Weeknotes

Jeni Tennison

Jeni Tennison

Jeni Tennison

I haven’t felt hugely productive this week, but that’s down to a combination of family stuff drawing on my time, and my attention being on a couple of other strands of work:

  • The upcoming report from the ODI, Aapti Institute and Data Trusts Initiative for the GPAI Data Governance Working Group on the potential of data trusts to reduce the impact of the climate crisis. One theme that comes through is questions about the incentive (as well as skills and legal and technical means) for people to provide data to data trusts. And then, of course, how they are actually governed (eg who the trustees of the trust actually are).
  • With Public Digital for their contribution to the Bloomberg Philanthropies City Data Alliance. This is just getting started but I’m looking forward to coming at the question of civic participation in data and analytics services from the perspective of the user-orientation of the approach to service delivery that Public Digital advocates.

The one big announcement is our partnership with Research ICT Africa on their Africa Just AI project. I’m so excited to work with Rachel, Alison and the team on approaches to collective data governance that draw on African rather than European traditions.

The rest of my week was largely on organisational administration, not least preparing for the selection of our Advocacy and Campaign Director. There has been a much larger set of applicants than I anticipated, which is great but a lot to handle as a one person organisation. I have created a sifting questionnaire as the next stage, and then a couple of written tasks for applicants to complete before interview.

Getting in gear for employing people also means creating contracts and all those policies you’re supposed to have. So, if anyone has any pointers to off-the-shelf policy packs we could adapt, or approaches to developing them in a lightweight way, I’d appreciate it!

Do you collect, use or share data?

We can help you build trust with your customers, clients or citizens

 Read more

Do you want data to be used in your community’s interests?

We can help you organise to ensure that data benefits your community

 Read more