(task) The Economist explains: Why mobile data to prevent Ebola has not yet been released | The Economist

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http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2014/11/economist-explains-4?fsrc=rss&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=pulsenews

Why mobile data to prevent Ebola has not yet been released

THE number of new cases of Ebola in west Africa is decreasing, suggesting that quickly-enacted emergency precautions have so far been successful. Yet there is a valuable tool that epidemiologists would like to use to track the disease and help stamp it out: data from mobile phones. These "call data records" identify where the device is and has been, along with its proximity to other devices, among other things. It lets experts infer, with empirical data and in real-time, where people are, and how many, and where they are probably headed. Yet despite talks among researchers, phone companies, governments—and even UN agencies and the GSMA, the mobile-industry’s trade association—the records have not yet been released. Why not?

It is not for a lack of utility. A bevvy of cases already underscore the data’s usefulness. Call records have been analysed by Flowminder, a charity doing epidemiological mapping, to track and help combat malaria in Kenya and Namibia. The records were used to identify where Haitians fled after an earthquake and cholera outbreak in Haiti in 2010. The Japanese government used the data for modelling the mobility patterns of people in Tokyo following an earthquake and nuclear accident in 2011. An analysis by researchers at Telefonica of data at the time of Mexico’s swine flu epidemic in 2009 showed that official shutdowns stopped people from traveling but medical advisories did little.
If the data are so helpful, why are they not used? Several factors are to blame. Privacy is cited: customers may be uneasy, and sharing data creates a business risk if regulators disapprove. Next, there is a cost to preparing the data, and they may not be in a clean format, to the operators’ embarrassment. Drawing up the legal terms takes time (particularly if there is no formal deadline). More subtly, the problem represents a "policy thicket" of sorts: it requires bringing operators and regulators together to do something they have never done before, and their processes are slow. Yet the chief reason is a lack of effective leadership. The people most aware of the data’s potential lack the clout to break the logjam. And because it is no one’s responsibility to make it happen, talks on releasing the data just drag on.

So the valuable data just lie fallow in operators’ databases, unused by epidemiologists despite the gravity of the Ebola crisis. Historic records have dribbled out, but near real-time data are not released on an ongoing basis. In recent days, the GSMA, operators and the International Telecommunications Union, a UN agency that manages telecoms standards, have pledged to overcome the blockages, and release the data to researchers in an aggregated, anonymised way to preserve privacy. But after months of talks and similarly high-minded statements, the data are unlikely to be released without stronger leadership that brings together operators, regulators and researchers.

Dig deeper:
Why the world must use mobile data to combat Ebola (October 2014)
The science and politics of call data records and epidemiology (October 2014)
The benefits of big data (February 2014)

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