Book by David McRaney: “What made a prominent conspiracy-theorist YouTuber finally see that 9/11 was not a hoax? How do voter opinions shift from neutral to resolute? Can widespread social change only take place when a generation dies out? From one of our greatest thinkers on reasoning, HOW MINDS CHANGE is a book about the science, and the experience, of transformation.
When self-delusion expert and psychology nerd David McRaney began a book about how to change someone’s mind in one conversation, he never expected to change his own. But then a diehard 9/11 Truther’s conversion blew up his theories—inspiring him to ask not just how to persuade, but why we believe, from the eye of the beholder. Delving into the latest research of psychologists and neuroscientists, HOW MINDS CHANGE explores the limits of reasoning, the power of groupthink, and the effects of deep canvassing. Told with McRaney’s trademark sense of humor, compassion, and scientific curiosity, it’s an eye-opening journey among cult members, conspiracy theorists, and political activists, from Westboro Baptist Church picketers to LGBTQ campaigners in California—that ultimately challenges us to question our own motives and beliefs. In an age of dangerous conspiratorial thinking, can we rise to the occasion with empathy?
An expansive, big-hearted journalistic narrative, HOW MINDS CHANGE reaches surprising and thought-provoking conclusions, to demonstrate the rare but transformative circumstances under which minds can change…(More)”.
Selected Readings on the LGTBQ+ Community and Data
By Uma Kalkar, Salwa Mansuri, Marine Ragnet and Andrew J. Zahuranec
As part of an ongoing effort to contribute to current topics in data, technology, and governance, The GovLab’s Selected Readings series provides an annotated and curated collection of recommended works on themes such as open data, data collaboration, and civic technology.
Around the world, LGBTQ+ people face exclusion and discrimination that undermines their capacity to live their lives and succeed. Together with allies, many LGBTQ+ people are fighting to exercise their rights and achieve full equality. However, this struggle has been undermined by a lack of specific, quantifiable information on the challenges they face.
When collected and managed responsibly, data about sexual and gender minorities can be used to protect and empower LGBTQ+ people through informed policy and advocacy work. To this end, this Selected Reading investigates what data is (and is not) collected about LGBTQ+ individuals in the areas within healthcare, education, economics, and public policy and the ramifications of these outcomes. It offers a perspective on some of the existing gaps regarding LGBTQ+ data collection. It also examines the various challenges that LGBTQ+ groups have had to overcome through a data lens. While activism and advocacy has increased the visibility and acceptance of sexual and gender minorities and allowed them to better exercise their rights in society, significant inequities remain. Our literature review puts forward some of these recent efforts.
Most of the papers included in this review, however, conclude with similar findings: data for about LGBTQ+ communities is still lacking and as a result, research on the topic is often times also lagging behind. This is particularly problematic, as detailed in some of our readings, because LGBTQ+ populations are often at the center of discrimination and still face disparate health vulnerabilities. The LGBTQI+ Data Inclusion Act, which recently passed the US House of Representatives and would require over 100 federal agencies to improve data collection and surveying of LGBTQ communities, seeks to address this gap.
We hope this selection of readings can provide some clarity on current data-driven research for and about LGBTQ+ individuals. The readings are presented in alphabetical order.
***
Selected Reading List (in alphabetical order)
- D’Ignazio, Catherine, and Lauren F. Klein. Data Feminism. MIT Press, 2020. https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/data-feminism.
- Giblon, Rachel, and Greta R. Bauer. “Health care availability, quality, and unmet need: a comparison of transgender and cisgender residents of Ontario, Canada.” BMC Health Services Research 17, no. 1 (2017): 1–10. https://bmchealthservres.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12913-017-2226-z.
- Marshall, Zack, Vivian Welch, Alexa Minichiello, Michelle Swab, Fern Brunger, and Chris Kaposy. “Documenting research with transgender, nonbinary, and other gender diverse (trans) individuals and communities: introducing the global trans research evidence map.” Transgender Health 4, no. 1 (2019): 68–80. https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/trgh.2018.0020.
- Medina, Caroline and Lindsay Mahowald. “Collecting Data about LGBTQI+ and Other Sexual and Gender-Diverse Communities.” Center for American Progress, May 26, 2022. https://www.americanprogress.org/article/collecting-data-about-lgbtqi-and-other-sexual-and-gender-diverse-communities.
- Miner, Michael H., Walter O. Bockting, Rebecca Swinburne Romine, and Sivakumaran Raman. “Conducting internet research with the transgender population: Reaching broad samples and collecting valid data.” Social science computer review 30, no. 2 (2012): 202–211. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3769415/.
- Pega, Frank, Sari L. Reisner, Randall L. Sell, and Jaimie F. Veale. “Transgender health: New Zealand’s innovative statistical standard for gender identity.” American journal of public health 107, no. 2 (2017): 217–221. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5227923/.
- Ruberg, Bonnie, and Spencer Ruelos. “Data for Queer Lives: How LGBTQ Gender and Sexuality Identities Challenge Norms of Demographics.” Big Data & Society 7, no. 1 (June 18, 2020): 205395172093328. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2053951720933286.
- Sell, Randall L. “LGBTQ health surveillance: data = power.” American Journal of Public Health 107, no. 6 (2017): 843–844. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5425894/.
- Snapp, Shannon D., Stephen T. Russell, Mariella Arredondo, and Russell Skiba. “A right to disclose: LGBTQ youth representation in data, science, and policy.” Advances in child development and behavior 50 (2016): 135–159. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26956072/.
- Wimberly, George L. “Chapter 10: Use of large-scale data sets and LGBTQ education.” LGBTQ issues in education: Advancing a research agenda (2015): 175–218. https://ebooks.aera.net/LGBTQCH10.
***
Annotated Selected Reading List (in alphabetical order):
D’Ignazio, Catherine, and Lauren F. Klein. Data Feminism. MIT Press, 2020. https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/data-feminism.
- D’Ignazio and Klein investigate how data has been historically used to maintain specific social status quos. To overcome this challenge, they approach data collection and uses through an intersectional, feminist lens that identifies issues in current data handling systems and looks toward solutions for more inclusive data applications.
- The editors define data feminism as “power, about who has it and who doesn’t, and about how those differentials of power can be challenged and changed using data.” The book centers around seven principles that identify and challenge existing power structures around data and seek pluralist, context-based data processes that illuminate hidden and missed data.
Giblon, Rachel, and Greta R. Bauer. “Health care availability, quality, and unmet need: a comparison of transgender and cisgender residents of Ontario, Canada.” BMC Health Services Research 17, no. 1 (2017): 1–10. https://bmchealthservres.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12913-017-2226-z.
- Canada boasts a universal healthcare and insurance system, yet disparities exist between the treatment quality, services, and knowledge about transgender patients.
- Data collection on transgender, non-binary, and intersex individuals is not conducted in Canadian health surveys, making it difficult to compare and contrast the healthcare provided to transgender people with that provided to cisgender people. Moreover, a lack of physician knowledge about trans needs and/or refusal to provide hormone therapy/ gender-affirming procedures result in trans individuals explicitly avoiding medical services. The lack of services, comfort, and data about transgender people in Canada demonstrate their severely “unmet health care need.”
- Using data about Ontario residents from the Canadian Community Health Survey and the Trans PULSE survey, the researchers find that 33% transgender Ontarians had an unmet health need that would not be unmet if they were cisgender. As well, transgender men and women found the quality of healthcare in their community to be poor than compared to cisgender individuals. Twenty-one percent of transgender people avoided going to emergency rooms because of their gender identity.
Bowleg, Lisa, and Stewart Landers. “The need for COVID-19 LGBTQ-specific data.” American Journal of Public Health 111, no. 9 (2021): 1604–1605. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34436923/.
- The adage “no data, no problem” has been magnified during the pandemic, highlighting gaps around data collection for LGBTQ communities, which often intersect with other communities who are disproportionately at-risk for COVID-19, such as minority populations in the service industry and those who smoke.
- Despite concerns about the stigma facing LBGTQ communities, data collection from these demographics has been relatively feasible, with federal governments drastically increasing their data collection from LGBTQ communities.
- However, the lack of direction and guidance at a federal level to collect sexual and gender minority data has stunted information about how this demographic has experienced COVID-19 when compared to cis-gender, heterosexual groups. The authors stress the need for data collection from LGBTQ communities and advocacy to encourage these practices to help address the pandemic.
Marshall, Zack, Vivian Welch, Alexa Minichiello, Michelle Swab, Fern Brunger, and Chris Kaposy. “Documenting research with transgender, nonbinary, and other gender diverse (trans) individuals and communities: introducing the global trans research evidence map.” Transgender Health 4, no. 1 (2019): 68–80. https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/trgh.2018.0020.
- Marshall and colleagues study a series of 15 academic databases to assemble a dataset describing 690 trans-focused articles. They then map where and how transgender “have been studied and represented within and across multiple fields of research” to understand the landscape of existing research on transgender people. They find that research around the trans community focused on physical and mental healthcare services and marginalization and were primarily observational research.
- The authors found that social determinants of health for transgender people were the least studied, along with ethnicity, culture, and race, violence, early life experiences, activism, and education.
- With this evidence map, researchers have a strong starting point to further explore issues through a LGBTQ lens and better engage with trans people and perspectives when looking at social problems.
Medina, Caroline and Lindsay Mahowald. “Collecting Data about LGBTQI+ and Other Sexual and Gender-Diverse Communities.” Center for American Progress, May 26, 2022. https://www.americanprogress.org/article/collecting-data-about-lgbtqi-and-other-sexual-and-gender-diverse-communities.
- The paper argues, that despite advances “a persistent lack of routine data collection on sexual orientation, gender identity, and variations in sex characteristics (SOGISC) is still a substantial roadblock for policymakers, researchers, service providers, and advocates seeking to improve the health and well-being of LGBTQI+ people.”
- Even though various types of data are integral to the experiences of LGBTQI+ people, the report narrows its focus to data collection in two forms of environments: general population surveys & surveys regarding LGBTQI+ people. Specific population surveys such as the latter provide significant advantage to capture specific and sensitive data.
- It argues that a range of precautions can be adopted from a research design perspective to ensure that personal data and information is handled with care and matches ethical standards as outlined in the Data Ethics Framework of the Federal Data Strategy ranging from privacy and confidentiality to honesty and transparency.
Miner, Michael H., Walter O. Bockting, Rebecca Swinburne Romine, and Sivakumaran Raman. “Conducting internet research with the transgender population: Reaching broad samples and collecting valid data.” Social science computer review 30, no. 2 (2012): 202–211. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3769415/.
- The internet has the potential to collect information from transgender people, who are “a hard-to-reach, relatively small, and geographically dispersed population” in a diverse and representative manner.
- To study HIV risk behaviors of transgender individuals in the U.S., Miner et al. developed an online tool that recruited individuals who frequent websites that are important for the transgender community and used quantiative and qualitative methods to learn more about these individuals. They conclude that while online data collection can be difficult to ensure internal validity, careful testing and methods can overcome these issues to improve data quality on transgender people.
Pega, Frank, Sari L. Reisner, Randall L. Sell, and Jaimie F. Veale. “Transgender health: New Zealand’s innovative statistical standard for gender identity.” American journal of public health 107, no. 2 (2017): 217–221. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5227923/.
- Pega et al. discuss New Zealand’s national statistical standard for gender identity data collection, the first of its kind. More governments in Australia and the United States are now following suit to address the health access and information disparity that transgender people face.
- Data about transgender people has advanced progressive policy action in New Zealand, and the authors celebrate this statistical standard as a way to collect high quality data for data-driven policies to support these groups.
- While this move will help uncover LGBTQ individuals currently hidden in data, the authors critique the standard because it does not “promote the two-question method, risking misclassification and undercounts; does promote the use of the ambiguous response category “gender diverse” in standard questions; and is not intersex inclusive.”
Ruberg, Bonnie, and Spencer Ruelos. “Data for Queer Lives: How LGBTQ Gender and Sexuality Identities Challenge Norms of Demographics.” Big Data & Society 7, no. 1 (June 18, 2020): 205395172093328. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2053951720933286.
- Drawing from the responses of 178 people who identified as non-heterosexual or non-cisgender in a survey, this paper argues that “dominant notions of demographic data, […] that seeks to accurately categorize and “capture” identity do not sufficiently account for the complexities of LGBTQ lives.”
- Demographic data commonly imagines identity as fixed, singular, and discrete. However, the researchers’ findings suggest that, for LGBTQ people, gender and sexual identities are often multiple and in flux. Most respondents reported their understanding of their identity shifting over time. For many, “gender identity was made up of overlapping factors, including the relationship between gender and transgender identities. These findings challenge researchers to reconsider how identity is understood as and through data.” They argue that considering identities as fixed and discrete are not only exclusionary but also do not wholly represent the dynamic and fluid nature of gender identities.
- The piece offers several recommendations to address this challenge. Firstly, the researchers argue to remove data discreteness, which will enable users to select multiple identities rather than choose one from a drop-down list. Secondly, create communication and feedback channels for LGBTQ+ to express whether surveys and other data collection methods are sufficiently inclusive and gender-sensitive.
Sell, Randall L. “LGBTQ health surveillance: data = power.” American Journal of Public Health 107, no. 6 (2017): 843–844. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5425894/.
- Sell recounts his motto: ‘data = power;’ ‘silence = death’ and how LGBTQ people have been victims of this situation. He argues that health research and surveillance has systemically ignored sexual and gender minorities, leading to gaps in administrative understanding and policies for LGBTQ population.
- He laments that very few surveys on American health collect sexual and gender orientation data, and the lack of standardization around this data collection muddies researchers’ ability to collate and utilize the information meaningfully.
- He calls for legislation that mandates the National Institutes of Health to include sexual and gender minorities in all publicly funded research similar to the specific inclusion requirement of women and racial and ethnic minorities in studies. Despite concerns about surveillance and targeting of LGBTQ minorities, Sell argues that data collection is imperative now for a long-scale understanding of the needs of the community, transcending political terms.
Snapp, Shannon D., Stephen T. Russell, Mariella Arredondo, and Russell Skiba. “A right to disclose: LGBTQ youth representation in data, science, and policy.” Advances in child development and behavior 50 (2016): 135–159. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26956072/.
- Despite significant and positive reforms such as the legalization of same-sex marriages and protection from intersectional sexual harrasment (Webb, 2011) in the United States, there is a striking gap in literature on evidence-based practices that support LGBTQ+ Youth (Kosciw & Pizmony-Levy, 2013). The lack of data-driven solutions stifle the creation of inclusive environments where members of the LGBTQI+ community feel heard and seen. There is a striking gap in literature on evidence-based practices that support LGBTQ+ Youth (also see Kosciw & Pizmony-Levy, 2013; Mustanski, 2011).
- At present federal and local state data-states do not include SOGI (Sexual Oreintation & Gender Identity) in demographic questions. Data sets that do have spaces to disclose SOGI are largely in a health-related setting such as the Centre for Disease Control or Youth Risk Behavior. As such learning and education disparities and outcomes are not accurately measured.
- Missing systematic SOGI data renders members of the LGBTQ+ community invisible and sidelined. As such several members of civil society have therefore demanded for the need to gather SOGI data in the Department of Health, Education & Justice. Such data is therefore central to holistically encapsulate the discriminatory experiencees LGBTQ+ Youth face in an education setting, integral to well-being and development. Scholars and research teams have thusfar overcome the barriers of data reliability and validity (see Ridolfo, Miller, & Maitland, 2012) by collating the most effective methods for data collection (Sexual Minority Assessment Research Team, 2009).
Wimberly, George L. “Chapter 10: Use of large-scale data sets and LGBTQ education.” LGBTQ issues in education: Advancing a research agenda (2015): 175–218. https://ebooks.aera.net/LGBTQCH10.
- This book chapter highlighs the importance of large-scale data sets to gain understanding about LGBTQ students, school experiences, and academic achievement.
- Young people who identify as LGBTQ tend to be generalized and ways that LGBTQ identification questions are asked by surveys change across years, making it important to disaggregate large-scale data for more granular knowledge about LGBTQ people in education.
- Wimberly provides information about multiple datasets that collect this information, how they ask questions on LGBTQ identity, and ways in which the datasets have been used or have the potential to be leveraged for a more comprehensive understanding of students. He also points out the limitations of existing data sets, namely that they tend to be retrospective of the LGBTQ adolescent experience and collected from convenience samples, such as college students. This limitation also impacts the external validity of the data, especially with regard to rural, racialized, and lower-income LGBTQ students.
Identifying and addressing data asymmetries so as to enable (better) science
Paper by Stefaan Verhulst and Andrew Young: “As a society, we need to become more sophisticated in assessing and addressing data asymmetries—and their resulting political and economic power inequalities—particularly in the realm of open science, research, and development. This article seeks to start filling the analytical gap regarding data asymmetries globally, with a specific focus on the asymmetrical availability of privately-held data for open science, and a look at current efforts to address these data asymmetries. It provides a taxonomy of asymmetries, as well as both their societal and institutional impacts. Moreover, this contribution outlines a set of solutions that could provide a toolbox for open science practitioners and data demand-side actors that stand to benefit from increased access to data. The concept of data liquidity (and portability) is explored at length in connection with efforts to generate an ecosystem of responsible data exchanges. We also examine how data holders and demand-side actors are experimenting with new and emerging operational models and governance frameworks for purpose-driven, cross-sector data collaboratives that connect previously siloed datasets. Key solutions discussed include professionalizing and re-imagining data steward roles and functions (i.e., individuals or groups who are tasked with managing data and their ethical and responsible reuse within organizations). We present these solutions through case studies on notable efforts to address science data asymmetries. We examine these cases using a repurposable analytical framework that could inform future research. We conclude with recommended actions that could support the creation of an evidence base on work to address data asymmetries and unlock the public value of greater science data liquidity and responsible reuse…(More)”.
Artificial Intelligence and Democracy
Open Access Book by Jérôme Duberry on “Risks and Promises of AI-Mediated Citizen–Government Relations….What role does artificial intelligence (AI) play in the citizen–government rela-tions? Who is using this technology and for what purpose? How does the use of AI influence power relations in policy-making, and the trust of citizens in democratic institutions? These questions led to the writing of this book. While the early developments of e-democracy and e-participation can be traced back to the end of the 20th century, the growing adoption of smartphones and mobile applications by citizens, and the increased capacity of public adminis-trations to analyze big data, have enabled the emergence of new approaches. Online voting, online opinion polls, online town hall meetings, and online dis-cussion lists of the 1990s and early 2000s have evolved into new generations of policy-making tactics and tools, enabled by the most recent developments in information and communication technologies (ICTs) (Janssen & Helbig, 2018). Online platforms, advanced simulation websites, and serious gaming tools are progressively used on a larger scale to engage citizens, collect their opinions, and involve them in policy processes…(More)”.
Civic Life of Cities’ Puts Civil Society Organizations in Their Place
Article by Christof Brandtner and Walter W. Powell: “One of the ironies of social science publishing is that, despite frequent references to “American exceptionalism,” there is rarely a need to justify the United States as a setting in many leading journals. As sociologists and organization scholars, we know that many concepts devised in the US either differ in meaning (e.g., what is scholarly impact) or might not be applicable (e.g., the central role of philanthropy in developing public policies) outside the United States. In fact, there is significant pressure for scholars of such regions as Latin America, East Asia, or Africa to justify their setting and how it generalizes to other areas of interest to scholars of the Global North and West. This summer, we published a series of articles from a co-produced multi-place research project in six cities worldwide in the journal Global Perspectives to bring a new angle to this problem.
Comparative work has been among the most fruitful for testing different social science theories. In the field of civil society research, for instance, scholars have often examined government failure theory—the idea that nonprofits are more plentiful where authorities are unable to serve the full spectrum of needs—by comparing states and nations. The arguably most impactful research project for defining nonprofit organizations was a comparative study of national nonprofit sectors led by Helmut Anheier and Lester Salamon in the 1990s. Closer to the ground, the comparative case method has also been generative for understanding persistent performance differences among seemingly similar organizations. Work comparing hospitals by Kate Kellogg, and neighborhoods by Robert Sampson or Eric Klinenberg, provide illuminating examples of the power of comparing sites.
Comparing the civic life of cities
In this spirit, we designed a research project meant to provide a reality check on some now-common understandings of organizational and social dynamics developed in the Global North. In our introductory essay to the special collection titled “Capturing the Civic Life of Cities,” we ask: “In a wired world, how do social interactions among organizations and people continue to define civil society?” Our work investigates the civic life of cities, which has seen significant transformations with digitalization and globalization since the 1990s heyday of “big theories” of civil society. These transformations have seriously called into question whether the dynamics of civil society organizations—often developed in the US context—still apply. During our data collection over the past three years, civil society was further shocked by both political upheavals and a global pandemic. Nonetheless, in light of the many examples where civil society organizations have stepped up to meet pressing new needs, we conclude that:
“Civil society organizations are rooted in place through their people, practices, and partnerships. During the storm of the pandemic, these roots may have grown deeper and found new ways of invigorating cities.”…Courtesy of the University of California Press, the special collection of Global Perspectives is openly accessible until the end of July 2022.…(More)”.
Rules: A Short History of What We Live By
Book by Lorraine Daston: “Rules order almost every aspect of our lives. They set our work hours, dictate how we drive and set the table, tell us whether to offer an extended hand or cheek in greeting, and organize the rites of life, from birth through death. We may chafe under the rules we have, and yearn for ones we don’t, yet no culture could do without them. In Rules, historian Lorraine Daston traces their development in the Western tradition and shows how rules have evolved from ancient to modern times. Drawing on a rich trove of examples, including legal treatises, cookbooks, military manuals, traffic regulations, and game handbooks, Daston demonstrates that while the content of rules is dazzlingly diverse, the forms that they take are surprisingly few and long-lived.
Daston uncovers three enduring kinds of rules: the algorithms that calculate and measure, the laws that govern, and the models that teach. She vividly illustrates how rules can change—how supple rules stiffen, or vice versa, and how once bothersome regulations become everyday norms. Rules have been devised for almost every imaginable activity and range from meticulous regulations to the laws of nature. Daston probes beneath this variety to investigate when rules work and when they don’t, and why some philosophical problems about rules are as ancient as philosophy itself while others are as modern as calculating machines….(More)”.
Meta launches Sphere, an AI knowledge tool based on open web content, used initially to verify citations on Wikipedia
Article by Ingrid Lunden: “Facebook may be infamous for helping to usher in the era of “fake news”, but it’s also tried to find a place for itself in the follow-up: the never-ending battle to combat it. In the latest development on that front, Facebook parent Meta today announced a new tool called Sphere, AI built around the concept of tapping the vast repository of information on the open web to provide a knowledge base for AI and other systems to work. Sphere’s first application, Meta says, is Wikipedia, where it’s being used in a production phase (not live entries) to automatically scan entries and identify when citations in its entries are strongly or weakly supported.
The research team has open sourced Sphere — which is currently based on 134 million public web pages. Here is how it works in action…(More)”.
Modularity for International Internet Governance
Essay by Chris Riley and Susan Ness: “The modern-day “global” internet faces a dubious future. On the battle lines of internet freedom, Russia’s increasing authoritarian control aspires to China’s great firewall levels, while the annual Freedom on the Net report for 2021 found a global decline in internet freedom for the 11th straight year. The same report also noted that at least 48 separate countries explored increasing governmental oversight over the tech sector.
In the midst of increasing global division lies, perhaps, a core of unity: a worldwide interest among democracies in changing the status quo of internet governance to improve the baseline of responsibility and accountability for digital platforms. And for this problem, at least, there is hope—perhaps distant hope—for the possibility of increasing alignment. We propose that modularity can be a useful and tractable approach to improve digital platform accountability through harmonized policies and practices among nations embracing the rule of law.
Modularity is a form of multistakeholder, co-regulatory governance, in which modules—discrete mechanisms, protocols, and codes—are developed through processes that include a range of perspectives. Modularity produces, to the extent possible, internationally aligned corporate technical and business practices through shared mechanisms that achieve compliance with multiple legal jurisdictions, without the need for a new international treaty.
Think of modularity as a five-step process. First, problem identification: One or more governments—working together or separately—identify an open challenge. For example, vetting researchers as part of a digital platform data access mandate. Second, module formation: A group of experts (which may or may not include government representatives) collaborates to develop a module that includes both standards and processes for addressing the problem, and is designed for use across multiple jurisdictions. Third, validation: Individual governments evaluate and approve the module by indicating that its output—such as a decision that individual research projects should be cleared to receive platform data—can be used to satisfy requirement(s) set out in their respective underlying legislation. Fourth, execution: Systems created through the module apply the module’s protocols to individual circumstances. (In this instance, vetting research projects applying for clearance.) Finally, enforcement and analysis: Each government uses its national policies and procedures to ensure digital platform compliance, and periodically assesses the module process to ensure it remains fit-for-purpose.
Modularity offers many advantages for digital platform governance. It helps norms and expectations evolve along with rapidly evolving technology, while maintaining the force of law, without the obstacles and delays inherent in separately amending each of the underlying laws. And it helps close substantive gaps present in many platform legislative frameworks being developed today. But making it a reality will require governments to be willing to embrace an aligned path forward through disparate legal and political systems…(More)”
Global Data Governance Mapping Project: Year Two Report
Report by Thomas Struett, Adam Zable, and Susan Ariel Aaronson, Ph.D.: “…The Digital Trade and Data Governance Hub (the Hub) seeks to help policymakers and the public understand how governments around the world govern data. For many governments, governing various types of data has become an essential, albeit challenging, task, because government officials must justify and launch new strategies, structures, policies, and processes. In 2021 researchers at the Hub designed a new evidence-based metric to characterize a comprehensive approach to data governance at both the national and international levels. We hoped that by doing so, we could help create a broader understanding of data governance.
The OECD defines data governance as principles and policy guidance on how governments can maximize the cross-sectoral benefits of all types of data (personal, non-personal, open, proprietary, public, and private) while protecting the rights of individuals and organizations.3 A comprehensive approach includes strategies, policies, processes, and organizational structure. A comprehensive approach also governs different types of data use and re-use.
The Hub’s metric includes 6 attributes of data governance (strategies; laws and regulations; structural changes; human rights and ethical guidelines; involving their public; and mechanisms for international cooperation). We then use 26 indicators which provide evidence of comprehensive governance.
Key Findings
01. Consistent performance over the two year period The UK, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, and France take the most comprehensive approach to data governance at the national and international levels. This finding is consistent with our first iteration, where these countries were also in the top five (See Chart 1).
02. Income disparities in data governance Taking our attributes in sum, what the World Bank terms high income nations do more to govern data and in particular do more on the international and responsible attributes. In contrast, lower and middle income countries tend to focus their data governance efforts on structural or regulatory actions to govern data rather than develop strategies or put forward human rights/ethical guidelines (Chart 2 and 3).
03. Shared evidence of key components of comprehensive data governance Most of our case studies have enacted or created a freedom of information law, an open data portal, a public data protection law, and a public consultation related to data governance or data driven sectors (Chart 4).
04. Growing importance of digital trade agreements as a form of data governance We noted an increase in the number of nations adhering to a trade agreement with the free flow of data (with exceptions) as the default.
05. Advice from experts Most nations have created advisory committees to govern data and data driven technologies, but these committees are mainly composed of representatives of business, government, and academia rather than representatives of the broad public. By including such representatives, policymakers may be better able to anticipate and understand data driven issues that could affect public trust.
06. Policymakers are generally not responsive to public concerns regarding data governance Although most countries seek public comment on proposed laws and regulations related to data, we have little evidence that policymakers revise their data governance policies in response to public concerns…(More)”.
Reimagining Data and Power: A roadmap for putting values at the heart of data
Paper by The Data Values Project: “This paper sets out the key themes that emerged from the consultation and describes a collective vision for a fair data future with agency, accountability, and action as its core features. Agency in data refers to having power to shape personal and/or community data and deciding whether, when, and with whom to share it. Accountability in data means that people have access to mechanisms to shape data governance decisions and to hold the powerful accountable. Data in action refers to the imperative of data producers and decision makers to use and share data to improve lives.
Building on these themes, the Data Values Project will advocate for actions that shift power to the people most affected by data production and use. This paper captures examples and stories that show these actions are already being taken by pro-active governments, companies, and civil society organizations around the world. These examples show what’s possible and already happening, while pointing to the distance that remains to achieve a fair data future for all.
This paper is only the first step to changing power imbalances in data design, collection, use, and governance. A global campaign to advocate for the values laid out in this white paper will launch in September at the United Nations General Assembly. Alongside this global campaign, champions and changemakers will lead localized advocacy efforts by tailoring messages and recommendations for actions at the local, sectoral, and regional levels.
The Data Values Project envisions a world where people can be equal players in the production and use of data that impacts them. This vision is for a fair data future in which the power of data is harnessed and its benefits are shared equitably to improve lives and ensure no one is left behind…(More)”.