Connected by data

Participation pathways - designing for effective engagement

Tim Davies ▪ Nov 21, 2022

This post was originally written to follow up a workshop of the Data Trusts Initiative, and is cross-posted from the Data Trusts Initiative blog.

How can the individuals and communities affected by decisions about data be more engaged in shaping and making those decisions?

New institutions of data governance, such as data co-operatives and data trusts provide an important framework for enabling data stewardship to be better aligned with community or public interest (by contrast, for example, to corporate structures oriented towards prioritising shareholder interests). However, even with trusts or co-ops, for interest alignment to actually take place, there is a need for ongoing and in-depth participatory practice.

What’s our vision of British data protection?

Jeni Tennison ▪ Nov 12, 2022

Michelle Donelan, the Secretary of State for the Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), announced a new, British, approach to data protection at the October 2022 Conservative Party Conference. It seems the Johnson government’s new direction for data, which culminated in the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill introduced in Parliament in July, is to be revised through more consultation, though it appears not a public one.

GDPR isn’t perfect and it would be great if the UK could be bold in changing data protection laws to build on and move beyond GDPR. Unfortunately, the Bill as it stands takes backwards steps rather than confronting future – or even current – challenges. Its focus on simply reducing regulation, especially for small businesses, is misplaced and out of step with the kind of regulation the modern data economy needs.

Proportionate data protection policies

Jeni Tennison ▪ Oct 21, 2022

When I first started CONNECTED BY DATA, one of the first things I thought about was the website’s privacy policy. Wouldn’t it be great, I thought, if we could demonstrate the kind of approaches that we’re advocating for in our own practice. But then there was so much other stuff to do – website content, hiring, finance, strategy work, engagement, projects, fundraising, writing, and so on and on – that it was easier to use a couple of off-the-shelf data protection policies for recruitment and just to not even track website analytics.

Then we got going on our advocacy work, and started organising events. And this meant we needed to collect data – personally identifiable data – and about privacy advocates! The worst kind of data subject. We knew we had to take a proper look at our data protection approach.

Effective Data Governance

Jeni Tennison ▪ Sep 21, 2022

Our work at CONNECTED BY DATA is about improving data governance, so that organisations are more effective at making decisions about data towards justice, equity and sustainability. We believe this means that data governance needs to be collective, democratic, participatory, deliberative and powerful. This post unpicks what these terms mean in practice.

Weeknotes are a combination of updates and personal reflection written on a routine basis