Danny Lämmerhirt at Open Knowledge: “We are pleased to announce a new research series investigating how citizens and civil society create data to drive sustainable development. The series follows on from earlier papers on Democratising The Data Revolution and how citizen-generated data can change what public institutions measure. The first report “Making Citizen-Generated Data Work” asks what makes citizens and others want to produce and use citizen-generated data. It was written by myself, Shazade Jameson, and Eko Prasetyo.
“The goal of Citizen-Generated Data is to monitor, advocate for, or drive change around an issue important to citizens”
The report demonstrates that citizen-generated data projects are rarely the work of individual citizens. Instead, they often depend on partnerships to thrive and are supported by civil society organisations, community-based organisations, governments, or business. These partners play a necessary role to provide resources, support, and knowledge to citizens. In return, they can harness data created by citizens to support their own mission. Thus, citizens and their partners often gain mutual benefits from citizen-generated data.
But if CGD projects rely on partnerships, who has to be engaged, and through which incentives, to enable CGD projects to achieve their goals? How are such multi-stakeholder projects organised, and which resources and expertise do partners bring into a project? What can other projects do to support and benefit their own citizen-generated data initiatives? This report offers recommendations to citizens, civil society organisations, policy-makers, donors, and others on how to foster stronger collaborations….(Read the full report here).