Advancing decentralised data governance

Distributed architectures for Decentralised data governance

Many of the discussions on decentralised data governance focus on regulatory and policy perspectives, but as Fabrizio Sestini pointed out in his blog on the next generation internet, it's time to look into ways to engineer new network architectures as a way to re-address the balance of power held by a few global aggregators. 

Dominant data platforms have extremely centralised architectures, especially at the level of data governance. The key question is whether technological solutions enabling an intrinsically decentralised data governance break the "rules of the game" that have made current data incumbents successful. 

The shift would come from distributed architectures that enable the fully decentralised storage and management of data. In such a scenario, peer-to-peer technologies and distributed ledgers technologies would enable a fully decentralised certification and security of transactions: monetary exchanges and data exchanges.

Current projects exploring the challenges and opportunities include Decode (among others) but the topic is now also part of the EC's Work Programme 2018-2020 (draft) on the next generation internet, specifically ICT-24-2018-2019: NGI - An Open Internet Initiative. R&I Actions closing in 2018

Decentralised data governance:

• leveraging on distributed open hardware and software ecosystems based on blockchains, distributed ledger technology, open data and peer-to-peer technologies.
• paying attention to ethical, legal and privacy issues, as well as the concepts of autonomy, data sovereignty and ownership, values and regulations. 

Of interest to experts in:

• Relevant technology fields.
• Researchers/professionals working on legal and ethical aspects.
• Open data communities.

If you have the expertise in relevant technology fields, legal and data governance to address this challenge? Then join us in driving the debate on NGI