Tuesday, December 26, 2017

This is a Data Management issue that I find a bit confusing. Probably make for a good paper topic!
Europe’s banks brace for a huge overhaul that throws open the doors to their data
Banks have long been at an advantage when it comes to data on their customers.
From current accounts to credit cards, established lenders have access to vast amounts of information that financial technology (fintech) competitors could only dream of.
In Europe, that could all be about to change.
On January 8, banks operating in the European Union will be forced to open up their customer data to third party firms — that is, when customers give consent. [Is downloading an App proof of consent? Bob]
EU lawmakers hope that the introduction of the revised Payment Services Directive (PSD2) will give non-banking firms the chance to compete with banks in the payments business and give consumers more choice over financial products and services.
… Banks will be required to build application programming interfaces (APIs) — sets of code that give third parties secure access to their back-end data.
… Some believe that tech giants such as Facebook, Amazon and IBM could be primed to disrupt banking, especially once lenders are forced to open their data vaults to tech firms.
… "All financial services products are just data. So companies that are very good at managing data are advantaged in this space. I would also say that once you get into an open banking world, when you don't actually have to be a bank and you can manage a big balance sheet and have all the regulation that goes with it, it changes the game."




Another issue for my Data Management students. Can you play a VHS tape? What about a vinyl record? A wire recording?
Paper – Metadata Provenance and Vulnerability
Metadata Provenance and Vulnerability. Timothy Robert Hart and Denise de Vries, Information Technology and Libraries (ITAL). Vol 36, No 4 (2017). doi: 10.6017/ital.v36i4.10146
“The preservation of digital objects has become an urgent task in recent years as it has been realised that digital media have a short life span. The pace of technological change makes accessing these media increasingly difficult. Digital preservation is primarily accomplished by main methods, migration and emulation. Migration has been proven to be a lossy method for many types of digital objects. Emulation is much more complex; however, it allows preserved digital objects to be rendered in their original format, which is especially important for complex types such as those comprising multiple dynamic files. Both methods rely on good metadata to maintain change history or construct an accurate representation of the required system environment. In this paper, we present our findings that show the vulnerability of metadata and how easily they can be lost and corrupted by everyday use. Furthermore, this paper aspires to raise awareness and to emphasise the necessity of caution and expertise when handling digital data by highlighting the importance of provenance metadata.”


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