Rethinking data and rebalancing digital power

This report highlights and contextualises four cross-cutting interventions with a strong potential to reshape the digital ecosystem: 1. Transforming infrastructure into open and interoperable ecosystems. 2. Reclaiming control of data from dominant companies. 3. Rebalancing the centres of power with new (non-commercial) institutions. 4. Ensuring public participation as an essential component of technology policymaking. The interventions are multidisciplinary and they integrate legal, technological, market and governance solutions. They offer a path towards addressing present digital challenges and the possibility for a new, healthy digital ecosystem to emerge. What do we mean by a healthy digital ecosystem? One that privileges people over profit, communities over corporations, society over shareholders. And, most importantly, one where power is not held by a few large corporations, but is distributed among different and diverse models, alongside people who are represented in, and affected by the data used by those new models. The digital ecosystem we propose is balanced, accountable and sustainable, and imagines new types of infrastructure, new institutions and new governance models that can make data work for people and society. Some of these interventions can be located within (or built from) emerging and recently adopted policy initiatives, while others require the wholesale overhaul of regulatory regimes and markets. They are designed to spark ideas that political thinkers, forward-looking policymakers, researchers, civil society organisations, funders and ethical innovators in the private sector consider and respond to when designing future regulations, policies or initiatives around data use and governance. This report also acknowledges the need to prepare the ground for the more ambitious transformation of power relations in the digital ecosystem. Even a well-targeted intervention won't change the system unless it is supported by relevant institutions and behavioural change