Activity 4: Determine the role of trust within your ecosystem
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Learn how to map your trust relationships and use the 10 elements of trustworthy data stewardship to determine your organisational priorities within specific relationships
The aim of this activity is to use a map of your data ecosystem to better understand the role of trust within that ecosystem. If you have not mapped your data ecosystem, see the 'Data Ecosystem Mapping tool' for information on how to do so.
A data ecosystem map illustrates the various actors in a data ecosystem, and helps to document how data, insights, services, products and money flow between organisations in that ecosystem. In the context of trust and trustworthiness, it can help organisations to: identify organisations that they trust directly and those that they trust indirectly, illustrate the relational nature of trust, and elucidate the role of trust within their ecosystem.
Different organisations will view trust and trustworthiness within their ecosystem differently. For example, you may decide that trust and trustworthiness are most important in relationships where there is the most potential risk for your organisation or the highest potential value. Or, you may decide that trust and trustworthiness are most important in areas where there is a lack of standardised, scalable, widely-adopted mechanisms to assess and demonstrate trustworthiness; where demonstrating your trustworthiness to – or assessing the trustworthiness of – potential collaborators can be difficult.
Look at the different relationships you have with members of your data ecosystem documented on your map, and think through a few hypotheticals for each relationship:
What might cause trust within this relationship to diminish? What would be the result?
What might cause trust within this relationship to increase? What would be the result?
What steps might you take to lower/raise the chances of that happening?
Select one relationship where you feel trust and trustworthiness are particularly important. If they are all important, pick one that you would like to examine in the next activities. We recommend examining all your relationships using the process in activities 4–6. However, we recognise organisations may decide to examine only a selection of their relationships based on time/resourcing constraints or the specifics of their trust-related needs.
Prioritise the elements of trustworthy data stewardship according to the importance you place on each element within the relationship you have chosen to examine. If you are not already familiar with the 10 elements of trustworthy data stewardship, you can find an introduction in Activity 1.
This is a different activity than the ranking activity in Activity 1. That activity was internal-facing and looking at an organisation as a whole. This activity, on the other hand, is external-facing and is aimed at helping organisations examine whether their organisational practices are enabling them to be trustworthy and trusted within specific relationships.
Since trust is relational and trustworthiness is, to an extent, subjective, what is required of organisations to be trustworthy and trusted will be different within different relationships. Within one relationship, an organisation might demonstrate and stress its trustworthiness in areas like security and strategic oversight because they know the partner in that relationship prioritises those elements of trustworthy data stewardship. In another relationship, the organisation might demonstrate and stress its trustworthiness in entirely different areas based on the needs and expectations of the other party.
As in Activity 1, we recommend that representatives from multiple departments within your organisation take part, to get each department to rank the elements on their own before presenting their rankings to the group.
To begin prioritising the important elements within this relationship, ask yourself:
When we strive to demonstrate the trustworthiness of our organisation – and our data practices and/or the data we collect, manage use and share – to this organisation, what elements do we prioritise? Why?
When we strive to assess the trustworthiness of this organisation, its data practices and/or the data it collects, manages, uses and shares, what elements do we prioritise? Why?
Which elements are non-negotiable?
Settle on a final prioritisation of the elements of trustworthy data stewardship that you feel are most important within this relationship. There are no right answers. Different organisations will rank them differently based on things like the sensitivity of the data they steward, existing regulatory regimes, maturity of the sector, etc. (You will examine each element of trustworthy data stewardship within the next activity, so do not be overly concerned about the rankings – for example whether a specific element belongs at #5 or #6.)
How does your prioritisation of the elements for this relationship compare to the prioritisation for your entire organisation in Activity 1?
Before moving on to the next activity, try to imagine you are the other organisation in the relationship you are examining and rank the elements of trustworthy data stewardship according to what you expect is most important to them when they are interacting with you.
When they strive to demonstrate the trustworthiness of their organisation – and their data practices and/or the data they collect, manage, use and share – to you, what elements do they prioritise? Why do you think that is?
When they strive to assess the trustworthiness of your organisation, your data practices and/or the data you collect, manage, use and share, what elements do they prioritise? Why do you think that is?
Which elements are non-negotiable in their point of view?
How does your own prioritisation of the elements for this relationship compare to the one produced through this role-playing exercise?
