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Data is the new oil

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Trinidad and Tobago has been an oil and gas economy for many years so we can relate to the terminology and comparison. The quote's origin is from 2006 by Clive Humby and was popularised in 2017 when the Economist published the report "The world’s most valuable resource is no longer oil, but data". I emailed the Ministry of Digital Transformation and asked, "What does "data is the new oil" mean to you and what does it mean for Trinidad and Tobago and how do we capitalise on this?" I think the country needs to answer these questions. It is an old term but then I will hear that we in Trinidad are usually playing catch up and so here I am today trying to get some discussion around this.

When we talk about data we are talking about open data, big data, IoT, AI and data analytics among other things. We should be making use of these as we try to diversify away from oil and gas. Data analytics can help with generating business and revenue. We need data driven decision making in Trinidad and Tobago.

I have seen some articles written that disagree with the term and say data is not like oil and I guess they could be right if you focus on the differences between oil and data. The point is to focus on the similarities. The key word is "new". Similar but different and new. Data and oil are valuable and can be refined. Just like oil we have to be careful of data spills and data needs proper governance and management.

In my research for this blog post I have found that people are also referring to data as the new gold. While others are saying analytics is the new oil. Then others are saying analytics is the refinery and intelligence is the fuel. Then there is APIs being the pipelines. I even came across this youtube that stated "Data Is the New Oil. And China Is the New Saudi Arabia" in the context of their achievements in AI and the "Age of AI". Then I came across the interesting comparison that data is the new oil and AI is the engine it fuels. What about "attention is the new oil" because it seems like many of these companies are competing for our attention.

I like the terminologies because it gets persons and decision makers excited about data and leveraging tech for growth and profit. The growing field of data science and demand for data scientists and data analysts does point to the importance of using data to drive business and remain competitive. We have oil. We have data. What next? I like this one I came across "metadata is the new data". Maybe that can be a future blog post for me.

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