Data Governance

Data Governance

An effective data governance system must address competing stakeholder claims and numerous legal, financial, and ethical considerations, not all of which will have emerged at the time of its design. A data governance system must therefore delicately balance competing priorities yet also flexibly adjust to new issues.

The concept of the “data trust” is drawing a great deal of attention among those charged with studying and addressing data governance challenges. Born of the common law trust, true “data trusts” retain two key features: a critical element of fiduciary responsibility, and allegiance to the principle that a trustee manages assets in the interests of beneficiaries. In practice, however, many data governance vehicles called “data trusts” retain neither of these features.

The purpose of this project is to bring clarity to the question of what responsible data stewardship looks like. In doing so, it examines desirable features of data trusts and compares a variety of emerging data governance systems. To that end, this project aims to define a framework that can be used to identify a responsible data stewardship model and distinguish it from other data governance models and classify different kinds of data governance models.

Project Participants

• David Fewer - General Counsel, CIPPIC
• Stephanie Perrin - Chair of the Non-Commercial Stakeholder Group of ICANN
• Brenda McPhail - Director, Privacy, Technology & Surveillance Project, Canadian Civil Liberties Association
• Andrew Clement - Professor Emeritus of the Faculty of Information Science, University of Toronto

OPC Funded Project

This project received funding support through the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada’s Contributions Program. The opinions expressed in the summary and report(s) are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. Summaries have been provided by the project authors. Please note that the projects appear in their language of origin.

Draft Report

The Price of Trust?  An Analysis of Emerging Digital Stewardship Models

Toolkit

• Explainer - Creating a Data Governance Framework
• Explainer - De-Identifying Data
• Explainer - Fair Multi-Stakeholder Committees
• Explainer - Location Data

 Boîte à outils Traduction française

• Explicatif - Établissement d’un cadre de gouvernance des données
• Explicatif - Anonymisation des données
• Explicatif - Comité multipartite et équitable de surveillance
• Explicatif - Données de localisation