We are more aware of how our personal data is used in the online services we engage with everyday. Conversely, unfortunately, we are also more aware of how our personal data is abused through well-documented examples of its misuse (such as the Facebook / Cambridge Analytica scandal). Governments have developed regulatory responses in an attempt to combat data misuse, such as the General Data Protection Regulation. But there is also a growing community response, focusing on the design of better data governance arrangements. In particular, there is interest in the form and types of organisations that collect and use data, looking at the way in which these aspects of an organisation inform and shape their data governance behaviours.
The Open Data Institute (ODI) has a programme of work in this area, focusing on ‘data institutions’. ‘Data institutions’ are organisations that steward data on behalf of others, often towards public, educational or charitable aims. The ODI is one of a number of infrastructural organisations offering support services to a growing ecosystem of data institutions and data governance initiatives. They have been working with data institutions researching how they run, mentoring their founders and running funding programmes to support early stage organisations. Emerging Field worked with the ODI at the end of 2020 to explore how the ODI could further support institutions and evolve it’s role in the ecosystem.
Working for the ODI we started by exploring what a longer-term and more involved relationship between the ODI and data institutions could look like, which we initially called hosting. Starting with exploring ideas internally, we mapped what ‘hosting’ meant - from mentoring and financial support to data institutions, to delivering services such as legal and data governance services. We then creatively explored the types of services that could be provided and designed a range of potential product and service propositions. These propositions were tested with leaders of data institutions and, on the basis of their feedback, we developed recommendations for new ODI products and services that reflected their, as well as strengthening the broader data governance ecosystem.
Supporting organisations by delivering new products to support their needs also means changing what your organisation does. In developing new services and product offerings, much of the day-to-day work requires developing new practices and behaviours internally in order to be able to deliver a new offering. Our work with the ODI developed into exploring the internal capacities needed to deliver in a new way, as well as the infrastructural and culture changes that would support these new capacities. The insights and outputs of this work informed the redesign of the ODI Data Institutions Programme.
Systems Thinking
Service Design
Strategy