UCL's Vision for Data Empowerment

Data-Empowered Societies

Vision 

Data is changing almost every aspect of our lives. It's transforming medicine and healthcare, improving climate resilience, and altering how we live and learn through new ways of measuring, sharing, analysing, and making decisions. But in an era of ‘data-driven’ innovation, technical advances sometimes outpace our understanding of how elements of society can be harmed, or left behind through exclusion, machine bias or reductionist approaches to analysis.

To truly empower society with data, we need to ensure that data serves human needs. Our vision for Data-Empowered Societies is to deliver positive innovation through information technology in ways that empower. 

By the end of the decade, our goal is for UCL to be independently assessed as a global leader in inclusive, data-driven research, education, and innovation, bringing transformative technologies into harmony with the values, vulnerabilities and needs of people and society.  

Goal

Our goal is to explore the relationship between digital transformation and society through projects that are both enthusiastic about the potential of data and mindful of its risks. We will use this understanding to create positive societal impacts, especially for the most vulnerable and those least able to adapt. We aim to ensure that the opportunities provided by data are shared widely.

A key question, therefore, is: How can we make data usage more empowering and support society in adapting? How can we capture, curate, use, analyse, and interpret data in ways that maximise benefits and minimise harm for everyone?

Sub-Themes 

To achieve our vision around data, society and empowerment, we have collaborated with groups across UCL to identify and set out a series of potential sub-themes to frame the Grand Challenge. These initial ideas are meant to spark engagement. 

We describe our sub-themes along two axes: 

Axis one: Approaches and Perspectives

1. Data abundance 
   How can we exploit abundant data while avoiding exploitation and manipulation?
   What measures can be taken to ensure data privacy and prevent surveillance?
2. Data exclusion and misrepresentation
   How can we ensure that missing or biased data does not disempower society?
   What steps can be taken to include underrepresented groups in datasets?
3. Data, Power and Governance
   How can we ensure that data use aligns with human-centric goals and prevents harm?
   What governance structures are needed to manage the power dynamics of data control?

Axis Two: Challenge-led Problems

1. Knowing and deciding with data
   How can data be used to address global issues like healthcare, sustainability, and climate change?
   What strategies can be implemented to prioritize human needs and build resilience through data?
2. Data and social change
   How can we harness data for meaningful social change while addressing equity, privacy, and inclusion?
   What are the ethical considerations in creating and using digital twins or "virtual selves"?
3. Working and learning in data-empowered societies
   How can we transform work and learning considering societal impacts?
   What balance should be struck between the benefits of data and the risks?
4. Data-Empowered Organisations 
   How can organizations effectively use data-empowered approaches to transform their operations and offerings?
   What prototypes and proof of concept solutions can be developed to study digital transformation?

Over the coming weeks and months, we will work with the UCL community to further define and agree on these sub-themes through cross-faculty representative governance. As we address these challenges, we will foreground societal needs and address issues of freedom, bias, and vulnerability as a starting point for the technical design and development of advanced digital systems.