a phase where we can beginning to show that it would have economic value – both the business of setting up Data Trusts and also for Jersey."
This is an extract of an interview with Dame Wendy Hall for the March edition of Connect Magazine, which is out later this week.
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Pictured top: Dame Wendy Hall, Regius Professor of Computer Science at the University of Southampton and a Digital Jersey Non-Executive Director, who was last year appointed to United Nations high-level advisory body on artificial intelligence.
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