To learn more about Open North’s approach to data governance, be sure to check out the second blog post in this series as well as our online course.
Data is not just about data. Data is about the very arrangements of power, profit, inclusion, and equality that structure our society. As such, data governance is not just about the use of information; it is about rethinking our social contract in a time of massive digital upheaval.
INTRODUCTION TO THE SERIES
A few months ago we decided to re-write our Data Governance ONTraC learning module. Our team had done fascinating and innovative work together with the City of Montréal on their Digital Charter and data governance strategy, and we thought the learning module needed to be updated to reflect these new insights.
Rethinking the module sparked a much larger conversation about the untapped potential of data governance, and through that we have come to see its potential as lying at the very foundation of much of what we do and envision for digital transformation. This series of blog posts will discuss this evolution of our thinking, introduce the new ONTraC module, and outline how it is informing our upcoming projects and future directions.
DATA GOVERNANCE IN A TIME OF UPHEAVAL
Through our research and work with municipalities across Canada over the last few years, we have come to see data governance as a unique place to redesign the distribution of power and benefit that data can afford. In this blog post we will discuss our understanding of the role of data in society and how it underpins our thinking on data governance.
Data is not just about data. Rather than a neutral description of the world, data is the outcome of the particular interests that caused its creation, whether as consumer profiles for advertising, mobility data for traffic planning, or racial data to detect discrimination. Data is not collected like a trail of breadcrumbs left behind; data is intentionally produced by these interests for their own goals. Technologies are specifically designed to create certain data, and not others — think of the questions on a census, or the data categories in air pollution tracking. The interests behind data production determine the data we have, which in an increasingly data-driven society, fundamentally affects what we know and do.
However, not all interests are alike. Data is produced in this way because people see value in them, but not all people have the same resources to produce the data they want and to use it to create value. In the past, states and governments were the most significant data producers, possessing the infrastructure and mandate to generate information about the population across their jurisdictions. They valued data as an asset, and used their data production capacity to expand their ability to govern — sometimes with beneficial effects, like using tax revenue to maintain important infrastructure, and sometimes harmfully, for example the welfare surveillance of Indigenous communities.
In the last few decades, corporations have emerged and in some ways far surpassed, and even supplanted, governments as the biggest and most consequential data producers and aggregators. The value of data as a commodity has skyrocketed, leading to corporations with annual profits that exceed the GDPs of some countries. Together with the rise of the value of data as a commodity we have seen the growing centrality of data producing technologies to the structure of society (e.g. Google Maps) and private-public partnerships between the state and technology corporations to provide public services (public transport schedules on Google Maps). Digital technologies, government, private corporations, and residents have become interwoven in new and complex relationships, at the heart of all of which is data.
This development has led to a situation in which data is not just about data, but is also a field of contestation over who produces what kinds of data, who gets to use it, and who benefits in which ways — and the results are highly unequal. Extensive research shows in detail how power determines the ability to produce data and create value, and the result is the further disenfranchisement of the already marginalized and the wholesale exploitation of entire populations’ data by ‘big tech’ corporations. Lacking the power to meaningfully participate in this contestation, research finds people are frequently excluded from data, included yet put at risk, or were barred from benefiting equitably.
Data has become a societal asset of such critical importance that it is now a space of the most fundamental struggles over power and profit, over inclusion and exclusion, and over the very structure of what a democratic digital economy should be. While the largest and most powerful players have worked hard to set the rules in their favour, the debate is still wide open with new data governance ideas actively in development the world over. This debate about data is not just about data: it is about rethinking the social contract for our digital age and creating a more equitable society.
On the level of communities and cities, data governance projects like the First Nations Information Governance Center, the Montreal en Commun Digital Charter, Barcelona and Amsterdam’s DECODE projects, Colombia’s PNID, and many more around the globe have grasped this potential and are working rapidly to develop new models to rebalance the system and return involvement and equity to their residents. The need for innovation in data governance is only going to grow as new issues arise in which data equality will play a vital role, whether it’s in the digitalization of climate action, supporting marginalized communities, reducing economic inequality, health and welfare, education, or global development.
It is in the face of this need that we have evolved our approach to data governance, built the new framework tool, developed a new learning module, and continue to innovate, apply, test, and refine our thinking.
In the next blog post we will introduce our data governance learning module, and explain how it can help communities and municipalities understand this crucial role of data governance, and begin to develop their own framework for tackling the use of data for the common good.