DATA ALLY: Agency, Logics, LegitimacY of Business-to-Government Data Sharing for Societal Challenges

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This project investigates how to rebalance the ‘data asymmetry’ between governments and businesses and how data shared by the private sector is used in government decisions on societal issues.

Addressing the societal challenges of the 21st century, such as the climate crisis and pandemics, requires governments to make evidence-based decisions using the best available data. The problem, however, is that, due to the growing datafication and platformization, businesses now hold more relevant data than governments that can be valuable for tackling societal challenges. To re-balance this business-government data asymmetry, EU governments have started taking regulatory and non-regulatory steps to compel businesses to share data with the governments when public interest is at stake.

The DATA ALLY project aims to investigate how Business-to-Government (B2G) data sharing for societal challenges is being institutionalized at the EU, national, and local level. The project breaks new ground as it will be the first large-scale scientific effort to study business-government data asymmetry and how governments across the EU access and use private sector data for societal challenges.

This project is funded by the NWO VIDI Talent Scheme and will run from 2024 to 2028.

Project leader

Key publications

Susha, I., Schiele, J., & Frenken, K. (2022, August). Business-to-Government Data Sharing for Public Interests in the European Union: Results of a Public Consultation. In International Conference on Electronic Government (pp. 515-529). Cham: Springer International Publishing.

Susha, I., & Gil-Garcia, J. R. (2019). A collaborative governance approach to partnerships addressing public problems with private data.