Resource by Stefaan Verhulst and Adam Zable: “In today’s AI-driven world, the reuse of data beyond its original purpose is no longer exceptional – it is foundational. Data collected for one context is now routinely combined, shared, or repurposed for others. While these practices can create significant public value, many data reuse initiatives face persistent gaps in legitimacy.
Existing governance tools, often centered on individual, point-in-time consent, do not reflect the collective and evolving nature of secondary data use. They also provide limited ways for communities to influence decisions once data is shared, particularly as new risks, technologies, partners, or use cases emerge. Where consent is transactional and static, governing data reuse requires mechanisms that are relational and adaptive.
A social license for data re-use responds to this challenge by framing legitimacy as an ongoing relationship between data users and affected communities. It emphasizes the importance of clearly articulated expectations around purpose, acceptable uses, safeguards, oversight, and accountability, and of revisiting those expectations as circumstances change.
To support this work in practice, The GovLab has now released Operationalizing a Social License for Data Re-Use: Questions to Signal and Capture Community Preferences and Expectations. This new facilitator’s guide is designed for people who convene and lead engagement around data reuse and need practical tools to support those conversations early.
The guide focuses on the first phase of operationalizing a social license: establishing community preferences and expectations. It provides a structured worksheet and facilitation guidance to help practitioners convene deliberative sessions that uncover priorities, acceptable uses, safeguards, red lines, and conditions for reuse as data is shared, combined, or scaled…(More)”.
