Background
The Data Collaboration Alliance is a nonprofit organization that’s committed to the advancement of meaningful Data Ownership and global Collaborative Intelligence. Our focus on reducing and ultimately eliminating data copies is similar to how societies already protect the value of currency, identities, and intellectual property - and it works for data, too. Our advisors include the Executive Director of the Mozilla Foundation and the ex-CIO of Dropbox. Guiding principles: Control - We support technologies and methodologies that minimize data and eliminate copies in order to make meaningful control possible Ownership- We believe Data Ownership is a human right and control should be in the hands of the rightful owner or a temporary custodian they appoint Access - We advocate accelerated and inclusive innovation powered by the Zero-Copy Integration framework and Data Collaboration methodology Key programs: Collaborative Intelligence Network (CIN) -research initiative defining a new infrastructure for the future of data and applications Node X - free software program supporting collaborative research at universities, charities, and Corporate For Good labs Node Zero - free community of data-centric problem-solvers who collaborate on datasets and free tools in support of their sector and important causes Zero-Copy Integration - draft national standard defining a framework to accelerate data-centric innovation while simultaneously advancing Data Ownership Visit: datacollaboration.org.
Project Description
The Data Collaboration Alliance operates Node Zero, a free community of data-savvy students and professionals who come together to collaborate on open datasets and free tools in support of their sector and important causes. Our members self-organized into different domains, including Collaborative Privacy, Collaborative Sustainability, and Collaborative Health. The idea for this project is to kickstart our Collaborative Cities do main by having the students work on the design and delivery of a free research tool that can be used by their fellow students and working professionals. Node Zero community members, including the members of this project, have free access to an enterprise-grade Data ware platform which enables organizations to create "digital brain" of linked datasets. This is a leading-edge data management architecture that includes a 'Data Browser' that allows people with a variety of data skills, from spreadsheets to SQL, to log in and collaborate on datasets and build "no code" and "lo code" digital solutions. A unique characteristic of the Data ware architecture is that it supports the 'Zero-Copy Integration' framework which is a draft Canadian standard. In short, this is a framework for building new digital solutions faster and more inclusively in a way that also supports meaningful Data Ownership and next-gen Data Governance. Team activities would include: Ideating on the free tool Planning datasets/ schemas / models Sourcing and connecting (with support) data from partners e.g. Municipal provincial, nonprofit databases Researching and entering data directly Inviting data collaborators (urban planning students, professionals) Collaborating with UX and data-centric developers to build the free web tool.
In this project, the Client expects the team to design the following:
The core concept for this project is to work with the capstone students to kickstart our Collaborative Cities domain by identifying and building (with support) a free tool in support of their sector that could be used by urban planning students and professionals. For context, members of Node Zero's Collaborative Privacy group recently delivered a “Data Privacy Gateway" that offers data privacy professionals with a web-based toolkit to support research, IT, and policymaking. This provides a model for how this proposed Collaborative Cities project could work. Visit: https://datacollaboration.net/privacy/. The free urban planning tool / resource created by the students would serve to kickstart our Collaborative Cities domain which the Node Zero community would continue to grow and enhance for the urban planning community worldwide. What we're actually building at Node Zero is a "digital brain" where all data is connected, and so these datasets may ultimately be used to connect and extend datasets and free tools in other domains e.g. Collaborative Sustainability. This project would also support the wider mission of the Data Collaboration Alliance which is to demonstrate that highly-efficient digital service innovation can be done collaborative and inclusive way and does not need to come at the expense of meaningful data control and ownership.