It is time for institutions to ensure data infrastructures are more responsive to their publics

Contemporary data infrastructures have had transformative effects; not only on methods, technologies and standards relating to data but also on our social, political, economic and cultural worlds. Building on the open data movement’s successes in the opening and sharing of data sets, Jonathan Gray argues it is time for a broader conversation around the making and development of data infrastructures. Until we institute processes to ensure data infrastructures reflect the concerns of their various publics, we risk sustaining systems that are disengaged from, or even damaging towards, those they are intended to benefit.