Live stream
There will be a live stream of this event from 12.30pm on Monday 15 April
Could data trusts help to increase data sharing while retaining trust from both people and organisations? Join our event to find out what we discovered when we tested the idea of developing data trusts in the real world
Increased international coverage around how data is used – such as the Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2018 – have made people more aware than ever of how data about us is being used – for our benefit and harm. This reduces trust. Trust between people and organisations, and between one organisation and another.
Our vision is to make data work for everyone. Companies and governments need to retain trust in how data is collected, maintained and shared if we are all to realise its full benefits. That’s why the Open Data Institute (ODI) has been researching the different ways these organisations can increase access to data while retaining this trust.
In 2018, the ODI joined forces with the Office for Artificial Intelligence and Innovate UK to assess data trusts as a potential approach to increasing trust and access to data. This followed the 2017 Independent review of AIfor the UK government, which recommended the exploration of data trusts. A data trust is a legal structure that provides independent stewardship of some data for the benefit of a group of organisations or people. We’ve been running three pilots to help understand where they might be useful and to draw some lessons that will help other people understand or build them.
These pilots have been built around real challenges that could be solved with data:
- Reducing illegal wildlife trade by making wildlife data from across the world more accessible so that new services can be built
- Tackling food waste by using data to track and measure how much food is wasted in supply chains so that better decisions can be made about how to reduce it
- Improving city services by exploring whether new services for citizens could be developed through data on areas like energy consumption, parking spaces and charging bays for electric vehicles
We’re pleased to present the findings of these pilots to businesses and governments at the Royal Society of Arts, and to discuss the pros and cons of such an approach through talks and expert panel discussions.
At this event we’ll be presenting our findings, including our recommendations to the organisations we’ve been working with, and discussing what we plan to do next. We also want to provide a space for questions and debate, as well as help to build a community of people exploring data trusts and other data access models.
Lunch will be provided and there will be drinks and networking from 5pm.
