Suchergebnisse

Access to data collected by the private sector could help local administrations to comply with their public-interest mission. Privately held data access by public bodies, however, is an emerging field with no established praxis yet. Its in-the-making status makes it a compelling subject for a research on the "politics of data", since it allows looking at the power (un)balances between the companies holding data and the local administrations interested in it as well as citizens' role. The contribution discusses the findings of a qualitative exploratory research that investigated the experiences and perspectives of local administrations regarding access to privately held personal data. Semi-structured interviews have been conducted with the innovation/data managers of twelve European local administrations. The interviews allowed contextualizing concrete experiences of data sharing in the discourses and viewpoints of the specialists working in this area, as well as the strategies they plan to put forward for facilitating access. The study illustrates how these cities' managers experience four operational modes to access private data: data donorship, public procurement of data, data sharing partnerships and tender obligations. The results highlight new divides caused by the unequal possibilities to access private data, as cities with more experience and better reputation are in a favorable position both to establish partnerships and receive data at no cost. The findings also suggest that public managers would like to retain sovereignty of data, co-create instead of acquire data- driven solutions, and that are imagining collective forms of negotiation to enhance their access to private data.

Abstract
The European public sector has for a long time tried to change its activities and its relation to the public through the production and provision of data and data-based technologies. Recent debates raised attention to data uses, through which societal value may be realized. However, often absent from these discussions is a conceptual and methodological debate on how to grasp and study such uses. This collection proposes a turn toward data practices—intended here as the analysis of data uses and policies, as they are articulated, understood, or turned into situated activities by different actors in specific contexts, involving organizational rules, socioeconomic factors, discourses, and artifacts. Through a mix of conceptual and methodological studies, the contributions explore how data-driven innovation within public institutions is understood, imagined, planned for, conducted, or assessed. The situations examined in this special issue show, for instance, that data initiatives carried out by different actors lack institutional rules to align data use to the actual needs of citizens; that data scientists are important moral actors whose ethical reasoning should be fostered; and that the materiality of data practices, such as databases, enables and constrains opportunities for public engagement. Collectively, the contributions offer new insights into what constitutes "data-driven innovation practices," how different practices are assembled, and what their different political, moral, economic, and organizational implications are. The contributions focus on three particular topics of concern: the making of ethical and normative values in practice; organizational collaborations with and around data; and methodological innovations of studying data practices.