VIDEO: Society 4.0 Conversation between with Stefaan Verhulst and Jane Farmer on Data Collaboration
By: Andrew J. Zahuranec
Tags: Data Collaborative, Events, Data Stewards, Interview, Data Responsibility

In October, Stefaan Verhulst, co-founder and chief research and development officer at The GovLab, sat down to talk with Prof. Jane Farmer, director of the Swinburne Social Innovation Research Institute. Julie Boulton and Rod Glover from the Monash Sustainable Development Institute initiated and facilitated the dialogue.

The conversation, which took place in context of the Society 4.0 conference, covered a wide range of topics including data collaboration, data stewardship, and data bilingualism. Five key takeaways include:

Data collaboratives are a way to empower communities to address their problems and should be part of the standard policy toolkit. Data collaboratives are a new form of collaboration, beyond the public–private partnership model, in which participants from different sectors — in particular companies –-exchange their data to create public value. This approach allows different groups to share resources to address pressing local concerns, whether that be coordinating disaster response efforts following a hurricane or supporting children in vulnerable conditions. Given the wealth of data available, organizations should think about how they can use these assets for the public good and what the cost of not using those assets are. Data collaboratives need a human infrastructure as much as they need legal and technical infrastructure. Data collaboratives benefit from individuals empowered to use previously siloed data to advance public good. These people, data stewards, are individuals or teams within organizations empowered to proactively initiative, facilitate, and coordinate data collaboratives toward the public interest. Absent those authorities, data collaboration projects often remain stuck in the pilot phase, never reaching scale. Data stewards focus on what can be done instead of what should be done, limiting their reach and ambition. Understanding the context is as important to apply the potential of data science. There is additional value in having data bilinguals, people who have a clear understanding of the problem area as well as an understanding of what data means to the problem area and how they can use it. These individuals can combine knowledge from a sector or area with the use of technology. These experts can help to guide data collaboration and ensure efforts are targeted, effective, and reflect a community’s interests. Organizations need to think creatively about funding to ensure data collaboratives are sustainable long term. Ensuring that data collaboratives can produce results long term means ensuring they can function long term. Organizations need to think about their resource needs and how they will be filled, whether that be through creation of a business model or through public funding. As Stefaan noted, “We need to be creative regarding funding models […] It could, down the line, save money, but we don’t have that research yet.” We need more well-publicized, high quality uses of data collaboration to keep it at the top of the agenda. While data collaboration has tremendous potential, there are few clear, well-known examples of them. As a result, they are seen as something exciting but unlikely to happen. For data collaboration to be part of the toolkit of solving public problems, there needs to be uses that express the value proposition. Governments could help with this work by supporting or participating in data collaboratives and publicizing their work.

You can learn more about how The GovLab is pursuing these ideas by watching the full interview above or by visiting The GovLab’s site on data collaboration. A summary of Stefaan’s masterclass presentation on community data collaboration, which he also delivered at the conference, can be found here.