Data stewardship: making sure data is used for social good

We talk about data a lot at Gather! Where to find it. Why we should standardise it. How to analyse it and create insight. Why we think this could help end the sanitation crisis.

One of our core beliefs is that data can be used to create social good. The global movement for open data — data that is freely available for everyone to use — is gaining momentum. With the increase in open data comes an increase in opportunities for using it for social good. In Nairobi, Kenya, the Digital Matatus project used open data to improve navigation across the city’s transportation system. In the Czech Republic, Windy is creating open data so that organisations can get live updates on wind, rainfall, temperature and air quality.

It’s not just data organisations that are talking about the better use of data. The Great Hack — a must-watch on the Cambridge Analytica Scandal — showed how Facebook were fined £500,000 for a “lack of transparency and security issues relating to the harvesting of data constituting”. This case got the public talking about how data is used and highlighted the importance of ethical use of data by private and public organisations alike.

There is a special responsibility on organisations like Gather who work in data. 90% of the world’s data has been produced over the last two years. It is estimated that the world produces 2.5 quintillion bytes of data every day. How is this data being used?