We recently updated the MyData White Paper. Unlike previous editions that stated “this is the way it should be,” this fourth edition asks questions about how MyData’s vision, principles, and shifts should be applied in today’s uncertain and dynamic technological landscape.

The white paper highlights several global challenges that have emerged or intensified since the previous declaration:

• The proliferation of AI and how it’s changing how data functions in society
• Impacts on democracy through visible and invisible data leverage
• Continued data concentration that distorts global economies
• Growing geopolitical tensions around data governance

It also identifies both inhibiting factors (technical security issues, power-concentrating economics, the “intractable data self,” digital literacy gaps) and enabling factors (evolving regulations, technical infrastructure development, market transformations, emerging social infrastructure). The white paper can be downloaded at mydata.org/publications.

The Declaration Update Process

The update process will be community-driven, focusing first on content (principles, shifts, and mission) before considering form (whether to maintain a static document or move toward something more dynamic). This process aims to culminate at the MyData 10-year anniversary conference in September 2025. MyData Global recently held a virtual town hall meeting to kick off discussions about updating the MyData Declaration – the organisation’s “north star” – for 2025 and beyond. With the current declaration dating back to 2017, the need for a refresh is especially pressing given the rapid evolution of technology, policy, and society over the past seven years.

Setting the Stage: The Updated White Paper as Input to the Declaration v2

Executive Director Christopher Wilson began by introducing the latest edition of the MyData White Paper, which has been updated to serve as a provocation document and input for the community-driven. Details of the process are being presently developed by the board of directors and its governance committee, who will announce them in May 2025.

Key Discussions: The MyData Shifts

Senior advisor Viivi Lähteenoja led an interactive discussion focusing on the three foundational shifts outlined in the declaration:

1. From Formal to Actionable Rights

This shift prompted several important questions:

• What if there are no formal rights in some jurisdictions?
• How do we address compliance burdens for ethical businesses?
• What cultural shifts are needed to make rights not just actionable but actually actioned?
• How do we account for rights beyond data subject rights?

Key contributions included:

• Considering communities as implementation points for actionable rights
• The need for tools and infrastructure that empower people directly
• The role of delegation in making rights actionable, especially with AI agents emerging
• Recognition that actionability might be a utopia, but “an important utopia to have”
• “Maybe what people need is power, not rights”.
• “From formal rights to actionable power”.

2. From Data Protection to Data Empowerment

Discussion centred around:

• What data should empower people – personal data only or other data affecting lives?
• The balance between protection and empowerment
• Whether empowerment means sharing more data
• Who should be empowered – individuals, groups, communities, or organisations trying to build empowerment tools?
• Moving beyond mere protection to giving people actual power over their digital lives and shifting from “protecting ourselves against abuse” to “having power” over digital lives
• “Data is people. And that is how our power is reduced or increased”

Participants noted that empowerment is much bigger than just data – it’s about having the power to function and exert influence over things that affect one’s life. Several contributors suggested framing this shift more positively as moving “from protecting ourselves against abuse to having power over our digital lives and selves.”

A fruitful tension also emerged between the above points of view and the one that MyData should retain its specific and strict focus on personal data as its unique selling point and as personal data is something that affects every single individual.

3. From Closed to Open Ecosystems

Key questions included:

• Should we insist on absolute openness, or allow for closed systems within a perfect MyData world?
• How do we prevent “enclosure of the commons”?

Valuable insights emerged:

• Debate over “open ecosystems” versus “closed systems with open standards”
• The need to distinguish between infrastructure (which should be open and interoperable) and content (which may need privacy controls)
• The importance of interoperability as the core solution to manage fragmentation.

Additional Highlights from the Discussion

A lively discussion was also had in the meeting chat. Highlights from the meeting’s discussions included suggestions for:

• Moving from consent to contract as the default high bar for personal data exchange: current consent models (dating from the 1980s) are seen as failing to meet their purpose. Reference was made to IEEE7012 “My Terms” development that allows for contracts written from individuals’ perspectives.
• Moving from private to public digital infrastructure: Discussion of digital wallets, identity systems and data exchange as potential public goods
• Moving toward “sovereign societies” or regional ecosystems with agreed standards
• Developing data resilience as a concept at the principle level.
• “Every citizen of the Internet must be able to say: ‘MyData, from anywhere and everywhere, is always available to me’.”

Next Steps

The meeting concluded with a discussion of next steps. The following actions were agreed upon:

1. Publishing the White Paper as a provocation document
2. Setting up a collaborative format for feedback on the Declaration
3. Potentially organising another town hall meeting specifically to discuss the principles of the Declaration
4. Summarising the discussion points from this meeting into a blog post

There was consensus on the need for multiple and multiple types of engagement opportunities given the diverse community around MyData.

Conclusion

This town hall marked the beginning of an important conversation about the future of MyData. As was noted, “MyData is more relevant today than it has ever been. The message of empowering people with data is as powerful as ever, and the shift to the human-centric paradigm is just as revolutionary today as it was 10 years ago.”

The challenge ahead is to ensure the declaration remains fit for purpose in a rapidly evolving data landscape while staying true to MyData’s core vision of human-centric personal data use.