For many people, a desire for better approaches to data stewardship is a brief, passing thought. Perhaps a customer begins to worry after a healthcare company announces a hack of customer data. Maybe someone tries to opt out of cookies on a website only to give up, exasperated at the multiple screens and clicks required. Perhaps a consumer wonders why an online restaurant reservation requires a birthday. It’s at such moments that we often think, “There must be a better way.” These concerns are only heightened with developments in AI fueling new uses for our data.
Data Futures Lab, a project of the Mozilla Foundation, served as an experimental space for developing new approaches to data stewardship. Its goal was to build tools and communities designed to offer such better ways—ways that give greater control and agency to people. In so doing, the project sought to advance policies, approaches, and tools that prioritize data co-creation, ownership, and stewardship in ways that benefit a diverse and inclusive public. Between 2021-2024, it provided funding, project incubation, scaffolding for collaboration, convening around emerging ideas, and a place to workshop approaches to data governance. By bringing together innovators, capital, and community, Data Futures Lab hoped to give greater control and agency to people, rather than corporations or systems.
The project has since ceased as a standalone initiative, and its success has inspired the broader Mozilla Foundation to take its approach to funding and tailored support so that more promising sociotechnical projects can flourish over a longer term.
Read more in our capstone case study.
