Monthly Archives: October 2020

New website exploring digital trade and implications for development

Extending our recent research on digital trade, we have launched a website called the “Digital Trade Tracker” that looks to provide better coverage of the implications of Digital Trade in terms of global justice and development.

In our research we have often found digital trade to be a fast moving, technical and confusing area. We also found that much of the public material presented in the mainstream press took a narrow perspective, often rehashing the positions of technology firms and powerful states, such as the US.

As issues around data, digital and trade becomes important there is need for clearer information and commentary on these issues. This is the goal of this website – to provide simple and balanced information for trade negotiators, policy makers, advocacy groups, academics and wider society on issues connected digital trade and how they will shape the future of the global economy.

More details of the Digital trade tracker website can be found here – Digital trade tracker

New paper: Datafication, value and power in developing countries

A new paper has been published that I was a co-author on. “Datafication, value and power in developing countries: Big data in two Indian public service organizations” extends our previous sectoral analysis of big data to explore the implications more broadly.

Datafication—the growing presence, use and impact of data in social processes—is spreading to all sectors in developing countries. But, to date, there are few analyses of real‐world experiences of datafication in developing country organizations

….Big data systems are facilitating a shift in power from the public sector to the private sector, and from labour and middle management to panopticon‐type control by central managers. Big data intersects with politics especially around the imaginaries of wider stakeholders, changing their view of the financial and political issues that technology can address.

You can find more details and a blog post on the publications page