Sunday, July 12, 2015

Random thought on #data governance and social good


Given the nature of digital #data (generative, remixable, scalable, storable, copyable, etc) it's hard to see how the current nonprofit corporate governance structures provide much assurance that these assets will be used for good. Nonprofit corporations must dedicate "excess" financial assets to their mission, what about their digital data assets?

Here are some models of practice from existing institutions that manage assets with some similarities to digital data:

- libraries (lending copies)
- loan funds (revolving resource)
- blood banks (donors regenerate what they donate)
- museums (perpetual conservation)
- trusts (intergenerational transfer)
- commons (participatory and constituent-based)

Just thinkin' out loud.

Can you think of others?

1 comment:

Greg Bloom said...

Data cooperatives have a few recent precedents (http://ourdata.coop ; http://datacommons.coop) and, I think, a lot of potential. Cooperative models may actually overlap a number of the institutional forms that you list here...