Area 3: Policy & Literacy for data

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Policy & Literacy for Data

In addition to the opportunities and challenges within government, governance, and technology, the third key focus area for data-driven policy research involves the policy, governance, and management issues related to developing and implementing data-driven solutions. Across the globe, different governance models and frameworks for data and associated technologies are being developed, influenced by local contexts, cultural values, and levels of public literacy and acceptance.

Regulations like Europe’s GDPR have set high standards for data practices worldwide, influencing how data is managed and protected. Additionally, laws and regulations concerning emerging technologies, such as AI and Blockchain, are increasingly being shaped through both the reinterpretation of existing laws and the introduction of new ones. Concepts like data intermediaries, data trusts, and peer-to-peer data infrastructures (such as distributed ledgers) are being explored as potential solutions for managing the complexities of sensitive data sharing and public–private collaborations.

From a management perspective, key concerns include data supply chains, ownership, provenance, sharing, linkage, and data curation. Effective governance of data and technology also depends on the availability of high-quality metadata, which must adhere to common standards to ensure interoperability across different scales.

The focus here is on understanding and managing the intricate relationships between data subjects, data controllers, and stakeholders, and on encouraging policymakers to reconsider the balance of power in data governance.

  • Governance, law and management of data and associated technologies;
  • Design principles and impact assessment;
  • Literacy, translation, communication;
  • Intermediaries, trusts, collaboratives;
  • Regulation of data-based services and processes;
  • Open science, open research infrastructure, and FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable) practice
Area 3 Committee Members:
Policy & Literacy for Data: Insights and Perspectives

Policy and Literacy for Data as Important Drivers to Trustworthy Governance : This blog post explores how policy frameworks and data literacy serve as critical pillars for fostering trustworthy governance in an era of rapid digital transformation. It examines their role in ensuring ethical and effective data-driven solutions.

Area 3 Panel Discussion: The Future of Data Ownership and Sovereignty
Data for Policy 2024 Conference – Area 3 Panel:
The Future of Data Ownership and Sovereignty: An examination on current governance modalities and debate on anticipatory trends
This discussion complements an ongoing Area 3 landscape report, fostering collaboration with panelists to shape future research directions.
Speakers

Fei Liao, Nanjing Audit University (Remote Participation)
Yaniv Benhamou, University of Geneva,
Masaru Yarime, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Ashraf Shaharudin, Department of Urbanism, Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, Delft University of Technology, Delft, the Netherlands
Annelieke van den Berg, TNO (Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research)

Chair: Johanna Walker, King’s College London

Panel Abstract

The recently released “The Data for Policy Community” report (Engin et al. 2024) outlines the vital role of this distinct field and articulates the increased need to guide research under a proposed collective framework. It solidifies the research and stakeholder community around this interdisciplinary area on “Data for Policy”, and expounds on 6 distinct yet interconnected themes to converge future research efforts and learnings. From this, the area on “Policy and Literacy for Data” focuses on the “the policy, governance and management issues involved in development and implementation of data-driven solutions” and the “governance models and frameworks for data and associated technologies [] developed across the globe with variances according to local context and value judgements, as well as public literacy and acceptance”. With this in mind, this panel discussion offers a brief reflection into current models, and an opportunity to learn how local contexts evolve with the changing data governance concepts with Latin America and China as specific examples, and emerging norms driven by rapid advancement in digital technology and the increased ambition from countries to provide a transformative approach towards a societal-scale digital public infrastructure to foster services and economic activites. It additionally reflects on anticipatory trends to come as data governance as a discipline and regulatory practice continues to change and adopt to mega technological trends brought on suppliers and firms, and norms and principles debuted by countries and the international policymaking community.

This panel discussion will be opened and framed within a comprehensive effort of a landscape report underway within the context of the “Policy and Literacy for Data” area by its area committee to attempt a proposition in reflecting on said current dynamics, and proposing further questions and needs for understanding change in governance approach as technology, norms, individual and instituational literary shift with time. This panel will serve to complement and inspire the “Data governance, law and management of data” subchapter of said report, and the knowledge shared during the discussion and potential collaboration on the report with this set of invited authors will potentially supplement this directional-setting task to inform future questions.

Explore more in ” Exploring the contributions of open data intermediaries for a sustainable open data ecosystem,” a publication tied to this panel’s themes.

References:

Engin Z., Gardner E., Hyde A., Verhulst S.V., Crowcroft J. (2024). Unleashing Collective Intelligence for Public Decision Making: The Data for Policy Community. Data & Policy. 2024;6:e2. https://doi.org/10.1017/dap.2024.2