By Shefali Girish Executive Summary Gender digital divides have aggravated the already existing inequalities in our society. The lack of control by women over their data has hindered their ability to obtain social and economic value of data. This article seeks to establish why adding a data layer to women cooperatives in…

By Suha Mohamed & Vinay Narayan Despite new modes of monitoring and capturing data, the ocean and its complex interdependent aquatic ecosystems are still relatively unmapped. Roughly 85% of it remains ‘unexplored’ — due to a vast set of operational and cross jurisdictional challenges. Yet this situation is quickly evolving…

By Suha Mohamed In February, the Data Economy Lab set out to understand the vast landscape of data gathering and governing efforts in the environmental conservation and sustainable development space. Our aim has been to identify the key stakeholders (policymakers, stewards/steward-like initiatives, funders and research institutes) in the space, diagnose…

By Shefali Girish When the Data Economy Lab was established in 2019, our vision was to map the landscape of stewardship, delineate its various operative models and document practices of existing stewards or steward-like initiatives across the globe. Our report furnished a common taxonomy to unify the vocabulary around data…

Instantiating Stewardship — A part of the puzzle towards rebalancing the data economy Burgeoning digitization continues to move beyond personalised services, and now plays the role of transforming governments, policymaking processes and our integral relation to the state as citizens. As a part of this trajectory, there has also been ongoing development and deployment of artificial intelligence (AI), iOT and blockchain based…

By Soujanya Sridharan The current ecosystem of health data sharing Health data governance assumes significance due to the highly sensitive nature of information under question, potentially revealing confidential data on medical history, racial or ethnic background and financial status of individuals and the broader communities they belong to. While data…

By Suha Mohamed This article was originally published in Business World on May 13th 2021 The lack of a cohesive government response in the latest wave of Covid-19 has forced citizens and civil society to fend for themselves. Citizens are acting as intermediaries, supporting others by pooling data and amplifying…

By Soujanya Sridharan & Siddharth Manohar ‘Communities’ as conceived by the Committee under Section 7.2 is ambiguous and risks causing more harm than good to their interest The report makes communities the owners of NPD, with a community being defined as “any group of people that are bound by common…

By Suha Mohamed The need for Responsible Data Governance for Impact Accelerated by the pandemic, civil society organisations (CSOs) are increasingly capturing data or partnering with other entities to unlock relevant information for societal benefit. Data-led efforts are critical, particularly in times of crisis when the lack of access to reliable administrative data can result in threats to…