EU Business News Q4 2018

6 EU BUSINESS NEWS / Q3 2018 , Work Needed To Maintain London’s Reign As Europe’s Data Capital In the wake of data scandals, UK CEOs take greater ownership of data and leaders look to the UKGovernment to regulate tech giants. Big Data London (BDL), the UK’s largest exhibition and conference for data leaders, has revealed findings from its UK Fourth Industrial Revolution 2018 Report. The independent research, commissioned by Big Data LDN and sponsored by Domo, surveyed 500 of the UK’s most influential data leaders as they struggle with pre-Brexit pressure and compete against data-savvy competitors globally at a time when it is more challenging for organisations to manage data than ever before. For some time now, data has been recognised as too valuable to be dumped into IT departments. Now, a data breach can be a sackable offence, as witnessed by executives at TalkTalk and TSB. As a result, this year’s report shows 15% of UK CEOs are fully in charge of data - last year, this figure was zero. According to this year’s survey, 45% of data experts believe Brexit will not help London reign as data capital of Europe, 17% of whom go so far as thinking it impossible. However, this is offset by the 34% of data leaders who believe Brexit will be a force for good - 15% of whom even consider Brexit essential for London to become the data capital of the continent. Alan Mak, MP, Chair of the All-Party Group on the Fourth Industrial Revolution, said: “Britain has a once-in-a- generation opportunity to be a world leader in the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) – building on our position as a global hub for innovation and data-driven economic growth. This report raises some important issues that need to be addressed by business if we are to continue to thrive as a modern digital economy. Challenges such as the digital skills gap, cyber-security, and a lack of business investment in digital transformation and automation will make it harder for businesses to compete in the global economy.” As the UK Government clarifies its own situation on the UK’s data privacy laws in the post-Brexit landscape, this year’s findings show the majority of UK data leaders electing the ICO and UK Government to regulate the tech giants. Overall, 42% of data experts think data regulators such as the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) should define this legislation, 40% believe it should be driven by the UK Government and, surprisingly, 35% believe UK data regulation should be carried out by specialised audit businesses (PwC, Deloitte, for example). Just 29% think tech giants should regulate themselves. Alan Mak continued, “Data leaders that are looking to Government for action on data ethics and digital regulation should welcome the new Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation that will work with industry to establish best practice and identify potential gaps in data governance. Working alongside the Information Commissioner’s Office and world- class research centres such as the Alan Turing Institute and the recently announced Ada Lovelace Institute, the Centre will play an important role in getting the right policies in place so that Britain can build a post-Brexit economy that is fit for the future.” Over half of UK organisations, 51% thought Brexit would make it easier to recruit talent into the company, 44% of respondents believed it would boost innovation through better data utilisation and just 10% saw their organisation as becoming less competitive globally. One thing the vast majority of data leaders, 79%, agree on is that Brexit will certainly have an impact on the UK’s place as a leader in the post-Brexit landscape. In addition, the report revealed that today, UK organisations spend on average £2.6 million on data initiatives, balanced between people and technology equally. However, according to the Fourth Industrial Revolution Report the amount invested by UK organisations sits at between just 0.5% and 0.7% of overall revenue. Despite this lack of investment, this year’s report reveals Data Science, Statistics, and Data Engineering skills are in high demand by data leaders, with 45%, 39% and 32% of respondents citing a lack of expertise in this area, respectively. Last year, Technical Cloud Skills had the top spot, wanted by 72% of respondents, but is now less important, interest more than halving to 31% in 2018. Big Data LDN founder Bill Hammond, said “These findings clearly demonstrate the challenge facing UK organisations, as they aspire to lead in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. With investment from UK organisations in data initiatives as low as 0.5% of revenue, we have to ask ourselves whether this is enough for Britain to take the lead and dominate after Brexit. Britain’s data leaders show a lack of confidence in Brexit as the catalyst enabling the UK to lead the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and go as far to say it will hinder the UK’s place in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Instead, the UK’s data leaders are choosing to garner more insight from the data they already have. Increasingly though, they are looking for the data science skills to discover and interpret even more data to gain the edge over global competition.”