COLLECTION OF INFORMATION
AYABONGA CAWE: Public and private sectors need to make data count more
Data is the new gold. You’ll probably within seconds or hours of reading this, receive a message from this or the other provider offering you funeral cover, loans and other products. It is still a mystery how indifferent most of us are in responding to the question we ask in our heads – where did they get my details? The answer may be the black-inked information given when you fill out the forms to get that store account, bank card, loyalty programme or smart ID: the data that at birth is captured by home affairs, at school placed in a file for the "department" and later captured by the tax man so you can meet your obligations to the state. Or the South African Social Security Agency ( Sassa), for many outside the labour market. That data, alongside that we give to retailers and bankers, tells them who we are, where we live, what we consume and what we prefer. For those driven by the profit motive, it provides opportunities to not only sell that data to others, but as the Net1 and C...
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