Collective, democratic and just. Towards a new global agenda on data governance policy and practice

Jeni chaired this RightsCon roundtable, bringing together Astha Kapoor from the Aapti Institute, Alison Gillwald from Research ICT Africa, and Carolina Rossini from the Datasphere Initiative.

To date, most data governance laws, policies and frameworks around the world have focussed on addressing individual data harms, and creating individual rights. However, we believe the governance of data needs to better account for data’s relational qualities, collective harms and public value.

This calls for new narratives, policies and practices of data governance that foreground collective, democratic and participatory practice: giving communities a powerful voice in data governance. Such approaches complement individual rights, and rebalance power over data. They draw on diverse traditions of community decision making across the globe.

This session explored opportunities to use the G20 over coming years (hosted by India, South Africa and Brazil respectively), and other global policy processes, to change the debate about data.