Big Data and a “Data Philanthropy” Vision for Public Good

Before cities sought access to data with policy, they relied on corporate largess. The rise of “big data” in the private sector and the “datafication” of the modern economy gave rise to a vision of “data philanthropy” that—as a notable and early expression of the public value of privately collected data—played a critical role in setting the stage for platform urbanism data sharing policy mandates.

As technology advanced, more and more of the world’s structured information was increasingly held by private sector actors whose economic models incentivized data capture. Writing about these trends in the Harvard Business Review in 2014, prominent civic technologist Matt Stempeck described that “the information revolution has helped the private sector speed ahead [of the public sector] in data aggregation, analysis, and applications”19 with Kirkpatrick warning, “it would be a massive oversight if the public sector got left behind”20 .

No less a body than the United Nations felt the need to respond to this imbalanced data dynamic. In 2009, recognizing that traditional public interest tools “cannot keep up”, UN Secretary General Bahn-Ki Moon established the Global Pulse Initiative21, as an “R&D Lab” to explore whether big data from the private sector could help “make policymaking more agile and responsive”22. Within a few years, Global Pulse Director Robert Kirkpatrick would write that “the evidence is growing that it can.”23

Global Pulse was on to something, and in 2011 at the World Economic Forum meeting of global leaders in Davos, Switzerland, they coined

19 Matt Stempeck, “Sharing Data Is a Form of Corporate Philanthropy,” Harvard Business Review, July 24, 2014, https://hbr.org/2014/07/sharing-data-is-a-form-of-corporate-philanthropy. 20 Robert Kirkpatrick, “A New Type of Philanthropy: Donating Data,” Harvard Business Review, March 21, 2013, https://hbr.org/2013/03/a-new-type-of-philanthropy-don. 21 Steve Lohr, “Searching Big Data for ‘Digital Smoke Signals,’” The New York Times, August 7, 2013, sec.

Technology, https://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/08/technology/development-groups-tap-big-data-todirect-humanitarian-aid.html. 22 Kirkpatrick, “A New Type of Philanthropy.”

23 Kirkpatrick.

the term “corporate data philanthropy”24. Writing in 2013, Kirkpatrick defines this term as “the idea that the private sector ‘holders’ of Big Data can make this valuable resource available to the public” contributing to a “data commons” that doesn’t “compromise competitiveness” and that “fully protects privacy in the process”25. This definition contained a vision. “What we need,” he wrote, “is action that goes beyond corporate social responsibility. We need Big Data to be treated as a public good.”26

“What we need is action that goes beyond corporate social responsibility. We need Big Data to be treated as a public good.”

-Robert Kirkpatrick, Director, UN Global Pulse

Kirkpatrick felt the enactment of this vision was imperative, and in addition to calling for private sector “leadership” and “courage” he named the specific need for “new regulatory frameworks, innovative policies, and fresh thinking about how public-private partnerships can work” (emphasis added). 27

Amazingly, Kirkpatrick’s words could apply almost verbatim to the present-day conversation about platform urbanism data sharing mandates a decade later, marking one of the earliest calls for public policy in this context and presciently spelling out some of the core tensions concerning corporate resistance and concerns about competitiveness and privacy that we are still left grappling with today.

24 “Mapping the Next Frontier of Open Data: Corporate Data Sharing | by Stefaan G. Verhulst | Internet Monitor 2014: Data and Privacy | Medium,” accessed April 6, 2022, https://medium.com/internet-monitor2014-data-and-privacy/mapping-the-next-frontier-of-open-data-corporate-data-sharing-73b2143878d2.

25 Kirkpatrick, “A New Type of Philanthropy.”

26 Kirkpatrick.

27 Kirkpatrick.