Making the Global Digital Compact a reality

In September of this year, as world leaders assemble in New York for the 78th annual meeting of the United Nations (UN) General Assembly, they will confront a weighty agenda. War and peace will be at the forefront of conversations, along with efforts to tackle climate change and the ongoing migration crisis. Alongside these usual topics, however, the gathered dignitaries will also turn their attention to digital governance.

In 2021, the UN Secretary General proposed that a Global Digital Compact (GDC) be agreed upon that would “outline shared principles for an open, free and secure digital future for all”. The development of this Compact, which builds on a range of adjacent work streams at the UN, including activities related to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), has now reached a vital inflection point. After a wide-ranging process of consultation, the General Assembly is expected to ratify the latest draft of the Digital Compact, which contains five key objectives and a commitment to thirteen cross-cutting principles. We have reached a rare moment of near-consensus in the global digital ecosystem, one that offers undeniable potential for revamping (and improving) our frameworks for global governance.

The growing prominence of these objectives and principles at the seat of global governance is a welcome development. Each is essential to developing a healthy, safe and responsible digital ecosystem. In particular, the emphasis on better data governance is a step forward, as is the related call for an enhanced approach for international AI governance. Both cannot be separated: data governance is the bedrock of AI governance.

Yet now that we are moving toward ratification of the Compact, we must focus on the next crucial—and in some ways most difficult – step: implementation. This is particularly important given that the digital realm faces in many ways a growing crisis of credibility, marked by growing concerns over exclusion, extraction, concentrations of power, mis- and disinformation, and what we have elsewhere referred to as an impending “data winter”.

Manifesting the goals of the Compact to create genuine and lasting impact is thus critical. In what follows, we explore four key ways in which the Compact’s key objectives can be operationalized to create a more vibrant, responsive and free global digital commons.

1) Advancing digital self-determination: The ability of individuals and groups to effect agency as it relates to their data (now referred to as digital self-determination) is crucial for fostering a more inclusive and responsive digital ecosystem. While it is essential to include individual citizens in this process, there is also growing recognition of the need for community-led processes, and of the importance for collective norms and values to be adequately represented in any framework for data or AI governance. Social licenses can play a major role here, complementing individual consent, by permitting communities to actively participate in governance frameworks and by ensuring a bottom-up process that better channels and reflects collective values and welfare.

Crucially, the effort to advance agency must be context-specific. A one-size-fits-all approach to data and AI governance risks alienating communities, especially those already marginalized, in the process undermining the trust and the long-term effectiveness of governance. Instead, by allowing for flexibility and local input, digital norms can be tailored to meet the specific needs of different collectives, aligning community-specific values with global standards of human rights and digital safety.

2) Making data collaboration more systematic: We live at a moment of unprecedented data abundance, yet one that is paradoxically also characterized by the growing privatization and "silo-ization" of data. This phenomenon, the “data winter” referred to earlier, risks being exacerbated by the proliferation of AI, which has led to new anxieties surrounding data rights and usage. It is increasingly clear that the key to a healthy data ecosystem depends on breaking down some of these silos, and in fostering a more open and collaborative data climate. Increasing access to data for re-use in the public interest, underpinned by a robust governance framework to ensure safety and citizen rights, is also essential to achieving the goals of the GDC.

Data collaboratives, an emerging structure that encourages data access within and across sectors, are likely to play a central role in fostering this healthier ecosystem. As we have noted, data collaboratives are being used with increasing frequency, in various sectoral and geographic contexts, to repurpose privately held data toward public ends. For this—and many more—reasons, we strongly encourage making data collaboratives more systematic as a key priority to operationalize the Compact.

3) Re-imagine data stewardship: As data grows in value, it also grows increasingly complex to govern. Making the collective use of data systematic is a delicate task that requires balancing a host of competing values, variables, stakeholders and desirable outcomes. In addition, the risks associated with data—including those related to privacy and security – are also growing, making good governance of data all the more crucial, and all the more difficult.

The role of data stewards is thus increasingly important, and in need of re-imagination. Core to any effort at creating a healthier data and digital ecosystem, data stewards (whether in the form of individuals, collectives or institutions) bring specialized knowledge and expertise to the table toward accessing and governing data responsibly, and represent a dedicated resource to manage a society’s or an organization’s data resources. At the moment, the practice of data stewardship remains limited and ill-defined; a clearer list of responsibilities, along with a readily available set of best practices and lessons learned, is critical to achieving many of the objectives set out in the Compact.

4) Become question-centric, in lieu of data-centric: The objectives laid out in the GDC are sufficiently broad that their operationalization could lead to a number of more specific objectives and outcomes. How to determine these more specific end-points is a crucial step that now faces the international community. This is a good moment to pause; before racing ahead to defining end-goals we need a period of reflection regarding what truly matters, what matters most and how best to achieve our most desirable goals. In other words, this is a moment for focusing on first principles, and for asking questions before racing ahead to answers.

Questions can play a critical role in identifying what matters most to a nation or community. They can help choose among competing objectives and goals, and they allow us to channel scarce resources (financial, human, etc.) in the most efficient manner possible. At a moment of nearly unmanageable abundance, questions can help prioritize. Indeed, as we have argued, the moment is ripe for a new science of questions.

The road to the GDC has been long, winding and not without bumps. The formal ratification of this document represents a true achievement, and a potential landmark on the path to a new, more inclusive and more effective system of governance for the global digital commons. Much work has been done to reach this current point of near global consensus; the moment is ripe with possibility.

Yet, as the above discussion makes clear, much work also remains. The task of translating noble goals to concrete results lies ahead. In some ways, this is the most challenging work—yet also arguably the most important.