The Department for Business & Trade, Challenge Works, the Open Data Institute (ODI) and Smart Data Foundry called on individuals, innovators, entrepreneurs, academia and civil society to join them in identifying innovative ways in which Smart Data could make a difference for consumers, small businesses and wider society.
Between 26 October and 8 December 2023 we ran an open call for cross-sector Smart Data use case ideas. We invited individuals and organisations to share their bold cross-sector use case ideas for a consumer-driven Smart Data economy. The most promising cross-sector use case ideas submitted in the open call were then selected by an expert panel and further defined with the help of expert input.
The Discovery Challenge culminated on Thursday 21 March 2024 at an event for the emerging Smart Data community. During the event, the teams behind the 14 most promising ideas pitched to an expert judging panel and Smart Data audience, and four teams were selected as the winners, sharing a prize pot of £20,000.
We are excited to announce that following the success of the Smart Data Discovery Challenge, we will be launching a full Smart Data challenge prize later this year. Participants in this prize will benefit from a share of up to £750,000 and access to a bespoke data sandbox enabling them to prototype and test a range of cross-sector Smart Data use cases.
Learn more about the winning ideas
Mealia integrates supermarket data to recommend healthier food alternatives, cost savings, budget-friendly shopping strategies, meals based on purchase data, and more sustainable food choices.
Lightning Riders, the team behind the Rodeo app used by more than 15,000 drivers, proposes a Smart Earnings Data scheme to enable gig workers to access and control their earnings data. Millions of gig workers in the UK are paid by dynamic algorithms on platforms like Uber, Deliveroo, Just Eat and Amazon. As ‘independent contractors’ they need to manage their finances and taxes and make informed decisions about who to work for and which jobs to accept. Smart earnings data would unlock new financial tools for drivers and enable gig workers to exercise their market power, improve their financial security and facilitate greater tax compliance.
Smarter Contracts is an online financial assistant providing consumers with personalised money-saving comparison offers for a wide variety of cross-sector services. Consumers could consent to always-on monitoring of their current products and services in relation to market changes, to check that they are always on the most appropriate product and terms, alerting them to potential savings when available. The entrants believe it could enable millions of UK consumers to save hundreds of pounds annually.
Designed in collaboration with a Tier-1 UK bank, the HomeHealth score combines Open Banking data and Smart Energy data with the aim of humanising consumer choice in home finance, energy consumption and CO2 emissions reduction. Smartlayer aims to open up personalised, wallet-sensitive, smart home finance options to the many households currently excluded from green finance.
could increase thanks to new commercial opportunities created by personal data mobility, and Smart Data will be key in unlocking this.
are already benefiting from Open Banking services as of February 2023.
Smart Data is the collective term for technologies and policies that will enable individual consumers and small businesses to securely share data that organisations hold on them with other authorised organisations they trust. These, in turn, will be able to use that data to provide consumers with innovative services.
Smart Data is already a reality in the UK for bank current accounts, in the form of Open Banking. In the future, it could expand into a range of other consumer sectors, including energy, retail and transport, as well as other financial services such as savings and investments, mortgages and insurance.
New ways of mobilising data will create opportunities to empower consumers, increase competition and sustainably grow our economy. It is estimated that new commercial opportunities created by personal data mobility could increase GDP by £28 billion per year, and Smart Data will be key in unlocking this.
