NGI Workshop on Trust-frameworks at ThingsCon 2019

NGI FORWARD held a Workshop on Trust-frameworks at ThingsCon 2019, on 12 December in Rotterdam (NL). The event was organized by Rob van Kranenburg (NGI Forward) and Theo Veltman, Innovation/Program manager, gemeente Amsterdam, with Manon den Dunnen (strategic advisor Police Innovation).

This NGI workshop was part of the Thingscon track ‘How to shape a responsible society’. The workshop featured two lightning talks focused on  Trust-frameworks from a societal perspective and from a technical perspective. The talks summarized three issues involved, 1) Control over your personal data 2) Availability of data for social goals and 3) Data exchange is costly and inefficient. Trust Infrastructure consists of a generic facility providing core services like identification, authentication, consent and security as well as data collaboratives, data sharing agreements, consents agreements and permissions.

The workshop also featured a discussion of use cases of personalised data management, addressing the key question of how to safeguard digital autonomy. The workshop conveyed a sense of urgency to strengthen the position of the individual while it is still possible.

Attendees included designers, civil servants from Ministries and City, artists, independent policy advisors and academia/Industrial Engineering. One of the operational conclusions was neatly captured in the following quote:

“If we are going to look for ways to build a better, more just, more dignified and respectful future, it is imperative that we consider governance mechanisms that can put communities and governments in positions of negotiating power with respect to optimization goals in the design of algorithmic systems. This implies identifying what data infrastructures must be owned or controlled by citizens, groups, communities and governments, what skills and expertise must be cultivated and what governance mechanisms must be put in place in order to be able to negotiate conditions of engagement with powerful platform economy actors.” – Irina Shklovski (output from the session)

For the full report see here