The Citizens Utility Board (“CUB”) and the Environmental Defense Fund (“EDF”) recently filed a joint petition asking the Illinois Commerce Commission (“ICC” or “the Commission”) to initiate a proceeding to adopt the Illinois Open Data Access Framework (“Framework”). They hope the Framework will become the governing standards for access to customer usage data by customers, utilities and third parties. One interesting point about the proposed Framework is that the utilities are guardians of the data (sounds like a movie my son would like) but not owners of it. Below is the paragraph discussing ownership:

Customer is principal owner of retail electric consumption data. The customer has the ability to authorize third parties to access individual customer data, and the customer can revoke that access at the customer’s discretion. The utility serves as the guardian of retail electric consumption data, and must allow access to third parties where the customer has authorized it.

You can read CUB’s and EDF’s prefiled testimony and other pleadings by going to the ICC’s website. The case number is 14-0507. Com-Ed and Ameren Illinois have intervened in the case.