Today I contributed to a session of the open data research groups at Delft University. They do this a few times per year to discuss ongoing research and explore emerging questions that can lead to new research. I’ve taken part a few times in the past, and this time they asked me to provide an overview of what I see as current developments.

Some of the things I touched upon are similar to the remarks I made in Serbia during Open Data Week in Belgrade. The new PSI Directive proposal also was on the menu. I ended with the questions I think deserve attention. They are either about how to make sure that abstract norms get translated to the very practical, and to the local level inside government, or how to ensure that critical elements get connected and visibly stay that way (such as links between regular policy goals / teams and information management)

The slides are embedded below.

Open Questions by Ton Zijlstra, at TUD

Iryna Susha and Bastiaan van Loenen in the second part of our afternoon took us through their research into the data protection steps that are in play in data collaboratives. This I found very worthwile, as data governance issues of collaborative groups (e.g. public and private entities around energy transition) are regularly surfacing in my work. Both where it threatens data sovereignty for instance, or where collaboratively pooled data can hardly be shared because it has become impossible to navigate the contractual obligations connected to the data that was pooled.