Abstract
Data access, use and availability has become an essential feature of the digital economy that bears an</p><p>enormous potential to contribute to sustainable development. The open data agenda and its implementation in the</p><p>Global South, although with unequal pace and diverse strategies, have made progress but have also recently</p><p>stagnated. Despite the expectation to contribute to development goals, such as economic growth, social inclusion, and access to public services such as healthcare, after a decade of open data initiatives few of these benefits have been materialized. Part of the problem, the evidence suggests, is related to governance aspects. This is our main</p><p>motivation to put this panel together. The aim is to understand key lessons learned, as well as to debate how to move to a brighter future as well as to develop better measurement tools. In this panel, we focus on complementary perspectives on the governance of open data. First, we are interested in those policies that are in place to enable a trustworthy, valuable and healthy open data ecosystem (Cretu and Scrollini). Questions we would ask the panellist to cover include: what countries have the foundations in place for responsible and effective data collection and use? How do open data policies operate among other data policy frameworks? What can we learn from recent survey exercises such as the Latin American Edition of the Open Data Barometer? A second governance perspective comes from a platform perspective (Bonina). Here, we will discuss how diverse tools and rules can be deployed from an open data platform owner, to cultivate an ecosystem of data publishers, data re-users and innovators in the global South. A third governance angle (Serale) relates to managing key stakeholders, their responsibilities, practices, and collaborations in the administration of open data. This third perspective will cover diverse tools to help organizations to work around data access initiatives, from lessons learned at a global scale. Finally, we will aim to reflect on emerging methodologies to capture the complexity of the governance dimensions in data ecosystems at a national and global level.</p>