ISCN Global Mixer: The cooperative as an emerging model for the data economy - the example of POSMO in Switzerland

Faced with all the emerging digital technologies, the individual and society still mostly focus on questions of data collection and data processing to negotiate functionality and privacy.

Roger Fischer, the speaker of this Global Mixer event, on the other hand sensitizes us for the more seldomly discussed questions of ownership and custody of data. For him these are concerns not only because they arguably feedback into the design of digital solutions, but also because in politically volatile times the usual custodians of data may drastically change their way of handling data.

Against this background, he forwards in his talk the model of cooperatives. They have a long tradition in German-speaking countries, particularly also in Switzerland, and are part of the Unesco Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Cooperatives are voluntary and self-organized associations of people who democratically manage shared interests or resources (commons). The mandatory principle of decision-making in the general assembly is one member, one vote.

In application of this model to the realities of the data economy, Posmo developed a program with which people can track their mobility patterns. In short intervals of 10 seconds, is recorded and AI automatically detects which mode of transport is being used. This is being aggregated into the outputs of distance, duration and carbon emissions of the taken route and mode of transport. In contrast to many other trackers, this happens with full consent and in anonymous form with further usage defined by members of the cooperative and revenues from sales of these data distributed among cooperative members. 

One example that the cooperative thus “produces” is heatmaps of mobility patterns that focus on the often underrepresented pedestrians and cyclists in a city. For the city of Zurich it rebalanced the data fundament of mobility it has since usually such datasets are dominated by data collection on cars.