First-Hand Information on Economic Policy at ZEW – BITKOM President and DATEV Boss Professor Dieter Kempf Discusses Trading Data and Data Protection

What happens to our online user data? Is there an effective way to protect our sensitive information, even as data is increasingly being traded as a currency in the online world? These are some of the issues that Professor Dieter Kempf, CEO at DATEV and President of the industry association BITKOM, will address in a talk at 6 p.m. on Monday, 2 March 2015 at the Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW). This event, entitled “Is Data the Currency of Tomorrow?” is part of ZEW’s lecture series “First-Hand Information on Economic Policy”.

Is data the global currency of the World Wide Web? The fear that data usage and trading undermine data protection follows us with every click as we surf the internet. There is widespread suspicion that companies are exploiting users’ personal data for their own commercial purposes. Germany is rather economical in its approach to this issue; all data is protected before it can be used. Dieter Kempf, however, advocates a different approach.

According to Kempf, data can and should be used in infrastructure, energy consumption or for future-oriented fundamental medical research – whilst subject to the highest possible level of protection as determined by governments. What this scenario might look like exactly will be explained by Kempf, an honorary professor of business economics, in his lecture.