Moving From Idea to Practice

Three Resources to Streamline the Creation of Data Sharing Agreements

Data collaborations can be critical in harnessing the kinds of data needed to develop insights that can inform impactful decisions. Unfortunately, many of the actors seeking to make use of different datasets encounter a major obstacle: Harnessing data from different sources can require forming agreements with outside actors and this process can be complex and time-consuming. Data stewards operating in the public and private sector have often little guidance on ways to make forming a data sharing agreement (DSA) easier.

In February and March 2023, the Open Data Policy Lab (a collaboration between The GovLab and Microsoft) and TrustRelay co-hosted conversations with multiple experts in law, data, and smart cities to solve this problem. The result is three documents that seek to help data stewards in the public and private sector address common barriers to forming a data sharing agreement.

  1. Conducting Principled Negotiations

First, those seeking to develop a DSA often struggle to work with collaborators to define roles and responsibilities or agree to common ends. Those participating can struggle to understand the interests and motivations of potential partners. They can lack knowledge of incentives that might foster trust, agreement, and reduce costs.

Many of these problems can be addressed by ensuring that all parties have a set of common, guiding principles before forming an agreement, principles that can be applied universally across all negotiations and help foster trust amongst all parties.

“Principled Negotiations by Design” includes a set of principles that data collaboration organizers can use to guide their attempts to form a DSA. We describe the elements needed to achieve those principles and how they might be operationalized within the DSA process.

2. Assessing Readiness

A second common problem is that those looking to develop a data collaboration can struggle to determine whether data has value for a given purpose until they have access to it. Organizations must find ways their own experience and capacity and those that they are engaging with.

The “Readiness Matrix” ensures there is the transparency to understand the maturity of partners. This framework helps data collaboration organizers determine the maturity level of the data in question and whether the parties involved have the skills or mandate required to engage.

3. Establishing the Elements of a Data Sharing Agreement

Finally, a DSA requires defining the purpose, outlining the data sources a collaboration requires, and outlining the timeline. However, it can be difficult to articulate these elements without taking the context into account and understanding who should be involved. Data collaborative partners often find themselves looking for a way to assemble all these elements along with the documentation needed for each part. To ensure there is consensus on the elements needed for an agreement, we provide the “Contractual Wheel of Data Collaboration 2.0,” an update of our previous collaborative wheel model.

This resource provides checklists of the elements typically needed for a Data Sharing Agreement and how data collaboration organizers can go about addressing each element.

We invite you to download these documents and use them for your organization. If you have any questions or feedback or would like to share how this guide helped you, please contact us at datastewards@thegovlab.org.

The Research Team

  • Andrew J. Zahuranec

    RESEARCH FELLOW

  • Hannah Chafetz

    RESEARCH FELLOW

  • Stefaan Verhulst

    CO-FOUNDER AND CHIEF RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT OFFICER

The Open Data Policy Lab

The Open Data Policy Lab is a resource hub supporting decision-makers at the local, state and national levels as they work toward accelerating the responsible reuse and sharing of open data for the benefit of society and the equitable spread of economic opportunity.

The GovLab

The Governance Lab (GovLab), based at NYU’s Tandon School of Engineering, seeks to improve people’s lives by changing how we govern. We believe that increased availability and use of data and new ways to leverage the capacity, intelligence, and expertise of people can improve the way we make decisions and solve public problems.