Data is crucial to the future of social impact. Whether it is used to better serve those in need, improve program design, assess impact, raise funding, or train better AI models, data is going to be at the heart of solving the world’s biggest problems.

Unfortunately, the state of data governance is a barrier to using data for society’s benefit. The dominant model is surveillance capitalism, which strip mines the world and its populace of data and uses it to generate outsized wealth for a few. More and more people, and more and more countries, are uncomfortable with this bargain, and are increasingly distrustful of data collection efforts.

Not only do we need data more than ever for addressing society’s biggest needs, but there is also an AI craze sweeping the world. Unfortunately, the datasets used in these massive AI models are not representative of humanity. Every day we read of new problems caused by AI. These issues range from the misidentification of faces of women of color to discrimination against various marginalized groups, and the inability to comprehend many of the languages spoken by a majority of the global population. However, these problems are not going to change as long as AI is driven by a small number of super-capitalized tech companies, who need to make major profits to justify all of that investment.

We need a Better Deal for Data! We are happy to announce the launch of a new movement to outline an alternative approach to data collection, use, and governance. An approach which centers ethics and brings benefits to individuals and communities and the entire planet, rather than a select wealthy few. The proposed Better Deal for Data is inspired by the open source and Creative Commons movements, which have helped unlock tremendous potential by their pro-social intent, and standardization of legal language.

We have just released an initial proposal set forth in a detailed white paper, posted on the BD4D.org website. Central to our concept are a small number of single sentence commitments to the people whose data is being used. These are intended to be easy to understand by everyone, not just data experts. For example, Commitment 1 is to use “your data to benefit you, your community, humanity, and the planet; not for private gain or profit.”

This is just the start of an open design process. We want to know if these draft commitments are the right ones or if key issues are missing. We need to collect data use cases from real nonprofits and businesses, using a fill-in-the-blank model: We want to collect from to deliver to them and society while preventing from happening.

We need to start writing supporting text for each commitment to explain what each means (and doesn’t mean). We will be creating model legal agreements for data collection, stewardship, and sharing. We want it to be as easy to commit to ethical action with data as it is to put a Creative Commons license on a white paper or photo, without needing to spend months working with lawyers.