Personal Information Brokerage - Feasibility Study

The PIB Feasibility study seeks to determine the technical and commercial practicality of creating a new ecosystem to give individuals better control of their personal information online.
We envisage that individuals will be able to choose ‘a personal information broker’ (PIB) from a managed market, and then use their broker account to: (i) link to, and communicate with, multiple counterparties, both organisations and other individuals; and (ii) give explicit permission for the transmission of personal information to, and between, such counterparties.
PIB is likely to be used first in the education sector; we are working towards a pilot in which a university will invite new students to choose a broker account immediately prior to starting their course. If successful, PIB would then spread to other universities, filter down to schools, and follow students in to the commercial world. The development company, PIB-d Ltd, is a joint-venture between the HE sector (as represented by JISC and the University of Hertfordshire) and the private sector.