Advancing data justice research and practice

Providing resources that help policymakers, practitioners, and impacted communities gain a broader understanding of data governance.

Project status

Ongoing

Introduction

Advancing data justice research and practice is a collaboration between the Global Partnership on AI (GPAI), The Alan Turing Institute, 12 policy pilot partners, and participants and communities across the globe. The project aims to widen the lens of current thinking around data justice and to provide actionable resources that will help policymakers, practitioners, and impacted communities gain a broader understanding of what equitable, freedom-promoting, and rights-sustaining data collection, governance, and use should look like in increasingly dynamic and global data innovation ecosystems.

Project aims

This project aims to fill a gap in data justice research and practice and provide resources that help policymakers, practitioners, and impacted communities gain a broader understanding of data governance. It is our hope that our resources are open and accessible to anyone interesting in learning more about data justice and how to promote it within their context. The research aims to offer practical guidance and conceptual framings for illuminating how historically rooted conditions of power asymmetry, inequality, discrimination, and exploitation are drawn into processes of data protection, extraction, and use. This includes considerations of equity and data justice informed by affected communities that encompass questions of access to, and visibility and representation in, data used in the development of AI and machine learning (AI/ML) systems. To achieve this, the research proposes six pillars of data justice power, equity, access, identity, participation, and knowledge. These provide a framing on how stakeholders can understand and engage in critical reflection of their data practices. 

The project outputs include (a) an assessment of the current state of research in this area and the identification of gaps to create a forward-looking research agenda and (b) Data Justice in Practice Guides for three target audiences: policymakers, developers, and communities impacted by AI/ML systems. The guidance includes practical questions to consider in the practice, use, and experience of AI/ML systems, with particular emphasis on realising the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. 

This research includes valuable contributions of many individuals and civil society organisations through consultations and an online participatory platform decidim. The 12 policy pilot partners from around the world made significant contributions, through their own research reports informed by a series of interviews and workshops, and by providing iterative feedback on our research throughout the project.  

The research from this project is a core component of the Global Partnership on AI’s (GPAI) Data Governance Framework

As scholars, advocates, and individuals, we are committed to social justice and to revealing the systemic bases of intersectional discrimination in our research practices and life choices. Some members of our team relate to marginalised stakeholders from both a position of kinship and one of solidarity, navigating their own lived experiences and confronting intersectional discrimination. Others reflexively acknowledge their inheritance of legacies of unquestioned privilege along with the limited mindsets that derive therefrom. From such a critical self-acknowledgement of privilege and difference, comes a deep sense of responsibility—namely, the responsibility to marshal the advantages of carrying out research in power centres of the Global North and at well-funded research institutions to serve the interests of those on our planet who are all too often marginalised, de-prioritised, and exploited in the global data innovation ecosystem. We recognise how critically important diversity, equity, and inclusion are to carrying out substantively objective and reflexive research. 

Recent updates

Research Outputs

'Mobilising for Data Justice', the third and final episode of the three-part ‘Advancing Data Justice’ documentary series was released in October 2023.

series of short video infographics were created to discuss the concepts developed within the ADJRP project and its output guides.

Data Justice in Practice: A Guide for Policymakers  

Data Justice in Practice: A Guide for Impacted Communities  

Data Justice in Practice: A Guide for Developers  

Advancing Data Justice: Research and Practice - An Integrated Literature Review  

Advancing Data Justice: Research and Practice - Data Justice Stories: A Repository of Case Studies  

Advancing Data Justice Research and Practice: An Interim Annotated Bibliography and Table of Organisations 

The Research Team

Find out more

Collaborators

Collaborating Organisations

International Centre of Expertise in Montréal on Artificial Intelligence (CEIMIA)

GPAI Data Governance Working Group

Policy Pilot Partners

AfroLeadership, Cameroon

CIPESA, Eastern and Southern Africa

CIPIT, Kenya

WOUGNET, Uganda

Gob_Lab UAI, Chile

ITS Rio, Brazil

Internet Bolivia, Bolivia

Digital Empowerment Foundation, India

Digital Natives Academy, Aotearoa

Digital Rights Foundation, Pakistan

Open Data China, China

EngageMedia, Asia-Pacific

Researchers and collaborators

Previous contributors

Contact info

[email protected]

 

Research publications

Advancing Data Justice Research and Practice

An Integrated Literature Review

Leslie, David, Katell, Michael, Aitken, Mhairi, Singh, Jatinder, Briggs, Morgan, Powell, Rosamund, Rincón, Cami, Chengeta, Thompson, Birhane, Abeba, Perini, Antonella, Jayadeva, Smera, & Mazumder, Anjali. (2022). Advancing Data Justice Research and Practice: An Integrated Literature Review. The Alan Turing Institute in collaboration with The Global Partnership on AI. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6408304