Data spaces and the (trans)formations of data innovation and governance

Doctoral candidate Dragana Paparova at the Department of Information Systems, Faculty of Social Sciences, is defending the thesis “Data spaces and the (trans)formations of data innovation and governance” for the degree of Philosophiae Doctor 31 January 2024.

Summary of the thesis

Data have been referred to as semantic entities with open-ended value potential once assigned meaning and used by actors to fulfill various goals and purposes. Innovating with data commonly requires recombining data that are produced, copied, shared, and used across multiple actors, imparting forms of governance that extend beyond the boundaries of single organizations. This duality of data – as strategic resources that require proper governance approaches – has also been central in practical debates; e.g., the European Union’s aspirations for developing data spaces as shared infrastructures for innovating with data, while preserving European values, laws, and regulations.  

Empirically, this thesis studies data spaces through an embedded case study in the highly regulated Norwegian healthcare sector dealing with personal and sensitive health data. The empirical studies take a multi-actor perspective on how health data (including electronic patient record data and patient-generated health data) were innovated with and governed across multiple public and private organizations. Overall, the cases show how personal health data were produced, shared, and used across multiple intertwined data spaces, as processes of data innovation and governance were changing their spatial configurations. 

Theoretically, the thesis builds on the process-oriented, realist ontology of assemblage theory. It adopts assemblage theory’s conceptualization of space to argue how data spaces are neither solely geometrical, nor networked, but provide structures across which various forms of innovation and governance can unfold.  

This thesis is aimed at theory-building and its contribution is two-fold. First, it utilizes the concept of space to study processes of data innovation and governance as simultaneously unfolding across various organizations, digital technologies, legal basis, and data sources, by changing their spatial configurations once thresholds are reached. Second, it accounts for the distinctive nature of data by showing how data do not simply decouple from the realities they refer to. Rather, these realities condition the forms data innovation and governance can take and are shaped by these processes in return.

More information about time and place for the doctoral defense.