A Letter on Data Governance and Democracy
August 12, 2021
We are big believers in robust, democratically accountable systems of data governance. Systems that shift the power balance from monopolistic firms to accountable intermediaries, allowing for productive collaboration through interoperability and portability, and understand that data is fundamentally collective and should be governed as such, rather than through the narrow frame of individual property rights and freedoms.
While there is no singular solution, we’ve found that many different ideas about the specifics of data policy are compatible with these foundational principles.
But some are not – and in the midst of a churning ecosystem, it can be difficult for policymakers and legislators to see that there is broad and growing agreement on this foundation.
We are a coalition of researchers, technologists, policymakers, artists, and entrepreneurs, and—while we may differ on specifics—we are united in our support of these principles. We’d love for you to add your voice to this open letter, here. Let’s get a community behind this basic statement, setting a clear, reachable, and flexible target for policymakers and technologists committed to a collective, just future for the data economy. Read the full letter below.
A Letter on Data Governance and Democracy
Data is core to our technical, sociotechnical, and economic systems. The current data landscape, dominated by a few organizations with overwhelming economic, social, and political influence, challenges meaningful democratic participation in these systems. There is a growing consensus that both data access and governance need to become more democratic and inclusive.
New data governance paradigms can shift the balance of power in our digital infrastructure toward democratically-stewarded systems that optimize for shared benefit. To meet this challenge, however, businesses, policymakers, and individuals must adopt a new way of thinking about data. By and large, data is not merely a personal asset to be individually owned and controlled, but a shared resource to be responsibly governed. This means we must start to move beyond the familiar individualistic mindsets of both personal property and dignitary rights – and instead start building flexible, federated, and democratically-accountable governance structures for information.
We believe the following principles will characterize tomorrow’s successful schemes of data governance:
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They will transcend individual data ownership, instead embracing an understanding of data as fundamentally networked, collective, and social; and build governance structures that draw strength and robustness from this conception.
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They will challenge the dichotomy of personal and non-personal, recognizing that most data is instead interpersonal, and / or infrastructural.
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They will support the development of an ecosystem of empowered, independent, and democratically accountable intermediaries scrupulously advocating on behalf of data holders’ rights and interests in the many types of data that pertain to them. Helping data holders combine their interests effectively is necessary to avoid dangerous concentrations of financial and political power from forming in modern data economies.
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They will support pluralistic, polycentric power structures in the data economy, designing for civil society involvement at all levels of social organization.
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They will help individuals, communities, and governments understand and influence how data is being used, including whether its application is discriminatory.
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They will embrace a range of other complementary principles, including: data portability and interoperability (across platforms, devices, regions, etc.), better antitrust laws, open standards across identity, payments, and algorithm governance.
We are cautiously encouraged by recent policy, including the EU’s Data Governance Act and Digital Markets Act, the NPD proposal in India, the California Consumer Privacy Act, and other legislation that aims to address the current dysfunction. However, some of these proposals retain troubling characteristics, such as emphasizing individual control and ownership, prohibiting the delegation of data rights, mistaking anonymization for the creation of so-called ‘non personal data’, or defaulting to state stewardship of data. We believe the above principles show a markedly better way forward.
Signatures
***Divya Siddarth - RadicalxChange Foundation, Ostrom Workshop
Matt Prewitt - RadicalxChange Foundation
Jennifer Lyn Morone - RadicalxChange Foundation
E. Glen Weyl - RadicalxChange Foundation
Sylvie Delacroix - University of Birmingham, Mozilla, Alan Turing Institute
Shiv Malik - Pool Foundation
Nils Gilman - Berggruen Institute
Sebastian Benthall - New York University School of Law
Yakov Feygin - Berggruen Institute
S. Amadae - University of Helsinki
Nathalia Ramos - Berggruen Institute
Katrina Ligett - The Data Co-Ops Project
Peter Lewis - Center for Responsible Technology
Harry Sleeper - Good
Sushant Kumar - Omidyar Network
Alex Craven - Pool
Salomé Viljoen - Columbia Law School
Andrew Trask - OpenMined, University of Oxford
Michael Zargam - BlockScience, WU Vienna
Amy Zhang - University of Washington
Carolyn Beer - Holochain
Shauna Gordon-McKeon - The Metagovernance Project
Paula Berman - Proof of Personhood Workshop
Lane Rettig - Spacemesh
James Beury - RadicalxChange
Christopher Kulendran Thomas - RadicalxChange Foundation
Pauline de Mortain - RadicalxChange
Audrey Tang - digitalminister.tw
Crystal Good - Black By God The West Virginian
Nicholas Vincent - Northwestern University
Numa Oliveira - Kolektivo Labs
Bruna Santos - Escola Nacional de Administração Pública (ENAP)
Daron Acemoglu - MIT
Fares El Choufi - Individual
Serj Hunt - Human Systems
Tanya Lee - Austin Self-Learning
Robert O’Brien - Data Commons NZ / Yumi Labs
Anne-Marie Slaughter - New America
Gustavo Pellegrini Dias - UChicago College, RadicalxChange Brasil
Keith Stevens - Individual
Alex Randaccio - RadicalxChange Foundation
G. Angela Corpus - RadicalxChange Foundation
Steven McKie - Amentum Capital
Leon Erichsen - Individual
Andreas Fauler - Rocketstar Foundation
Emilio Sempris - Brundtland School
Kris Jones - Commons Stack
Ryan Miller - Individual
Saeed Valadbaygi - The Global Centre for Risk and Innovation (GCRI)
Stanisław Szufa - Pabulib
Disruption Joe - Gitcoin
Connor O’Day - Gitcoin
Joshua Shane - RadicalxChange Seattle
Gershon Ballas - Individual
Paul Keller - Open Future
Scott Moore - Gitcoin
Billy Bog - Individual
Nikoline Nik - RadicalxChange
Maria Savona - University of Sussex and Luiss University
Diogo G. R. Costa - Escola Nacional de Administração Pública (ENAP)
Cody Hill - The Data Union
James Felton Keith - The Data Union
Erik Rind - ImagineBC
Aaron Soskin - Govrn
Najmuzzaman Mohammad - Individual
Alek Tarkowski - Open Future
Nikoline Arns - DoinGud
Spencer Gurley - UCSC
Ryan Lee - Individual
Ben Little - CU Boulder
Jim Callaway - Individual ***