Data for Sale: Uncovering public procurement of private sector data in The Netherlands

Abstract

To address complex societal challenges, governments increasingly need to make evidence-based decisions and require the best available data as input. As much of relevant data is now in the hands of the private sector, governments increasingly resort to purchasing data from private sources. There is, however, scant empirical evidence and a lack of understanding of how governments go about data purchasing. Therefore, we develop a new conceptual-analytical framework to analyze three models of data purchasing by governments: purchasing raw or aggregated data, data analyses, and data-based services. Next, based on Dutch data purchases, we explore the utility of our framework and create an evidence base detailing what data, data analyses, and data-based services Dutch governments purchase from whom, how, and for what purposes in the context of societal challenges. Our results map buyers and sellers of data in the Dutch context, as well as the types of data sold and in which policy domains. We expose a serious lack of transparency in government reporting on data purchasing. We further discuss our results in view of possible archetypes of data purchases and what purchasing strategy implications they have. Lastly, we propose several recommendations to practitioners and a research agenda for academics.