Data Autonomy Project

There is a growing concern of higher education’s dependency on ‘Big Tech’: companies such as Amazon, Google, or Microsoft use the data of universities for commercial goals, which means that universities do not have meaningful control over their data (‘Data Autonomy’).

How to become less dependent on Big Tech

The University of Groningen wants to work on a strategy and roadmap to become more data-autonomous. After organising first events on a regional scale with participants from all over the Netherlands, in June 2023 we launched an initiative that consists of three phases:

• Drawing up a roadmap
• Initiating a pilot project and
• Implementing the entire roadmap

For the first phase a project was initiated to establish a roadmap to Data Autonomy for the UG in a structured, broad-based, and viable manner. This roadmap will be developed in collaboration with stakeholders within the UG, but also in collaboration with external partners, both on a national and international level.

The first phase of the project

• A shared definition of Data Autonomy
• An internal stakeholder analysis at the UG
• An agreement on which level of Data Autonomy we strive for
• An analysis of the current status of Data Autonomy
• An external stakeholder analysis to identify national and international cooperation partners
• A Roadmap to Data Autonomy