My Data Trusts Essay – a key reference going forward in my research
Data Trusts Essay Summary
A key reference for my thinking on my final project is the essay that I put together for the Datafication, Accountability and Democracy module in Semester 1 of 2022. I’m sharing a quick outline, meta summary, and reflection on this essay for referencing back to in future blog posts.
Why have I combined the topic of data trusts with community development trusts?
I initially made the link between the two formats because they both offer the opportunity to challenge situations in which power is unevenly distributed and communities come together to reclaim the means to reassert control over their lives and collective futures. Same legal/ organisational structure but different medium.
What are community development trusts?
Through my work at charity Community Energy Scotland I work with many community development trusts across Scotland and strongly believe in this governance mechanism.
The Scottish community development trust movement was formed from the momentum generated by several community land buyouts in the country. The Development Trusts Association was created in 1992 as newly landed communities around Scotland, and others inspired by the movement, focused their efforts on creating self-determining communities that could further their social aims (Wyler, 2009). The success of the community development trust movement proves that communities themselves are best placed to choose how their future should be shaped and which issues efforts should be focused on.
What’s the challenge that we could apply this to in the digital world?
In a digital landscape where mass data collection is concentrating power and agency in the hands of a small number of very powerful organisations, local communities reclaim the outcomes and opportunities generated by data analysis to influence their futures for the better?
A key piece of reading assigned by Morgan Currie covered how data assets are valuable only when they are processed as part of a vast, accumulated total. Therefore, the aggregator is placed in a position with significantly more power than the individual (Viljoen, 2021). There is little mechanism for communities to aggregate their data as a group to use as a collective bargaining mechanism or to enact positive change that cannot be achieved by individuals alone (Delacroix, Pineau and Montgomery, 2020).
Data as Democratic Medium
Viljoen (2021)’s concept of “Data as Democratic Medium (DDM)” can be mobilised to examine the opportunities for the collective governance of data in informing and enacting social change at community level. The concept of DDM allows for a different view of data: instead of being an individual output that can have individual impacts; data must be seen in terms of its society-level impacts both in the risks that it can create (Viljoen, 2021) and the opportunities it can offer.
What can data trusts learn from the more established movement of community development trusts?
In the bulk of the essay, I referenced the legal mechanisms upon which the trusts are built; and the governance mechanisms that have been tried and tested by this model.
Are others talking about this? What’s the wider context?
In 2004, Edwards was the first to propose the legal entity of a trust might be suitable for managing data. Her proposal suggested that this model could protect individual privacy and offer an opportunity to collect royalties from monetary value generated by the data’s value to internet giants (Edwards, 2004).
The current focus seems to be data trusts as a means to limit the way a particular community’s data can be used with the aim of fighting an extractive internet environment. There has been much exploration of the concept of public data trusts (Ruhaak, 2019; Delacroix, Pineau and Montgomery, 2020; Micheli et al., 2020).
There is not a huge amount of discussion around the creation and use of data trusts by communities themselves to allow for grassroots activism. Since 2016, a small body of work has been published on the concept of such “bottom-up” data trusts (Delacroix and Lawrence, 2019; The Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence, 2022). In 2020, Delacroix and Montgomery (2020) published a paper examining how communities can use data trusts to ensure that external researchers carry out work that will foster the positive social change they seek; this concept is being actively developed with healthcare research projects such as Midata and HDR UK (Financial Times, 2022). Though there are examples of data trusts being created for, and even co-designed with, community groups (The Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence, 2022), there is little discussion around the creation and use of data trusts by communities themselves to allow for grassroots activism.
Bibliography (from full essay)
BPE Solicitors, Pinsent Masons and Reed, C. (2019) Data trusts: legal and governance considerations. Available at: https://theodi.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/General-legal-report-on-data-trust.pdf (Accessed: 25 November 2022).
Cooke, I. (2010) ‘Trust in the community? Development Trusts in Scotland’, Community Empowerment: Critical Perspectives from Scotland. Edited by E.A. Emejulu and M. Shaw, p. 88.
Davies, G. (2018) ‘Developing Sustainable Futures – an Orkney Way’, Orkney Cloud – Community-led data services.
Delacroix, S. and Lawrence, N.D. (2019) ‘Bottom-up data Trusts: disturbing the “one size fits all” approach to data governance’, International Data Privacy Law, 9(4), pp. 236–252. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1093/idpl/ipz014.
Delacroix, S. and Montgomery, J. (2020) ‘From Research Data Ethics Principles to Practice: Data Trusts as a Governance Tool’. Rochester, NY. Available at: https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3736090.
Delacroix, S., Pineau, J. and Montgomery, J. (2020) ‘Democratising the Digital Revolution: The Role of Data Governance’. Rochester, NY. Available at: https://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=3720208 (Accessed: 29 November 2022).
Development Trusts Association Scotland (2022) ‘So you want to set up a Development Trust? Tips and information to get you started’. Development Trusts Association Scotland. Available at: https://dtascot.org.uk/sites/default/files/publications/So%20You%20Want%20to%20Set%20up%20a%20DT%20Scot%202022.pdf (Accessed: 24 November 2022).
Edwards, L. (2004) ‘The Problem with Privacy’. Rochester, NY. Available at: https://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=1857536 (Accessed: 26 November 2022).
Financial Times (2022) ‘Are data trusts a suitable stewardship model for the developing world?’, 31 January.
Lawrence, N. (2016) ‘Data trusts could allay our privacy fears’, The Guardian, 3 June. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/media-network/2016/jun/03/data-trusts-privacy-fears-feudalism-democracy (Accessed: 25 November 2022).
McDonald, S.M. (2019) Reclaiming Data Trusts, Centre for International Governance Innovation. Available at: https://www.cigionline.org/articles/reclaiming-data-trusts/ (Accessed: 27 November 2022).
Micheli, M. et al. (2020) ‘Emerging models of data governance in the age of datafication’, Big Data & Society, 7(2), p. 2053951720948087. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/2053951720948087.
Moore, T. and McKee, K. (2012) ‘Empowering Local Communities? An International Review of Community Land Trusts’, Housing Studies, 27(2), pp. 280–290. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/02673037.2012.647306.
Ruhaak, A. (2019) ‘Data Trusts: why, what and how?’, Medium, 13 November. Available at: https://medium.com/@anoukruhaak/data-trusts-why-what-and-how-a8b53b53d34 (Accessed: 25 November 2022).
Scottish Community Alliance (2016) Local People Leading. Scottish Community Alliance. Available at: https://dtascot.org.uk/resources/publications.
Scottish Law Commission (2014) Report on Trust Law. Available at: https://www.scotlawcom.gov.uk/files/4014/0904/0426/Report_on_Trust_Law_SLC_239.pdf (Accessed: 25 November 2022).
Slee, B. (2020) ‘Social innovation in community energy in Scotland: Institutional form and sustainability outcomes’, Global Transitions, 2, pp. 157–166. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.glt.2020.07.001.
Stennett, A. (2018) ‘Eday’s Data Island – through the looking glass…’, Orkney Cloud – Community-led data services.
The Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (2022) Enabling Data Sharing for Social Benefit Through Data Trusts: Data Trusts in Climate. Available at: https://gpai.ai/projects/data-governance/data-trusts/ (Accessed: 25 November 2022).
Viljoen, S. (2021) ‘A relational theory of data governance’, The Yale law journal, (2), pp. 573–654.
Wightman, A. (2015) The poor had no lawyers: who owns Scotland (and how they got it). Edinburgh: Birlinn.
Wyler, S. (2009) A history of community asset ownership. Development Trusts Association. Available at: https://dtascot.org.uk/resources/publications.
Zuboff, S., 1951- author. (2019) The age of surveillance capitalism : the fight for the future at the new frontier of power / Shoshana Zuboff. London: Profile Books.
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