It is increasingly becoming difficult to separate our livelihood from the every cropping up innovations that are occurring on top of the telecommunications channels. Think about the new services in transport like Safeboda or Uber, e-commerce services like Jumia, business management, financial services like mobile money and online mobile money payments, even health, just to name a few of the innovators that are exciting users and it is only the beginning. All this is a data ecosystem in the Ugandan telecom industry that needs to be regulated.
These innovations are riding on the telecommunications and payments infrastructure. Carriers in Uganda have spent the past decade building, to the point where this infrastructure now reaches tens of millions of Ugandans, and makes all the innovations mentioned previously possible.
Behind these innovations is data. And in light of the ever increasing demands on data protection and privacy — Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) now wants look into how to make the telecommunications data ecosystem work best for Ugandans.
What does data ecosystem mean for Ugandans?
According to UCC ED Mr Godfrey Mutabaazi, when he thinks about data, for many Ugandans, he thinks data is about being able to share your truth with the market. Every day, millions of Ugandans do many important activities—farming, manufacturing, and running a small business. But because so much of this activity is not digital, they never get credit for this hard work. No one sees the price a coffee grower gets for their crop. No one sees the sales a trader brings in during a market day. And those who could help them—maybe with a business loan, or a bag of fertilizer right at planting time—they don’t know the truth of these hardworking Ugandans, and so opportunities for economic development are missed due to lack of digital data. However, due to transformation in the telecommunications data ecosystem, Ugandans are becoming better known, and these data gaps are shrinking.
To achieve these goals, the potential of creating and managing digital identity, business documents, and transactions becomes paramount. It is not just about the service being provided, but the records created from different service, can also be used by others to provide new services. Just as mobile accounts enabled payments, and then later digital credit, data creates a constantly expanding chain of innovation potential.
What is setting our data ecosystem backward?
There reasons as to why Uganda as a nation has not yet fully realized the potential of this data,
First, our data is not always securely and respectfully managed. Data is opportunity. But data is also risk. We have all seen the headlines about data breaches and identity theft. So what we need is to match our innovations in data with new consumer protection and data security frameworks which minimize the possibility of harm for data subjects.
The second reason is data silos. Think about it, you have a SIM card, you have various apps you use everyday, you have your debit card and your national ID. I have almost all my digital identity right here with me on a daily.
But can I connect my digital identity? Can I take all this information, and share it with any of the businesses I interact via one single transfer? For now, the answer is I can’t. At least not easily and electronically.
NITA Uganda recently launched an exercise to connect all government services digitally and allow Ugandans use these services online just by using their IDs. For example getting a driving permit or acquiring a new passport by using your National ID when you log into the online portal. What UCC wants it find ways to protecting data for Ugandans who access online services via the internet via the telecom infrastructure.
It is clear that our data is not talking to each other, and we as consumers do not have enough control over this information. We often don’t control who gets to see our data, or who is denied access to this data. There is need to reframe consumers’ data not as something a firm possesses, but something consumers have a right to leverage for their personal and economic benefit.
A way forward
The Commission has embarked on a Telecommunications Data Ecosystem Study. They have finally recognized that the data ecosystem is fast-changing. Definitions of industries are now transparent in digital marketplaces where banks, Mobile Network Operators, and over-the-top players may all offer similar services.
Policies and laws in Uganda to date have not kept up with this innovation and its high time to develop a new policy strategy for the Telecommunications Data Ecosystem. UCC wants this strategy to support three key objectives:
- The first objective is consumer protection. So that our data is not only open, but also safely and transparently managed.
- The second objective is competition. The more firms that can engage with all the data you carry around today, the greater choice you will have in the market.
- The third objective is innovation. Each new dataset creates a new opportunity to improve upon an existing service, or create a new one. We need to make sure that we have in place policies that facilitate the next wave of innovations, many of which we probably cannot even imagine yet.
Finally, UCC wants to anchor all these policies around the goal of economic development. At every moment we should be asking, “how will this support economic development?” We have already seen the proof how telecommunications data led a first wave of innovation that digitized communications and mobile money.
In a nutshell
How can UCC ensure the benefits of digitization reach the real economy and improve incomes for Ugandans? The commission has dodged that question for long and is now passing over this responsibility to the innovators. The Commission wants to stick to its role of regulation and help make sure the rules, rights and responsibilities regarding telecommunications data are in place to let you achieve these objectives.
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