New York City has passed new regulations requiring ride-sharing companies like Uber and Lyft to share detailed data on rides in the city, that is pick-up, drop-off and route locations. This ride data has previously been labelled the “holy grail” of city planning data and could potentially be used to evaluate demand for public transit and parking, to sync traffic lights for improved traffic flow, and even to evaluate storm recovery tactics.

Uber, who have consistently denied ride-data demands from other city and state councils have already mounted an appeal to the ruling, citing user privacy concerns. Only time will tell if Uber is forced to surrender data generated and owned by them.

Speaking of governments trying to get their hands on data – The Verge has this week reported on US State Governors and legislators, who in the wake of President Trump’s immigration policies, are actively seeking ways to stop state citizen data from being shared with and utilized by federal immigration authorities for mass deportation or the building of a “muslim registry”.

Californian Senator Kevin de León has introduced a bill to put an end to any sort of data collaboration with immigration enforcement saying;

“To the millions of undocumented residents pursuing and contributing to the California Dream, the State of California will be your wall of justice should the incoming Administration adopt an inhumane and over-reaching mass-deportation policy”.

In other news…

Back home in Australia, the QLD government has this week announced plans to set up a dedicated data analytics office following similar moves from both NSW and Victoria last year. The new unit will be expected to “establish appropriate frameworks and services ” that will ” enable effective data sharing that supports a digitally enabled government”. IT News has reported that QLD GOV is currently on the hunt for a new Executive Director to head up the office.

Data Republic has welcomed a new data contribution partnership with CoreLogic, Australia and New Zealand€™s largest provider of property data, insights and analytics. This partnership will give our current partners access to Core Logics property datasets, allowing them to build innovative new applications from unseen property insights.

Worth a read:

• AIG have released new research on “data-sharing in the workplace” and the privacy expectations of employees whose data is being gathered to improve business productivity.
• Virtual workspace start-up GitLab won major respect from both users and startups the world over this week with the way they handled a major database error with transparency.
• Data matters in 2017. In this column for Computer World, Thornton May argues that there is no escaping the fact that “data rules everything now” and IT leaders and Executives need to be prepared to deal with that.

Until next week.