17 November 2022 Reading time: 179 minutes Letter from the working group co-chairs This project by an international and interdisciplinary working group of experts from academia, policy, law, technology and civil society, invited by the Ada Lovelace Institute, had a big ambition: to imagine rules and institutions that can shift power over data and make it benefit people and society.The working group discussions centred on questions about power over both data infrastructures, and over data itself.Diane Coyle Bennett Professor of Public Policy, University of Cambridge Paul Nemitz Principal Adviser on Justice Policy, European Commission and visiting Professor of Law at College of Europe Co-chairs Rethinking data working group A call for a new vision In 2020, the Ada Lovelace Institute characterised the digital ecosystem as: - Exploitative: Data practices are exploitative, and they fail to produce the potential social value of data, protect individual rights and serve communities.Our work to ‘rethink data’ began with a forward-looking question: ‘What is a more ambitious vision for data use and regulation that can deliver a positive shift in the digital ecosystem towards people and society?’ This drove the establishment of an expert working group, bringing together leading thinkers in privacy and data protection, public policy, law and economics from the technology sector, policy, academia and civil society across the UK, Europe, USA, Canada and Hong Kong.These processes and methods moved the scope of enquiry on from the original premise – to articulate a positive ambition for the use and regulation of data that recognised asymmetries of power and enabled social value – to seeking the most promising interventions that address the significant power imbalances that exist between large private platforms, and groups of people and individuals."