Data trusts at the Service of Society

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One facet of data trusts that has been less explored in the latest blog posts is the societal benefit that can stem from a data trust: data management for the benefit of society. A great example of this is the WRAP project.

WRAP (Waste & Resources Action Programme), a UK non-profit organization promoting and encouraging sustainable resource use through product design, waste minimisation, re-use, recycling and reprocessing of waste materials1, directed a data trust pilot, in collaboration with the Open Data Institute2.

In 2019, they tested a data trust model, during a period of three months, to see if it could support food waste reduction efforts, on a global level « by improving the ability of stakeholders to track and measure food waste within supply chains »3. Why? The context of food waste is a sensitive one, especially in terms of sharing food waste data, which can be extremely commercially sensitive. Therefore, organizations want to restrict access to it, but sharing food waste data could help reduce it. That is why the idea of the data trust was brought forward: to increase the confidence of all stakeholders in the food waste chain. This sharing would take place through a safe legal structure, the data trust. 

Food waste being a complex worldwide problem, requiring specific tracking and coordination between key stakeholder with different procedures and methodologies to quantify and manage food waste is a challenge. The implementation of a data trust was a practical solution, as it could potentially facilitate this process and also provide a simple governance structure. This structure would address existing power imbalances between stakeholders in the food sector (e.g. clients, manufacturers), through an independent regulated and supervised process. 

Unfortunately, this pilot also highlighted the difficulties of operationalizing a data trust. The next (and last) article will present these difficulties. 

Ce contenu a été mis à jour le 28 mars 2021 à 17 h 32 min.