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36 | JANUARY 2022 | UTILITY WEEK Technology Download report How open should data be? Cross-sector data-sharing could offer a host of benefits, but do technology and business leaders in utilities buy into this ambition? And is it even viable? A new report seeks to find out. I t is now two years since the energy sector was charged with the adoption of a "pre- sumed open" approach to the wide array of data it holds. A similar journey has been under way across the water sector as it increasingly adopts a 21st century oversight of assets stretching back to Victorian times. Sector leaders now routinely reference data as vital infrastructure in its own right and acknowledge the need to maximise its value through cooperation across the sector and beyond. The energy and water regulators have also bought into the vision and are applying pressure to companies to show "measurable progress" in opening up data. However, innovation and data lead- ers interviewed for a new report from Util- ity Week, produced in association with Iotics, set out the barriers to progress that still remain. They highlighted concerns about the quality, consistency and completeness of in- house data. Interacting with external organi- sations introduces new risks around, among other things, legislative and regulatory com- pliance, data privacy, intellectual property and consumer impact. Others noted the need for more concrete guidance and direction on optimal technology solutions as well as data standardisation and management. In particular, they pointed at emergent challenges around sharing data across the sector, and traditional functional bounda- ries, and the challenges presented by wider data-sharing ecosystems. Despite the challenges they also pointed to key projects that are turning open data from rhetoric to reality and stressed the opportunities open data presents for the sector and beyond as utilities look to inter- operate, securely, at different levels between sectors. Picking up the pace of progress Awareness of the benefits of breaking down traditional organisational silos and shar- ing data more freely is gaining ground in the utilities sector, with regulators Ofgem and Ofwat both now doubling down on the message. Ofgem's best practice guidance on data, which all licensees must comply with under RIIO2 price controls, requires all data on assets and the associated metadata, plus so‡ware scripts used to process data, to be made openly available unless there is a spe- cific reason not to. The move aligns with rec- ommendations set out by the government's Energy Data Taskforce in 2019 that all data should be presumed open. It's an ambi- tion we can expect to see further progressed when the follow-up initiative, the Energy Digitalisation Taskforce, issues its recom- mendations, due in mid-January. Meanwhile, in the water sector, Ofwat's 2019 strategy, Time to Act Together, included open data as a key driver for sector-wide change to meet long-term challenges, including the impacts of climate change. A follow-up paper, published this October, highlighted the "huge untapped opportu- nity" held in data to stimulate innovation and collaboration. Fledgling collaborations and proofs of concept are helping turn good ideas on cross-organisational data-sharing into prac- tice. A National Energy Systems Map, the creation of which was recommended by the Energy Data Taskforce, was so‡-launched in November, for example. It aims to pull together all existing asset information from electricity and gas network operators into a single digital twin of the physical power and gas grids. The project, led by the Energy Networks