This, your data

Hakuna cha bure…

Geneva, that hard worker is back at the desk, blowing the holiday dust off the PABS assignment packs, rediscovering minutes, moving commas, only vaguely recalling the holiday restorative, and the determination not to go flat-out this year. Meanwhile, Trouble, that deep-pocketed, lone-wolf main character who claims to have outgrown clubs, but still loves their members, has left town apparently for good, but is slipping into DMs, still very very interested in your assets, especially those labelled “data”. Capitals are easing into the year a little more slowly, knowing they’ve made commitments, but, you know, pacing themselves.

As a continent prepares for a year characterised by financing the repair of the damage of the last, each government will audit its needs in context. Each will check its pockets for currency reserves, and calculate how far they can be made to stretch. In the brave new post-2025 world, the currency they’ll be dependent on is data: individual, institutional, commercial, aggregated. And even as national mattresses are being turned for coin, forward parties have already been dispatched from elsewhere to secure it. If and how they can finance their health infrastructure, what amounts will be assigned to research, innovation, surveillance regulation, manufacturing, or service provision, all of that will depend on what they can do with the asset everyone wants most.

So countries will need to know, and be sure they are right in knowing, which datasets are truly strategic, which conditions are non-negotiable, and what and how much can and should be traded for what ends, within the strictures of the law, of course. They will need to be astute about its transactional value and its bankability. It will not be enough to name the assets plainly but put verification of terms in the hands of people able to ask awkward questions . That best friend who tells you no lies, will need to be on hand for the straight-talk audits. If the brave new world is one of transactions the structure of the guardrails around the lanes chosen assume a singular significance.

Our fourth webinar, and first of the year, takes up these questions with an eye on strategy rather than sentiment. “This, your data” convenes data-privacy and governance experts and strategic advisers from public, private, and public-interest roles to ask, on World Data Protection Day, Wednesday 28 January 2026, what guardrails actually distinguish suitor from scavenger—and how countries, each in their own context, can know those guardrails are in place and holding.

Wednesday 28 January

Register here: https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_haNgC5rWRgKRs2CwDUEp1w#/registration

New year, new terms.