Seminari (CNSC): "People-centred data governance in cities"

Program

Abstract

Data governance underpinning digital infrastructures in cities often follows a hegemonic ownership model where data collectors own the data de facto. People living, studying, or working in the city are often data subjects and data collection processes are, at times, imposed on them. Given the power asymmetries between people and data collectors (e.g. Big Tech, transnational corporations, the public sector), the enactment of people-centred perspectives on data governance in cities is lacking. However, a myriad of arguments in the literature advocate for the reorientation of people’s roles in urban data governance and their inclusion in the distribution of direct benefits. Against this backdrop, this research aims to explore people-centred data governance (PCDG) in cities. It starts with investigating how PCDG is understood in the literature and enacted in cities to develop a working definition of PCDG. Then, it investigates how PCDG experiments become embedded in and anchored to city regimes. The project includes a systematic literature review and a comparative case study between the cities of Barcelona and Melbourne. Data for this work in progress is being collected from academic and grey literature, interviews, surveys, and an ideation workshop.

Jessica Bou Nassar

PhD candidate in Information Technology (Human-Centred Computing) at Monash University (Melbourne, Australia). She holds a BE in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Notre Dame University and an MSc in Bioresource Engineering from McGill University. Besides professional and teaching experience in academia in various fields, her research focuses on the democratisation of data governance in smart cities. She recently completed a research stay at the UOC in the CNSC/IN3.