It’s Time to Stop Stalling and Address Data Integrity

nChain is a Business Reporter client.

Data integrity is critical to business and society, and business and government inaction to ensure data integrity is holding up progress.

For example: The European Parliament’s resolution on the integrity of online gambling called on member states to make harm reduction and fraud prevention top priorities. The resolution concluded that online gambling “combines several risk factors” that make protecting players especially important, and called for thorough investigation.

Responsible gaming is indeed an immensely consequential issue. There’s only one problem: That EU resolution is dated Tuesday, March 10, 2009. Thirteen years of stagnation lead to frustration. In that time, millions of people have been harmed. In the UK alone, it’s estimated that more than 5 million people have experienced harm related to problematic online gambling.

Much of this harm, research shows, can be prevented through technological intervention and by regulations that protect players from themselves and prevent fraud. Player data can be analyzed to identify problematic behavior before it escalates, preventing harm and promoting a healthier industry. However, governments and gaming organizations have been working together to investigate these data-driven regulation strategies for far longer than a decade. We’re heard of countless committees, review boards, regulatory departments, slap-on-the-wrist fines and investigations.

The tools and technologies to solve these challenges are already available; regulators just need to agree to their use. We may hear misinformed concerns about the cost of implementing new technologies, but we shouldn’t forget that the cost of inaction is measured in human suffering: addiction, depression, economic strife and suicide.

At the heart of this prevarication is a data challenge that’s rampant across industries. For years, we believed that data would save the world; if we could just stall a bit longer, collect a bit more data, we would have models that enable near perfect decision-making. Unfortunately, if unsurprisingly, that hasn’t happened. Every week we read about another company investing in the latest AI-powered analytics tool, acquiring a hot new startup with “data” in its name or announcing how successful its data management and governance framework has been. How is it, then, that most decision makers report that they are likely to disregard a data-driven insight that conflicts with their own intuition?

We’ve invested billions in data and analytics, but in the end, the boss still goes with their hunch. The reason is not a lack of data—it’s a lack of data integrity. If we don’t have complete confidence in the data we rely on, it’s effectively worthless.

Simply put, data integrity is the reliability and trustworthiness of data throughout its life cycle—a measurement of our confidence that data hasn’t been changed, corrupted, abused or manipulated. Even perfectly valid and verified data can’t be trusted if it isn’t managed, stored and shared using systems that prioritize trust and immutability.

Data integrity challenges explain the stagnation in online gambling industry regulations. For example, regulators want gaming operators to prove their compliance with standards for how, when and how much they communicate with players about potential markers of harm. How could an operator do that? A promise surely wouldn’t suffice. The operator could keep a log of those communications, but that’s open to manipulation. It could use a third party to store evidence of communications, but that also holds potential for bribery, abuse or fraud.

The answer is to store evidence of communications on an immutable ledger. Externally auditable, decentralized and trustworthy, an immutable ledger can create true data integrity.

Data is a tool for better decision-making. However, until data integrity is fully addressed, data collection and analysis are a waste of time and resources. There are several ways for business leaders to identify the issue in their own organizations and take steps toward overcoming it. First and foremost is accepting that data integrity is a fundamental challenge.

Decision makers must turn a critical eye toward their organizations, and ask: How important is data for their decision-making? How frequently do they find that the data matches their gut instinct (a potential sign of confirmation bias)? How often do they ignore data they think is questionable and set a course based on their personal beliefs?

These questions are difficult to answer honestly, but those answers will certainly be revealing. Studies show that business leaders who have full confidence in their data insights are exceedingly rare. So, there’s no shame in recognizing a truth that plagues most decision makers.

It may appear that the solution is to identify and correct errors in the data. But with the acceleration of its collection and its increasing volume and complexity, this has become a near-Herculean task. Instead, businesses need to integrate systems for managing data that remove the chance for manipulation or corruption at a foundational level.

To avoid the risk of exposing our bias, we won’t speak to the work we’re doing at nChain to solve these exact challenges, the products we have in the market right now or the successes we’ve had. Instead, we would encourage you to reach out to multiple firms that prioritize data integrity and see whether they, like too many firms, are stalling with promises of what will one day be possible.

Our last piece of advice is to avoid a trap: Don’t let “investigating” immutable ledger technology be the way your business stalls. Invest in running a pilot program instead. Don’t expect your work to replace industry regulations overnight, but do understand that they will run parallel to existing systems until proven by undeniable results.

For the online gaming industry, as for so many others, until decisions are founded on data that can truly be trusted, the only valid decision is to stop stalling and invest in data integrity.

— Sergio de Mingo, Chief Product and Marketing Officer, nChain