Blog

27 October 2022

Placemaking with data: a data trust to serve a coastal community

The Brixham Data trust shares insights on creating a new form of civic institution, for community benefit, that arises from exploring data in a coastal community in South Devon, UK.

6 October 2022

Co-designing data trusts for climate action

Bottom-up approaches to data stewardship are already being used to tackle the climate crisis. In this guest blog, the Aapti institute and ODI report on the feasibility of data trusts for climate action and identify potential contexts where they could work.

15 September 2022

Participation pathways: designing for effective engagement

Participatory practice around data involves innovation in so far as it explores citizen voice in a relatively new domain, with novel configurations of technology and power to unpack, technology can offer a range of new participatory tools. Tim Davies from Connected by Data explores designing for effective engagement.

13 July 2022

Data Trusts for Health Research

Dr Jessica Bell explores how data trusts might operate in the health research context, specifically in birth cohorts and longitudinal studies that aim to engage participants over their lifetime with data trusts as a model for increased participation.

2 July 2022

Italy as a Testbed for an Urban Data Trust in Europe

Today the holders of the vast majority of mobility data are private service providers such as ride-sharing companies. Urban Data Trusts position themselves as an intermediary between the city and its people offering access to mobility data and more efficient use of data privacy rights vs private companies who do not necessarily take into consideration the common good.

2 July 2022

Social Data Trusts: A Governance Model

One unique feature of Québec’s trust law occurs in the form of social trusts: a purpose-trust without designated beneficiaries. This blog underlines how social trusts are well designed for imagining and creating data trusts and how to implement data governance mechanisms into this legal framework.

3 May 2022

Helping data trusts manage personal data

At first sight, Data trusts and Personal Data Stores (PDSs) may look incompatible. But they could prove complementary, with PDSs providing infrastructure for Trusts to work much more efficiently and effectively.

29 March 2022

Technology and the data trust lifecycle

With both our understanding of how to operationalise data trusts and our technical capabilities changing at pace, part of the challenge today is to really pin down how the technologies we have map onto the functions that data trusts need to deliver.

14 March 2022

Creating a pathway to successful real-world data trusts

Taking the data trust pillars that were the basis of our research agenda – community dialogue, technical systems, legal mechanisms, business models, and use cases – as a starting point, they point to an emerging framework for operationalising data trusts. With the aim of helping create a pathway to real-world implementation, we’ve started mapping these insights into the operational framework.

17 November 2021

Government’s role in developing data trusts: insights from recent research and practice

What role should government play in supporting data trusts? The UK’s Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport is currently seeking views about the policy interventions needed to encourage trustworthy data use through data intermediaries. Drawing lessons from recent work on data trusts, this post suggests three areas for action.

6 October 2021

Data trusts as new models for the data economy

Data trusts are a promising concept for enabling data use while maintaining data privacy. In this blog, Aline Blankertz, explores what regulation for data trusts should look like and how we can make new models possible.

17 September 2021

Our pilot programme: FAQs

Last week, the Data Trusts Initiative hosted an information session about our new support programme for data trust pilot projects. You can read more about the pilot scheme on our pilot projects pages. To supplement the FAQs published alongside the scheme, this post sets out our answers to the questions that came up during the information session.

9 September 2021

Creating real-world data trusts ... in conversation with Mark Surman.

The Data Trust Initiative’s core mission is to move data trusts from theory to practice – creating real-world data trusts that serve different communities. Shortly after the launch of our call for pilot projects, Sylvie Delacroix sat down with Mozilla Executive Director Mark Surman for our next ‘in conversation with…’ blog. Mozilla’s Data Futures Lab complements the work of the Data Trust Initiative, undertaking research and providing funding related to a wide variety of data stewardship approaches.

29 July 2021

Seeking Data Trusts Pioneers! Funding from the Data Trusts Initiative will support pilot projects to set up real-world data trusts

The Data Trusts Initiative pilot project scheme, which launches today, is inviting applications from individuals or organisations that would like to set up a data trust. These pilot projects would facilitate independent stewardship of data through the action of data trustees, support individuals and groups to collectively negotiate terms of data use, and provide strong institutional safeguards against data mis-use. Pilot projects might come from any sector, and the scheme is open to applications from any country.

14 July 2021

How can civil law jurisdictions support data trusts? The Quebec example

In most civil law jurisdictions, the use of trust law for data stewardship is not part of the legal landscape - trusts are generally emblematic of common rather than civil law traditions. The “civilization” of trust law is complex, affecting the contours and content of fundamental notions of civil law (ownership, legal person, patrimony).

25 March 2021

Where next for proposals from India’s Committee of Experts on Non-Personal Data? In conversation with Astha Kapoor and Sylvie Delacroix

In the next of our series of ‘in conversation with…’ blogs, Sylvie Delacroix speaks to Astha Kapoor (Co-founder, Aapti Institute) about how discussions about data trusts are developing in India, following publication of a report from India’s Committee of Experts on Non-Personal Data.

4 March 2021

Legal mechanisms for data stewardship - the role of data trusts

A new report from the Ada Lovelace Institute, in partnership with the Data Trusts Initiative, AI Council, ODI and City of London Law Society, explores the different legal mechanisms that can contribute to data stewardship.

1 March 2021

International perspectives on data institutions: lessons for data trusts

A new Working Paper from the Data Trusts Initiative explores how different countries are developing data trusts, and what lessons can be taken from these international comparisons.

29 January 2021

Data trusts and the draft Data Governance Act

The draft Data Governance Act marks the start of a new phase of action by the European Commission in its ambition to “boost a data-driven economy in Europe”. The Act sets out a framework to govern the work of data intermediaries – organisations that are involved in data sharing services – with the aim of increasing data sharing while supporting individuals to exercise their data rights. In this post, we look at some of the questions the Act raises about the development of data trusts.

26 January 2021

Understanding the Data Governance Act: in conversation with Sylvie Delacroix, Ben McFarlane and Paul Nemitz

Publication of the draft Data Governance Act marks the next phase of the European Commission’s plans to bolster data sharing across the EU. In a bid to shed some light on the intricate questions surrounding this Act’s reference to the delegatability of data rights, Sylvie Delacroix (University of Birmingham) hosted a conversation with Ben McFarlane (University of Oxford) and Paul Nemitz (European Commission).

17 December 2020

From Theory to Practice: How do we Create Real-World Data Trusts?

By empowering individuals to assert their data rights, data trusts offer a way for individuals and groups to influence how and why organisations are able to use data about them. However, despite much recent excitement surrounding the role data trusts could play in creating trustworthy data governance institutions, gaps in understanding about the form and function of these trusts remain. spread of COVID-19 (and the ethical issues that follow), an article and a letter to the Financial Times make the case for further efforts to develop data stewardship mechanisms, such as data trusts.

17 December 2020

Funding Call: Moving Data Trusts from Theory to Practice

The Data Trusts Initiative is offering research grants for projects that can help bridge the gap between discussions about the potential of data trusts and their practical application.

1 October 2020

International Approaches to Data Trusts: Recent Policy Developments from India, Canada and the EU

Governments across the world are embedding the idea of data trusts in policy developments. This post reviews recent policy proposals from India, Canada and the EU.

7 June 2020

Data trusts and the EU data strategy

The EU’s draft data strategy set out its aim to promote a European data economy, while protecting individual rights and embedding ethical considerations in data governance. Data trusts offer a tool for bridging the gap between aspirations to share data and concerns about individual rights. This blog considers the role of data trusts in the European policy landscape and the action needed to create a policy environment to support their development.

27 March 2020

Selecting a Data Sharing Structure: A Value-based Choice

Sharing data can bring a range of benefits for individuals, organisations and society. Achieving these aspirations requires governance structures that enable data access, while managing the rights and responsibilities associated with different data types. Different forms of such structures exist, and they are differently suited to different purposes.

6 February 2020

Research and Policy (Spring 2019 Update)

This paper by Sylvie Delacroix and Neil Lawrence sets the scene for discussions about the use of Trust law as a data governance tool, arguing for the creation of ‘bottom-up” data trusts as a new form of data governance. The issues this paper raises were explored further in 2020’s Global Forum on AI for Humanity, which you can view on Inria’s YouTube channel, and at a workshop by The Alan Turing Institute and Jesus College Intellectual Forum.

6 February 2020

Media and Comment (Spring 2019 Update)

Responding to recent debates about the use of data to track the spread of COVID-19 (and the ethical issues that follow), an article and a letter to the Financial Times make the case for further efforts to develop data stewardship mechanisms, such as data trusts.