A digital future is on the cards, so we must be prepared for it

In 1789 Benjamin Franklin wrote that nothing in life can be said to be certain, except death and taxes. However, as we move into a new digital world, I think that we can add a third; the influence of data in all aspects of life. For many years, we have considered the property industry as just bricks and mortar. But as we become more digital and put more sensors into our buildings and use a range of new data sources to support our decision making, we need to start taking the influence of data more seriously. Not something that we have traditionally needed to do. This comes at a time when the property sector is under growing scrutiny about what it does and how it does it. It is imperative that we consider not only what we can technologically and legally collect, but what we should collect. Real Estate must get on the front foot with data ethics. The ethical use of data is going to be one of our greatest challenges for the next decade. While we are searching for ever improved insight and answers through the use of data , we need to always consider the ethical points. And for us in real estate, this means that we need to take responsibility for the way we collect and manage data on behalf of the people who use our buildings. It is worth spending a moment considering some examples.  The office of the future is increasingly going to be measured by how productive it is for the people using it. As we become more outcome focused and the data is available with which to measure these outcomes, it follows that we will use more and more data to inform the decisions we make around a property. So, if we want to better understand how productive someone is, what data could we collect? Perhaps we could monitor the times they enter and leave the building. Perhaps use facial recognition to understand how happy they appear to be. Biometric data could be collected from a range of different devices to determine health and wellbeing. Perhaps we could monitor spending habits to see what people are eating or measure the keystrokes on their computer to understand how much work they are producing. It is relatively straight forward to believe that these data sets could help us understand the productivity of a person, and hence a building, and in turn support better decision making. But should they? At what point do we start asking not just what we can do, but what we should do? At what point do the people using the office building start thinking about whether they can trust us as a sector? Another example might be not just what data we collect, but how it is used. If we use a range of different data sets to understand employee demographics, build types, office hours and so on, we could easily build a system that helps us to avoid a particular group of people. Perhaps if we ran a taxi service that we didn’t want regulating, we could avoid the regulators. Not particularly ethical, many would agree. However, what if a delivery company used the very same data, algorithms and software to keep their drivers safe? Most would agree that this was ethical. These are just two examples of where data might be used where a human, ethical perspective needs to be considered. Buildings are going to collect more and more data and as we use this to inform our decision making, one of the biggest questions we face is how we achieve the right ethical balance. While this is a huge task, it is also a huge opportunity for the real estate sector to show that it is on the front foot. To help with this a new initiative, called the Real Estate Data Foundation, has been created.  It is a not-for-profit supported by a range of industry organisations such as the BPF, IRPM, RICS and the UCEM, and it has published six data ethical principles that it is asking companies to sign up to.  Not only will these help companies to get data ethics on the agenda, it will also demonstrate to the general public that real estate is tackling these challenges head on. How real estate companies deal with data ethics will be key to a successful future.  Sign up to support the RED Foundation Data Ethical Principles today to get on the front foot. Find out more at www.theREDFoundation.org