International Perspectives on the Development of Data Institutions (Working Paper 2)

Data Trusts Initiative
, The Data Trusts Initiative , 2021.

Abstract

Data acquires value through use; it can create tailored projects and services for individuals, streamline organisational processes, and improve the delivery of public administration. The magnitude of the potential economic and social benefits that follow demand action to create frameworks and mechanisms that enable data sharing for public benefit. At the same time, these shifting patterns of data generation and use create new vulnerabilities for individuals, communities and society.

With the ambition of harnessing the value of data for economic and social benefit, while preventing citizens being exposed to new forms of data-enabled harm, governments across the world have looked to data trusts as a new model of data institution. In creating these data trusts, lessons can be drawn from comparing the approaches and legal models that are being established across different jurisdictions.

A workshop convened by the Data Trusts Initiative on 28 January 2021 set out to explore how discussions about data trusts are progressing across different jurisdictions. This Working Paper brings together the insights that these international perspectives offer for the future development of data institutions.