Description: This session aims at introducing participants to critical public policy concerns pertaining to the design and implementation of data governance frameworks, when this issue is approached from a rights-and-development standpoint. It will focus on equipping participants build their understanding of the following topics
a) What are the salient, privacy-plus issues concerning data governance?
b) How are individual and group rights in data linked to the realization of civic-political and economic-social-cultural rights and the right to development?
c) What approaches are being explored to address data concentration and the exploitation of digital intelligence by Big Tech monopolies?
d) What policy measures are being implemented and contemplated in creating data infrastructures for social good?
e) How should we define different sets of data (personal, communal, environmental), their limits, their ownership and their associated risks?
f) What techno-design alternatives can be used to build a ‘federated data commons’?
g) How do domestic policy frameworks for data governance connect to trade policy in the new economy?
There are two key standpoints from which data governance regimes are shaped. One is about the issue of privacy and general security, and the other relates to data's social, public and economic value. Of course these perspectives are linked, and they often relate to the same data. This training and capacity building workshop will familiarize workshop participants with the emerging issues in data governance such as, but not limited to:
a) privacy and data protection
c) data portability
d) individual and collective rights over data
e) data ownership
f) data sharing
g) free flows of data
h) data localization
g) data infrastructures
h) data commons
Concepts will be unpacked from a conceptual, legal as well as technical points of view. For instance, data portability is both a social/legal issue and a technical one, so is data sharing and data infrastructures. The proposed tutorial will make an attempt to tackle these nested understandings.
The four facilitators will engage with the issue from their varied backgrounds in research, policy intervention, technical work and advocacy with the workshop participants and take them through the building blocks of data governance regimes. Indicative speaker briefs are included below:
a) Nanjira Sambuli, Web Foundation will unpack the debate on data and innovation and outline the role of policy in the same.
b) Duncan McCann, New Economics Foundation will address the issue of data concentration and possible alternative models to data-driven innovation.
c) Deepti Bharthur, IT for Change will talk about the rise of datafication in the context of governance and public sector systems in the global south and its impact on development outcomes
d) Jean F. Queralt, The IO Foundation will focus on the role of techno-design in shaping data structures and in turn data governance.
The extended tutorial will follow an interactive format. The aim will be to engage participants on their current levels of knowledge followed by short lectures that focus on regional and sectoral perspectives.
While the workshop is open to all and will be based on sign-ups, it will be particularly useful to early career policy professionals, entrepreneurs, students, members of technical community and researchers who will have the opportunity to learn about policy contestations, policy spaces and good practices including from the global South.
Expected Outcomes: The workshop hopes to generate the following outcomes:
a) Informed engagement of early career policy professionals, students, members of technical community, and individuals from the private sector in issues around data governance.
b) Creation of a simple resource tool kit on data governance that can be shared and used as a resource for future training and capacity building.