the small challenge of data governance (and democracy, accountability and altruism) | linnet taylor

That still leaves the problem of private humanitarian or development activities, particularly small-scale ones such as hackathons and advocacy projects. The large ones such as the Red Cross and UNICEF have very strong and coherent ethical frameworks to govern their work, dating back many decades. The challenge here is to adapt these to deal with data use and misuse, which is not impossible but takes serious high-level will within the organisation, often from people with little technical understanding of the kinds of data available. The small actors, however, do not base their actions in these frameworks. So we have large organisations with coherent ethical frameworks that aren’t yet applicable to digital data, and small organisations working on digital interventions who have no ethical frameworks at all.