Open AccessData Trusts and the Governance of Smart Environments: Lessons from the Failure of Sidewalk Labs’ Urban Data Trust
Author(s) -
Lisa M. Austin,
David Lie
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
surveillance and society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.781
H-Index - 46
ISSN - 1477-7487
DOI - 10.24908/ss.v19i2.14409
Subject(s) - accountability , data governance , clarity , corporate governance , relation (database) , public administration , public relations , redevelopment , business , computer security , political science , law , computer science , data quality , finance , marketing , data mining , metric (unit) , biochemistry , chemistry
Data trusts are an increasingly popular proposal for managing complex data governance questions, although what they are remains contested. Sidewalk Labs proposed creating an “Urban Data Trust” as part of the Sidewalk Toronto “smart” redevelopment of a portion of Toronto’s waterfront. This part of its proposal was rejected before Sidewalk Labs cancelled the project. This research note briefly places the Urban Data Trust within the general debate regarding data trusts and then discusses one set of reasons for its failure: its incoherence as a model. The Urban Data Trust was a failed model because it lacked clarity regarding the nature of the problem(s) to which it is a solution, how accountability and oversight are secured, and its relation to existing data protection law. These are important lessons for the more general debate regarding data trusts and their role in data governance.