Dive Brief:
- U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker says her department collects a lot of data, and she wants to share it with the private sector, according to a Fortune report.
- Some of the data the Commerce department routinely collects includes "census information, patent and intellectual property data, climate data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and international trade data," Pritzker said.
- Her department is working to clean up its various data collections so they are more easily available and accessible to companies, according to Pritzker. Such data could potentially help U.S. businesses compete more successfully overseas, she said.
Dive Insight:
The Commerce Department is also trying to convince the private sector to share data with more regularly with the agency so that it can do things like calculate a more accurate GDP, for example.
Sharing data can offer big benefits, especially when it can be used to curb cyberattacks. But sharing data with the government has been a tough sell for many businesses, even following legislation like the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015, which requires them to do so. CISA set up incentives for businesses to share threat information with each other and government agencies in hopes that it will eventually result in tools to better protect networks.
