I am sure many of you had read about the proposed slot swap between Delta Airlines and US Airways, giving the former substantially more presence at La Guardia while the latter would gain strength at Reagan National in Washington D.C. When the airlines applied for approval, the FAA set conditions that would have nixed most of the benefits expected by the carriers. They are now going to the courts, arguing that the FAA is charged with making sure airspace is used safely and efficiently and not with assessing impacts on competition. The issue of who owns slots has been on the table before but so far, no real answers have been given by the federal authorities. With this latest round and the involvement of the courts, there is hope that a judge will come up with something that can at least be chewed further if it is not to the liking of any of the parties involved.
But slots are an almost physical commodity compared to the nature and ownership issues that are looming in respect of system wide information management (SWIM). So who owns data?
Right at the start we must differentiate between ownership in a purely data management sense and ownership in terms of the value represented by a piece of data. The data management aspect is relatively easy and setting the right rules will ensure that the data owners are always properly identified, their rights (e.g. to change the data) and obligations (e.g. to provide the data) correctly assigned and acknowledged and access by others limited as appropriate.
It is when we start to consider ownership in terms of the value of data that things start to get complicated. Let’s take a concrete example that has in the past already generated some discussion… and little agreement.
Who is the owner of aircraft position information obtained by ground surveillance?
Remember, this is not about ownership in terms of who may or may not see or influence this information but about who may decide on what may be done with this information, like selling it to interested third parties potentially earning revenue. You may smile now and ask whoever may be interested in buying aircraft position information but there are several potential buyers from taxi companies to professional flight tracking service providers. Yes, position information has value that can be realized through applications that deduce all kinds of useful information from the raw position data.
As a knee-jerk reaction many an expert will say that the aircraft position information is owned by the air navigation service providers, after all, it is their surveillance systems that create the information in the first place. Along the same reasoning, it is only the ANSP which may sell this information or as the minimum, decide who may or may not see the information they developed.
Is this right? Well, we have seen that the FAA thought that airport slots were something they could set conditions for and this is now subject to a legal challenge. It is very likely that the airlines will be proven right and the FAA wrong… but we will have to wait and see.
In terms of the aircraft position information, we have to consider how and why that position information is being created by the ANSP. The airspace users concerned buy a service from the ANSP, this service being separation provision (which in turn is provided through instructions and clearances issued by air traffic controllers). The ANSP needs the position information to provide this service. They will have implemented a surveillance system, including the processing of the signals and of course displaying the information to the controllers.
Make no mistake, that entire infrastructure as well as the service itself is fully paid by the airspace users. When buying the service, they implicitly
agree that position information be developed for separation purposes but nothing else. Any value that position information may have beyond separation provision remains with the airspace user. After all, they have paid for the infrastructure and the controllers and everything else involved in the process. How could anyone else claim ownership in value terms?
As it is, plenty of organizations actually think they can and they will too. Aircraft position information is only an easy to understand example of possible problem data. There will be plenty of others! This is why it is essential that very early on during the creation of the SWIM environment this ownership issue is discussed and agreements are reached that reflect the true ownership status rather than what certain organizations would wish to have.
Of course there are certain guidelines that must be taken into account in any discussion or arrangements concerning ownership of data. Among these is that data ownership considerations should never hinder the intended use of any data and eventual pricing should be such that it does not discourage information use. It should also be a basic tenet that data used for air traffic management purposes should continue to be seen as part of the basic cost structure of providing the services airspace users buy and as such, shared for ATM purposes free of charge.
In the legacy ATM environment information, often scarce and fragmented as it is, was not really suitable for innovative further exploitation and except for rare cases, it was not seen as a potential source of new revenue. In the net-centric SWIM environment things will change in a big way and the business value of information will become apparent and the potential for its exploitation beyond air traffic management purposes widely recognized.
Business ownership of data will no longer be an abstract construct, it will be the basis for claiming the right for generating additional revenue. Owners, like the airspace users but also the ANSPs, need to watch developments carefully lest their stakes are moved before they had a chance to stick them in.