Data Care - Who is cleaning, sorting and maintaining data?

Whilst the outdated call to 'move fast and break things' from Silicon Valley still resonates in some places, the opposite has been needed for a long time: a care-ful approach to data. Therefore we will discuss the practice of caring for and sustaining digital infrastructures on our panel. We will put a spotlight on datasets and databases: Where are they located? How are they initiated, how can they be extended? Who determines what they look like? Who has access? Who takes care of them? And why does care need so much cash?

Especially for public interest tech projects, the open availability of data, its reusability, and collaborative approaches are fundamental principles. But the many manual tasks involved in building and maintaining databases are often still not sufficiently considered, valued, and paid for. Yet, good data is indispensable for good applications and the data basis is often the determining factor for biases and risks, for example of automated systems.

Therefore, we urgently need to take a look at the often hidden work of caring for data assets and learn what Data Care means in everyday life. In the Panel Discussion, we bring together data custodians from different organizations to talk about databases: in public museums, for medical research and in community-driven research projects. What does it mean to collect and preserve data in these different contexts? In the discussion, we connect the organizational realities with the concrete technical level.

To get to the bottom of these questions, we talk to Roos Hopman (Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, Centre for Anthropological Research on Museums and Heritage), Nora Sagel (honic, Platform for Health Data) and Franziska Peter (Open Systems, University of Barcelona) about their experiences with Data Care.

Panel hosts: Freia Kuper and Judith Faßbender