Uber driver data will now be used to calculate insurance premiums for ride-sharing drivers who up until now have enjoyed ‘personal car’ level premiums about 90% cheaper than their regular taxi owner counterparts.

How will insurance companies approach this mandated exchange process? And what’s the potential for this activity to allow for cheaper premiums for regular drivers in the future? We’ll have to wait and see.

In other news…

The White House has announced a game-changing data exchange initiative between 67 of its city, county and state governments. Using data from criminal justice and health systems, the initiative is designed to reduce the number of people who repeatedly rotate through the healthcare and criminal justice systems. (We love a good ‘data for social good’ story!)

Speaking of the US, they’ve again failed to reach an accord with the EU on the ‘Privacy Shield Agreement’ which seeks to define the legal parameters around the secure exchange of data between the EU and the USA. The challenge? The EU’s stringent data protection laws. With cross-border data flows between the EU and the US the highest they’ve ever been –this legislation needs to be ratified ASAP.

New Vantage brings us their 2016 Big Data Executive Survey – which provides great insights on the adoption Big Data initiatives in business Boardrooms.

We’ve learnt about a local government data sharing initiative in Scotland which uncovered nearly £17m of fraud and errors. Yikes!

Also, there was a ‘sort of’ election held in Australia, which if you’re anything like the rest of us, you’re sick of reading about. Nothing to report here.

Let’s stick to the data – Happy Wednesday,

Team Data Republic