A tool offering huge benefits for society and the economy
Author
Prof. Rolf H. Weber
Member of the Steering Committee NRP 75 “Big Data”
Interview with Rolf H. Weber, Professor of International Business Law at the University of Zurich and member of the Steering Committee, about NRP 75 and Big Data in general.
What were your expectations towards NRP 75? What would have been missing without NRP 75?
In my view, the main expectation of NRP 75 is for it to create opportunities for interdisciplinary and inter-institutional collaboration between various fields of research. New technologies regularly have a major impact on our society, economy and law, making it vital that researchers do not remain locked in a silo mentality, but rather that different individual disciplines are open to and feed off each other. NRP 75 has broadly speaking achieved this goal, even if it has not been possible to analyse every single relevant issue.
Without NRP 75, interdisciplinary collaborations would absolutely have been much more limited in scope. Aside from the projects proposed by the researchers themselves, the intersectoral projects formulated specifically for NRP 75 (e.g. the ethical, legal and social challenges of Big Data) have helped to improve understanding between different fields of research. In this respect, this state support for research has proven to be very forward-looking.
Can you explain to us what Big Data means to you?
Big Data primarily means gathering and administering large amounts of data (quantity). However, it is much more important that the data collected is linked up from an analytical perspective, enabling correlations to be determined and derived (quality). Big Data should therefore be viewed as a tool that can offer huge benefits for society and the economy. However, there are not inconsiderable risks that need to be taken into account: besides the central issues of protecting privacy (self-determination with regard to personal information, data protection), other factors to avoid include discrimination, unfairness or even an erosion of solidarity (e.g. in healthcare).
Where do you expect the biggest impact of Big Data? What is nonsense?
The impact of Big Data analyses can be seen in both the public and private spheres – there are very few areas of activity that are not affected by Big Data. Put simply, the greater the impact of Big Data, the more data-intensive a particular social area is.
The risks of Big Data (e.g. for data protection and equal treatment) must be closely monitored. However, a blanket rejection of such forms of data analysis is clearly unreasonable, because new technologies should not be impeded by bans. Instead, it is important to create the right legal framework to enable Big Data applications to develop in an appropriate direction. Furthermore, Big Data will not replace personal relationships; the fear that Big Data applications could, for example, result in a serious erosion of solidarity in the insurance sector has proven to be exaggerated, as taking individual circumstances into account will remain crucial even in the future.
How do you assess Switzerland’s position in terms of Big Data research and applications? NRP 75’s position?
NRP 75 has shown that Big Data research in Switzerland is (already) hugely important – the research programme has been and remains vital for boosting interdisciplinary and inter-institutional collaborations in Switzerland. In this respect, you could say that NRP 75 has revealed hidden strengths, and its successful projects have produced new insights; now we can only hope that these collaborations will continue to be maintained even after NRP 75 is over.