At Common Ground, we are working towards pooling open-source tools for the community-led governance of Commons and landscapes, and building the shared infrastructure needed for tools, data, and knowledge systems to talk to each other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Building this requires several systems to work together. Existing public datasets need to be made accessible and interpretable by the local communities who live within these landscapes. The knowledge and data that already reside within communities need to become part of how these systems understand the landscape, alongside the more formal, technical understanding built through mapping and monitoring. The knowledge and data collected and created by the various NGOs working in this space also need to be integrated into these systems. At the same time, the interests of communities have to be protected: their rights over their own data, and their ability to govern the systems built around it, cannot be an afterthought.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Building this kind of shared and open infrastructure is complex. It requires us to agree, early on, on some fundamental design principles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To help guide this path, we partnered with Aapti Institute to map the approaches that already exist globally for public interest technology. We are grateful for the collaboration with Aapti Institute on this report and multiple Common Ground partners and experts who provided their valuable time and perspectives. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In their report, “Reclaiming Digital Infrastructure for the Commons: Community Participation and Data Governance,”<\/strong> Aapti examines digital public infrastructure, free and open-source software, and data cooperatives and collectives, drawing out the best practices, challenges and opportunities of each from global precedents and examples.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are many important insights in the report for anyone looking at creating digital infrastructures for scale: <\/p>\n\n\n\n What we are learning is that this path has to be built one step at a time, guided by a clear set of design principles, and by the critical questions we will need to keep asking ourselves as we design digital systems meant to serve local communities. We may not have all the answers yet, but asking the right questions is where the work begins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n