Research on Indigenous Data Governance Protocols: A toolkit for working with Indigenous Knowledge

Project Information

RIDaGoP

Grant agreement ID: 101069311

DOI

10.3030/101069311

Project closed

EC signature date 16 June 2022

Start date 1 July 2022

End date 31 December 2023

Funded under

• European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

No data

EU contribution

€ 150 000,00

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITAT AUTONOMA DE BARCELONA
Spain

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - RIDaGoP (Research on Indigenous Data Governance Protocols: A toolkit for working with Indigenous Knowledge)

Reporting period: 2022-07-01 to 2023-12-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Data governance trends increasingly emphasize the need to open access to data, despite growing concerns over data privacy, control, and surveillance. Indigenous peoples, with different epistemological traditions for the use and sharing of culturally sensitive information, add the additional concern of people’s ability to exert data sovereignty. Thus, while interest grow on the documentation and use of Indigenous knowledge, current data governance trends do not align well with Indigenous data rights and governance rules. This is the case of data on Indigenous peoples’ perceptions of climate change impacts collected under the LICCI project (771056-LICCI-ERC-2017-COG). While adhering to the highest EU ethical standards, data collected under the LICCI project failed to address Indigenous data governance. The project “Research on Indigenous Data Governance Protocols” (RIDaGoP) aimed at developing a set of tools to guide the management of Indigenous knowledge and data in the open while adhering to Indigenous data governance principles.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

RIDaGoP undertook four activities:
i) a literature review to document Indigenous data governance protocols;
ii) an assessment on requirements to follow Indigenous data sovereignty principles within European research projects;
iii) the development and testing of a digital toolkit to operationalize Indigenous data sovereignty and governance within open data and open research contexts; and
iv) the dissemination of results.
RIDaGoP has facilitated the configuration of Indigenous data sovereignty protocols allowing knowledge holders to set granular terms of access and use of data and to track data usage.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

In partnership with organizations working on Indigenous data governance issues, RIDaGoP results have the potential to reframe how datasets concerning Indigenous peoples are managed and how Indigenous peoples are represented. Beyond Indigenous data sovereignty, RIDaGoP innovation in tackling equity in data governance can be upscale to issues such as national statistics or health.