What Could Go Wrong? | Failure Modes for Data Stewardship
We are optimistic about opportunities for data governance, but we recognize that data initiatives also carry serious risks. In this study, Keith Porcaro imagines theoretical scenarios, inspired by reality, where data initiatives go wrong.
Overview
This brief examines failure modes for data stewardship initiatives. It was commissioned as a "red team" brief by Mozilla Insights, to help Mozilla and its partners improve their strategic planning, and determine how to support the data stewardship field.
The heart of this brief is a series of speculative narratives: stories about hypothetical future projects that have failed, and why. Although this brief looks at the data stewardship field with a critical eye, these stories are not destinies. While no single document can comprehensively capture all of the ways a data stewardship initiative might fail, this brief succeeds if it helps spark the imagination, and prompt thoughtful approaches to mitigating the harm to people that failure can cause.
True to the red team form, this brief was drafted in isolation from the rest of the research outlined here, and does not represent the opinions or positions of Mozilla or any of its staff, affiliates, or partners. The stories are fictional, and should not be read as descriptions of any current or past initiatives.
This study is part of a collaborative research series for Mozilla's Data Futures Lab. It explores how power can be shifted through data governance. Learn with us about the ideas, risks and opportunities of this new innovation landscape for the internet.
