The Role of Governance in Unleashing the Value of Data

In 2018, the essay series Data Governance in the Digital Age anticipated some of the data governance issues that have emerged, such as surveillance capitalism and the economics of data, but did not cover data valuation in depth. Data is increasingly central to economic activity and how we make sense of the world, but it is still not valued in either national or corporate balance sheets. There is no accepted methodology to measure data’s value — value that depends on its usefulness in a particular context, which is framed by individual or societal perspectives, governance rules and regulations, and input from different stakeholders. Four themes are explored in this essay series: the current state of global data governance; different perspectives on notions of value; governance frameworks to unleash the value of data; and mechanisms for governance cooperation.