data governance

The Draft Data Governance Act, 2020 envisages the rules for data sharing in the EU. This initiative is part of the Data Strategy, adopted by the EU to regulate the digital economy. The summary feedback by IT for Change is available here and the detailed feedback is here. We recommend the need to focus on community approaches, away from an…

This paper explores changes in General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement (CETA), Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in greater detail, explaining how they are relevant to the platform economy in Canada. It then discusses Canada’s current data policies, and the…

This policy brief reviews current trends in the regulation of data collection and analysis with a focus on platforms. In particular, it interrogates emerging regulatory frameworks that shape, constrain, or advance citizens’ control over personal (and related) data. In doing so, it points to areas of necessary intervention to address citizen…

Anushka Mittal wrote a policy brief titled, 'Data Sharing of Non-Personal Data - A Plausible Redistribution at Play'. The policy brief is based on her paper titled, 'Exploring the Constitutional Tenability of Data Sharing Policies', which laid down one way to look at the constitutional arguments that may be applied to the recommendations of the…

Anushka Mittal published a research paper as part of the Data Governance Network project titled, ‘Exploring the Constitutional Tenability of Data Sharing Policies’, analyzing the recommendations of the Draft Non-Personal Data Committee Report for community ownership of data and data sharing, from the perspective of its constitutional status in…

Parminder Jeet Singh authored a working paper titled, 'Breaking Up Big Tech: Separation of its Data, Cloud and Intelligence Layers', arguing that traditional competition frameworks are inadequate to address the rapidly building digital power concentration. Competition frameworks need to be combined with perspectives from technology governance…

Parminder Jeet Singh and Anita Gurumurthy co-authored a policy brief titled, ‘Data Sharing Requires a Data Commons Framework Law’, based on the paper 'Data and Digital Intelligence Commons'. The paper examined the current non-governance of aggregate non-personal data, and presented a new approach that involves treating a large part of such data…

Future of Rights and Citizenship in the Digital Age seeks to identify and address challenges emerging from increased usage of data and algorithms in society. Supported by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Canada, this project will undertake systematic, evidence-based research and advocacy towards a citizen-oriented framework…

The Political Economy of Data

Data and data governance are hotly contested issues in the 21st century. Typically, they have been perceived as questions of policy and political economy. Data is attributed multiple characterizations, one of which is that of a resource. There are…

Data is almost universally recognised as the most valuable economic resource today. Seven out of the top 10 companies globally by market capitalisation are data-centric. In these circumstances, it appears strange that there has hardly been any worthwhile attempt to look at who has economic rights to various kinds of data, and how these rights…