Research

datatesting: co-developing computational methods for socially evaluating public data infrastructures

To what extent can datasets from open data initiatives address questions related to urgent societal issues? How can computational methods be used to evaluate this?

datatesting brings together cultural, social and computational researchers to co-develop interdisciplinary methods for assessing the state of public data in relation to civil society concerns around the world.

Through a series of methods studios, the project sought to equip civil society led questioning with web scraping, data interpretation and machine learning to assess public data infrastructures around the world.

These studios explored how interdisciplinary methods may complement the work of the Global Data Barometer, a Global South-led, multidimensional study assessing the state of data for public good in over a hundred countries, and worked with a transnational community of practice to support more inclusive assessment of data for public good.

Team

Dr Jonathan Gray, Director of Centre for Digital Culture + Reader in Critical Infrastructure Studies at Department of Digital Humanities, King’s College London + Cofounder, Public Data Lab

Dr Elena Simperl, Professor of Computer Science, Department of Informatics, King’s College London + Director of Research, Open Data Institute

Dr Neal Reeves, Research Associate, Department of Informatics, King’s College London

Dr Amy Johnson, Research Director, Global Data Barometer

Dr Silvana Fumega, Director, Global Data Barometer

Paul Walsh, CTO at Link Digital + CKAN Co-Steward