Data ‘the new oil’ but privacy crucial, says Optus CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin

Optus chief executive Kelly Bayer Rosmarin has warned of the “creepy” side-effects for consumers if their intimate information isn’t handled with care.

Optus chief executive Kelly Bayer Rosmarin: ‘Whatever we are doing, we already leave digital trails: when we are running, shopping, or even just sitting in traffic.’ Picture: Britta Campion

Customer data is “the new oil” but needs to be treated with safety and respect for privacy, according to Optus chief executive Kelly Bayer Rosmarin, who has warned of the “creepy” side-effects for consumers if their intimate information isn’t handled with care.

Speaking at the Melbourne Business Analytics Conference via video link, Ms Bayer Rosmarin said tech giants were getting increasingly adept at hoovering up user data, making it equally important that those companies were ethical in their privacy and security practices.

“Companies that trade in data — the oil of the digital era — are the ones that capture our attention, imagination and dollars,” she told attendees. “There’s Uber, which knows where we go and what we eat. Facebook knows who we know and what we share with them. The mammoth Amazon knows what we buy.

“And perhaps most impressive of all, Google knows our intentions as we use the behemoth’s search engine to research our next holiday, car or baby name.

“If you described this to someone 30 years ago, it would have sounded like witchcraft. And even today, this collection of information may feel invasive to some, even creepy. That’s why it’s important for those of us who recognise the benefits of data to help people understand the good that can come from collecting insights in the right way.”

Ms Bayer Rosmarin said companies were generally not using data to control consumers and citizens, instead using it to help empower consumers by giving them options to tell the companies what they wanted done better, but said the data must be extracted safely and that privacy must be respected throughout the process.

“Like oil, data must be refined. Data should be aggregated so that patterns emerge and individuals aren’t identified,” she said.

“Yet unlike oil, data is an ever-increasing resource pool. It is with certainty I can say that tomorrow’s data reserves will be greater than today’s.

“Whatever we are doing, we already leave digital trails: when we are running, shopping, or even just sitting in traffic.”

Ms Bayer Rosmarin, a former Commonwealth Bank executive, said she saw data capabilities as a key differentiator for Optus, and that those capabilities were particularly crucial amid the recovery from COVID-19. She said that, for example, as Australians went into lockdown a year ago, Optus saw visits to fitness sites skyrocket as people sought workouts and exercise classes online, so the company launched a second Optus Sport channel, OS Fitness. She said since its launch, OS Fitness users had streamed 490,000 workouts, and customer feedback had been positive.

“Data can be used to identify what’s working — and where improvements should be made for the benefit of our communities,” she said.

“When analysing visitor movements in the Gippsland Lakes region during the Australian Black Summer bushfires, we can see that some visitors begin to leave when tourists were first warned to evacuated the area on December 23, when authorities already knew conditions were bad and going to become worse.

“But it wasn’t until a second warning on December 29 that visitors could be seen to decrease sharply, many who were by then trapped or hindered by road closures. Why didn’t visitors heed the first warning?

“What could have been done to encourage more people to exit earlier, when it was safer to do so and to save emergency responders efforts for other activities? Our data has identified that a better call to action is needed in these types of situations.”

Ms Bayer Rosmarin said Optus customers’ usage patterns would inform the company where it next put its focus.

“We launched Optus’s MyNetwork initiative directly in response to customer input, and it is a stellar example of valuable, actionable qualitative input,” she said. “MyNetwork allows customers who have experienced poor service or a disconnection to drop a pin at the offending location so that we know where issue areas lie. It gives our customers the control to tell us when and where a problem is occurring or to provide us with feedback on how we can do better.

“As Optus improves our services and builds out 5G, more devices will connect, more data points will evolve, and the network ­effects will increase the speed with which that data can be turned into actionable wisdom.

“There is so much more potential ahead of what data can do, how we can use it, and what can be achieved, solved and accomplished.”