The power to use information to solve society’s problems has always been key to human progress. From the printing press to vaccine development, new data, analysis, and knowledge has empowered people to rewrite the rules and dramatically improve lives.
Yet now, as humanity confronts existential challenges of climate change, food insecurity, and pandemics, we are not using the best data available to tackle the worst problems. Declining trust, exclusion, inequality, and outdated ways of working are creating barriers between data and those who stand to benefit the most from it.
Data needs to serve everyone, and getting it right is as much a political and social endeavor as it is a technical one. We must build data systems that help and empower people, instead of harming and excluding them. This demands change in the ways we design, collect, fund, manage, and use data.
The Data Values movement is calling for urgent action to create a fair data future. Organizations, governments, and people must act now and together to create this change.
What will it take?
1. Support people to shape how they are represented in data.
2. Invest in public participation for accountability.
3. Democratize data skills for greater equality.
4. Create cultures of transparency, data sharing, and use.
5. Fund open and responsive data systems so that all people share in the benefits of data.
