Data is not like oil. It's better.

When we found oil, Norway had the political will to regulate the resource for a long-term value-added commercialization. With data, we've done the opposite. We produce massive amounts of data, but without frameworks that capture the values before they disappear out of the country. It is this structural gap that we need to close.

Norway's biggest obstacle in the data economy is not a lack of technology, but a lack of clear rules for access, pricing and quality. The institutional framework that was the very basis of the oil adventure is lacking for data.

Norway currently produces very valuable data in the fields of health, energy, transport, construction and finance. Yet the data lies scattered, is unstandardized and often inaccessible. We have the raw data, but without a regulatory regime its value ends in other countries, or remains untapped at home with us.

If Norway is to succeed in the AI economy, we need to treat data as a national resource, not as a random by-product of digital systems.

Competition in the digital economy follows an optimization logic. Whoever uses data to continuously improve their services wins. Google is getting better for every search, Microsoft for every document in Copilot, Nvidia for every model trained.

This dynamic creates a self-reinforcing advantage that no other actor can match.

Without control of our own data, Norway loses before the competition starts. The self-reinforcing effects make the values concentrated in the actors who already have the most data.

It is not a law of nature that the computer giants should own all future value creation in the data economy. McKinsey estimates the value potential from data and IT in Norway at NOK 95—159 billion in the year. That equates to a good portion of the annual oil money spend. OECD stresses that better use of data can both cut costs substantial in service production and creating entirely new forms of value creation.

What stands in the way of creating value from Norwegian data?

An important source is overly risk-averse privacy interpretation. Another is a lack of expertise in data management and sharing. A third is the lack of incentives. Those who have data don't get anything left to share.

A fourth consideration is that data sharing in some markets is perceived as competitively sensitive. In industries such as grocery, where price and volume information can provide strategic benefits, sharing is often interpreted as risk to coordination rather than innovation.

Three things need to be in place:

• An economic model for data: Raw data should be managed by the community, while commercial use can be licensed through transparent arrangements. Based on Norwegian and international estimates of the value potential of the KI economy, even a very moderate base rate, about one per cent of value creation in selected sectors, could generate NOK 10—15 billion in annual revenues.
• Clear rules and incentives for data sharing: Norway has long had a policy of open data, but without ensuring the quality of the data shared, and without incentives for sharing data. Today, there are no incentives to share data. That's why we need Datafunn, a rule-driven deduction in which an independent body assesses the data set's quality, structure and reuse potential, and rewards sharing through a tax deduction on the same principle as Tax Findings.
• National platforms for data management sharing and access: Norway has several good common components, not least Altinn, a national data solution, which creates value for both business and the public sector. At the same time, the health sector is still characterized by heavy regulation and fragmented infrastructure. Industry data and energy data lie somewhere in between. They have vast amounts of data, but without a national access model that makes them shareable and usable.

Many people talk about digital infrastructure, but few talk about the regulatory economics of data. Norway needs a structural approach that makes data as predictable and profitable to manage as oil once was - with national gain at its core. With proper regulation, data is our next great value-added resource and this time without emissions.

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