It’s been another packed few weeks, with our monthly meetup, the Justice Data Matters evaluation project starting in earnest, progress on our narratives research, contributing to a couple of collaborative projects, and reading to keep track of coming in thick and fast. It might have just been a rush of publications around International Day of Democracy, but it seems that there’s a lot happening when it comes to data & democracy.
For this weeknote though, I want to focus in particular on the practice strand of our work, and thinking about where Connected by Data can best contribute.
In our theory of change we state that we are aiming to “foster practice through surfacing and sharing examples of collective and participatory governance, and building a community of practitioners who lead and support collective data governance activities.”
In setting our quarterly goals (till end of November) last week, we put the following three down fitting broadly under our practice strand:
- Developing a briefing on putting community at the heart of data governance that outlines the case for, and practical approaches to, participatory data governance;
- Producing an alpha release of living resource hub on participatory data governance containing cases, interviews and models;
- Hosting at least one conversation with at least 10 participants from the wider community to explore issues of participatory data governance.
In parallel, I’ve been looking at the opportunities we might have to carry out learning projects and pilots, although most of the possibilities here look like they might unfold over a longer period than the next three months.
Six months or so into the Connected by Data journey, thinking more concretely about a set of ‘outputs’ like briefings and early iterations of a resource hub are a useful way to structure and bring together our learning to date, and to hopefully create resources that feed into our policy and advocacy work. However, I’m very aware of the need to (a) avoid duplicating work that is already done; and (b) hold to our values of being a bridging actor, rather than trying to do everything.
I’m particularly struck that this month I’ve seen more than one toolkit or resource PDF making the connection between participation and data governance: and that we need to make sure we’ve got a good understanding of the use cases for resources we might create from both the ‘supply side’ and ‘demand side’.
So - I’m planning for more of a focus over October on talking to ‘the field’ - and in that, trying to work out what the field is, needs, and might be.
If you’re reading this and might be up for a chat - please do grab a slot for a conversation here!