Core Principles
Philosophy
- Data is a valuable resource; it has real, measurable value. Data management and sharing platform should provide sufficient security, accessibility and sharing capabilities.
- Primary data owners or beneficiaries should always (subject to technical limits) have full access and, ideally, full custody of their data assets, even in an event of complete platform shutdown or extended downtime.
- Security and privacy should be at the centre of the platform architecture. Only authorised parties should be able to access the data.
- Strive to adhere to and promote the FAIR data principles. See also the Guiding Principles document. This is done in order to maximise both the short-term potential for automated data discoverability and reuse and the long-term value of the data.
- Eliminate data copies & movement. By eliminating the need for data movement, a modern data architecture reduces cost, increases “data freshness”, and optimises data agility.
Design
No Correlation Rule
MetaLocker should provide an ability to store and relevant data without revealing its ownership or context to unrelated third parties. It should be impossible, when looking at the publically available parts of the MetaLocker ledger (see Ledger Records) to derive participants of data transactions, nature of the underlying data, or relationship to any other transactions.
One Version Rule
It should be possible to prove that specific data sharing agreement was in place (“on the ledger”) at a certain point of time. Having a signed JSON document is not enough because there may be multiple versions of it, with conflicting terms.
Right to Access Rule
MetaLocker should offer an ability to prove that a specific party has access to a specific data set based on the ledger record.
Completeness Rule
A party that possesses a set of account secrets should be able to fully recover its data wallet and all related structures from MetaLocker.
Data Ownership Rule
Data ownership should be clear and unambiguous at all times.