# MyData Operators Awards 2021 (MyData in the Netherlands Fireside Chat)

## Summary
In Japan, technology wise, [The federation of Japanese IT-associations](https://www.itrenmei.jp/en/) oversees the certification program for Trusted Personal Data Management Services (TDPMS) and data sharing frameworks or services are available to both public and enterprises.However, all stakeholders (government, companies and individuals) must understand and practice fair data economy.

Increase in service providers but not practical use cases. Individual do not see services attractive. Company also worries about individual or other data sources not sharing data.

Increase in inquiry from the municipals wanting to be the operators. Making good use of student or citizen data.

(Reference: MyData 2019 - [Japanese Information Banks](https://www.mydata2019.org/programme-page/japanese-data-banks/))
## Questions
1. Could you share a concrete example of how your company/ organisation empowers people with their own personal data?
- Yes, I'll share use case we suggested to the City of Helsinki. It's a simplified process of looking for a food catering volunteer.
- In this use case, the parents need to look for a food catering volunteer who is required to disclose city hall issued licenses. It is time consuming to come up with a list of volunteers, interview them and agree on the working schedule. We suggested the use of personal data store (PDS) and revised procedures to make lives easier.
1. First, the volunteers can save work experiences and certifications onto their PDSs.
1. Second, the parents access the public PDS directory provided by the City of Helsinki and look for volunteers with food catering licences.
1. Third, the parents send a request to the volunteers and ask for permission to see the volunteers' work experiences and verify the food handling licence issued by the city hall. The volunteer can decline or approve the request.
1. Last, if the parents choose a certain volunteer to be the caterer, the volunteer can decide whether to share calendar entries with minimal information in order to schedule the date and time for the catering services.
- All parties including the City Hall are empowered to manage their own data.

1. Could you share your views on the market readiness for operator services and concrete demand, both in Japan but also internationally?
- This is just my personal opinions based on my experiences.
- Technology wise, we are more than ready. Personium was developed in 2008 and provided services in 2011. To raise random people's demand, we need to work harder.
- In Japan, we failed to tell the story straight when we try to differentiate operator services from the GAFA services. Therefore, two misconcepts are conveyed.
1. First, the medias emphasize too much on the trading data for money part.
1. Second, companies don't see the advantage of releasing data.
- Therefore, there are not much promising services in the last two years. Because,
- The individuals do not see the operator services generating money for them and the services are not as attractive as promised.
- A few of us continues to spread the idea about providing added value instead of money to the individuals.
- We also explain that releasing data can increase customer satisfaction.
- Recently, we do see an increase in inquiries from the public domain and group enterprises that have diversified data of their own.
- Europe is always the early adapter. Even within Fujitsu, regarding the topic of MyData and ethical use of personal data, it only took me 10 minutes get the CTO or data officer's attention.
3. Why did your company/organisation sign the MyData declaration and become a member of MyData Global?
- Personium is available as an open-source platform for managing, holding and sharing personal data.
- We believe the ethical and transparent use of personal data contributes to a fair and sustainable data economy.
- Fujitsu became an organization member because MyData principles also aligned with the Global Responsible Business concepts of Fujitsu. Especially, Personium's activities aim to
- protect digital human rights
- improve wellbeing for everyone including the Global Majority
- and collaborate with global communities to provide sustainable solutions.

## Notes
- We provides solutions to the municipality and implement proofs of concept for enterprises in Japan.
- Personium is available as an open-source platform (GitHub) for managing, holding and sharing personal data.
- Any experienced system administrator can construct and configure the environment necessary to become a MyData Operator in the cloud or on premises.
- Open APIs are available for developing applications to retrieve data from the sources, save them to the data store and share access permission to data using service.
- Since Personium is open-source, it is totally free. However, when a company wants to use Personium in a large scale ecosystem, there are scalability, extra security, and reliability issues that only a platform provider like Fujitsu can provide.

[MyData Operators](https://mydata.org/mydata-operators/)
[Why Fujitsu applied for the award](https://bit.ly/TechUp-09-2021)