Big Data Regulatory Legislation: Security, Privacy and Smart City Governance

Abstract

Dubai is a smart city: this cannot be contested. The city has labelled itself as a globally recognized successful smart city and it has set in place a vision and a strategy to achieve the goal to become a smart city and to keep this status. Therefore, to sustain its competiveness, the Government of Dubai is considering the massive, fast and diverse data moving quickly everywhere creating what is known as “Big Data” era. This data is becoming the most important source of valuable insights and ultimately helping to make more informed decisions. Despite the growing demand and hopes with the big data, legal and ethical issues related to accessing data remains the main challenge. Therefore, in 2017, Dubai has announced its new Big Data Regulations Act aiming at regulating the big data usage and access to improve policies for better quality of life. This comes as part of the Smart Dubai roadmap to prepare Dubai to embrace the future and emerge as a world-leading city by 2021. The new regulations aim at ensuring privacy, security and governance of the data. The paper will explore the new regulatory act, and evaluate how it sustains and develop comprehensive infrastructure for the big data era in Dubai to maintain the city’s vision.

Keywords: Big Data, Smart City, Dubai Data Law, Governance

DOI: 10.7176/JLPG/95-03

Publication date:March 31^st 2020