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Sector Transgressions

The technology firms are using the pandemic of COVID-19 to expand their reach, change their business strategies and capture new public functions and market positions around the world. We aim to relate the long-running investments in computer infrastructures with recent developments in business strategies to understand the implications of the rapid expansion of technology firms globally.

Sector Transgressions in East Africa: Synthesizing insights from the region

Are sector transgressions by technology firms occurring in all regions of the world, or does these dynamics and effects differ by region?…

Digital disruption or crisis capitalism? Technology, power and the pandemic

Click here to download the full report This report – commissioned by the European AI Fund as part of its research programme on Tech and COVID – addresses a critical question: how have technology firms used the pandemic to expand their reach, change their business strategies and capture new public functions and market positions in Europe?…

Transgression through a Sector — On COVID-19, power and technology

Essay #12 in the Data and Pandemic Politics series on data justice and COVID-19 Editors’ Note: Vidushi Marda argues that rather than looking for moments of sectoral transgression by technology firms as a strategy for orienting regulation and democratic checks and balances, we should pay attention to the ways in which firms actively create public-sector demand, conceptualising and making new spaces in relation to essential services that can only be filled by technological innovation.…

The Crutch of Big Tech — Thinking critically about sphere transitions in Malaysia and their implications for national policy

Essay #11 in the Data and Pandemic Politics series on data justice and COVID-19 Editors’ Note: This post by Anisha Nadkarni looks at government decision-making power in relation to pandemic technologies, and how the role of government in determining what kind of power the private sector should possess in the public sphere is diminished by the pandemic emergency.…

Furthering Private Sector Accountability for Public Service Delivery in India

Essay #10 in the Data and Pandemic Politics series on data justice and COVID-19 Editors’ Note: Arindrajit Basu, Aman Nair and Pallavi Bedi explore the ways in which regulation facilitates the capture of public service provision by the private sector in India through what they term ‘transitional arrangements’, where commercial firms expand across sectors in ways that challenge regulators’ ability to scrutinise and check private power.…

The Unchecked Power of Indonesia’s Tech Giants

Essay #9 in the Data and Pandemic Politics series on data justice and COVID-19 Editors’ Note: In this post, Josia Paska Darmawan explores how ‘super-apps’—apps which connect users to multiple services and functions, often including public services—are being foregrounded by the pandemic.…

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About the project

Places and populations that were previously digitally invisible are now part of a ‘data revolution’ that is being hailed as a transformative tool for human and economic development. Yet this unprecedented expansion of the power to digitally monitor, sort, and intervene is not well connected to the idea of social justice, nor is there a clear concept of how broader access to the benefits of data technologies can be achieved without amplifying misrepresentation, discrimination, and power asymmetries.

We therefore need a new framework for data justice integrating data privacy, non-discrimination, and non-use of data technologies into the same framework as positive freedoms such as representation and access to data. This project will research the lived experience of data technologies in high- and low-income countries worldwide, seeking to understand people’s basic needs with regard to these technologies. We will also seek the perspectives of civil society organisations, technology companies, and policymakers.