If sharing data can be compared to diet, then effective data sharing is like healthy eating. To maintain a healthy diet requires knowing what foods are good for you. Cooking healthy recipes requires knowing which ingredients are important and how to combine them for each dish. Just like a healthy and balanced diet, effective data sharing in the development sector is essential to ensuring that data activities benefit people on the ground.

Effective and Ethical Data Sharing at Scale, 2022

The cookbook for Effective and Ethical Data Sharing at Scale (the cookbook) was created in 2022 in response to demand for practical resources on this topic from the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data’s (the Global Partnership) broad network of partner organizations. Two years later, the challenges that prompted the original cookbook persist: Data sharing in the development sector is a relatively new domain, and there are some clear gaps in knowledge and experience.

But much has changed in this rapidly developing sector in the short time since the cookbook’s original release. The buzz around generative and frontier artificial intelligence models and concerns of the ramifications of the use and misuse of AI have brought issues of access to high quality datasets and cross-border data flows to the foreground. The European Union’s Data Act went into effect early this year, with rules to enable public access to private sector-held data. More recently, all 27 EU member states adopted a draft of the world’s most comprehensive AI legislation – with explicit mention of the benefits that public-private data sharing can enable: “trustful, accountable, and non-discriminatory access to high quality data for the training, validation and testing of AI.” The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean followed the United Nations (UN) Economic Commission for Europe’s example in 2023 by formally supporting access to privately-held data by the private sector for official statistics. Looking ahead, the Summit of the Future in September 2024 could see member states approve a vision for cooperation on opening up access and secure sharing of data through the Global Digital Compact. With just six years to meet the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) targets, the demand has grown for workable solutions that access (especially privately-held) data to address pressing public challenges in health, environment, social development, and more. 

The overwhelming positive response from partners to the original cookbook publication also prompted conversations about how additions to the cookbook could further contribute to gaps in knowledge around effective and ethical data sharing. As a result, this update speaks to how partners can build resiliency to navigate policy landscapes, or kitchens, for data sharing and offers strategies for getting key partners, or chefs, on board at the start of a data sharing initiative.

How this update was created

This update builds upon the research and expert guidance underpinning the cookbook through a series of interviews with key informants from partners and contributors. The Global Partnership’s Secretariat is indebted to the following organizations for their significant input and feedback on the original cookbook, which helped to shape this update in both focus and content: 

What’s in this new section

The Data Sharing Food Pyramid of the cookbook underlies this entire section: Trust (carbohydrates), shared value and benefits (fruits and vegetables), dependable data and infrastructure (proteins), knowledge and skills (dairy), and flexibility and adaptability (healthy fats). These are core components of “cooking,” or effective and ethical multi-party data sharing (from here on “data sharing”). But there’s more. Just as preparing food takes place in a kitchen, so data sharing initiatives operate in existing policy contexts. Likewise, the other piece of this analogy, choosing your chefs, speaks to getting—and keeping—the right people on board to drive an initiative forward and make it sustainable.

How was this cookbook created?

First published in 2022, this cookbook is the outcome of a year-long project undertaken by the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data (Global Partnership) and sponsored by Google.org, aimed at identifying drivers of effective data sharing in the development sector. 

It builds on insights collected through a landscape analysis of data sharing initiatives and feedback from a diverse working group of more than 20 experts who met four times between January and September 2022. It also draws on the Global Partnership’s experience in helping countries and organizations to fill their data needs and gaps by working with partners. The Global Partnership has facilitated over 120 data sharing collaborations since 2015.

If sharing data can be compared to our diets, then effective data sharing is like healthy eating. To maintain a healthy diet requires knowing what foods are good for you. Cooking healthy recipes requires knowing which ingredients are important and how to combine them for each dish. Just like a healthy and balanced diet, effective data sharing in the development sector is essential to ensuring that data activities benefit people on the ground. 

The similarities between a healthy diet and effective data sharing don’t end there. Of course, none of us eats exactly as our ancestors did a few centuries ago, as food and tastes are not immutable. Not only do ingredients, recipes, and methods vary significantly across the world, with each country and region developing its specific “cuisine,” but they are also constantly evolving. Likewise, this cookbook is merely a snapshot of current knowledge and experiences of data sharing from “chefs” all over the world. As with any cookbook, new and updated recipes should be added regularly to keep this tool relevant and to increase the diversity of sectors, regions, and initiatives represented here. 

Finally, it must be acknowledged that, despite the best efforts to seek and consult a diverse range of data sharing experts and initiatives as well as to leverage the Global Partnership’s experience working with organizations from the Global South, this document draws substantially from theoretical knowledge and recipes that have been developed in the Global North. Further efforts will be needed to rebalance our culinary knowledge to add more ingredients and tips from other contexts.