Through a series of regional stakeholder dialogues and debates in Berlin, Brussels and Madrid, the digitising europe initiative – organised by Data-Pop Alliance and the Vodafone Institute for Society and Communications – aims to provide insights for European companies and public sector institutions on initiating big data-driven projects and promoting responsible use and governance of big data for public good. The initiative convened academic experts, private companies, government civil society and the public from across Europe to discuss the applications and implications of big data for public good. These efforts have culminated in this short position paper that both reflects the major takeaways from these events and provides insights for both the private and public sectors in unleashing big data-driven innovation and promoting responsible data governance for public good.

This concept paper has been drafted for discussion during a roundtable discussion in Dublin as a side event to the 3rd International Conference on Big Data for Official Statistics, organized by the CSO Ireland and the UN Statistics Division. This dialogue will take place on Monday 29 August 2016, from 4-6PM in Dublin Castle (in Georges Hall). The agenda of the event can be found at http://unstats.un.org/unsd/bigdata/conferences/2016/dialogue.asp.

The audience will consist of a limited group of about 40 to 50 people from the communities of official statistics, civil society, academia and the private sector.

Questions that will be raised during the discussion include:

• What principles should guide data use and ethical public responsible data sharing? What is the role of companies in keeping consumers informed in consent?
• How can these decisions be taken when a company’s headquarter and data servers are in a different place than the people affected?
• Who should participate in these decisions?
• In what ways have government and public sector agencies partnered with companies to produce socially valuable insights through Big Data and the Internet of Things?
• What are the critical lessons learned from these partnerships—from data sharing to civic engagement?
• What kind of civic transparency and accountability measures exist in these initiatives and what is the role of both sectors in promoting civic participation, feedback and privacy protection?

If you are interested in contributing to this ongoing discussion, please take our 5-minute survey, which can be accessed at https://datapopalliance1.typeform.com/to/Suacel.