Original article here.
2025 marked another year of rapid acceleration in the data and AI landscape. Despite significant investment in AI and data infrastructure for the common good, data access gatekeeping and monetization efforts intensified. While initiatives supporting AI for the common good, such as the Current AI initiative launched at the AI Action Summit in Paris continued to emerge, the exponential growth of data and AI reshaped geopolitical relations and raised concerns about the diminishing influence of civil society.
In response to these developments, Europe advanced its regulatory agenda through initiatives such as the European Data Union Strategy and the AI Continent Action Plan. 2025 also marked the year the EU Data Act became fully applicable, establishing new rules for fair data access, portability, and use across sectors.
Against this backdrop, The Data Tank, in collaboration with The Governance Lab, continued to work towards a critical and often missing strategic role: navigating responsible data governance and access as foundational human infrastructure for AI development. We worked closely with civil society, private sector, and public sector organizations across Europe and beyond to ensure that access to data for responsible AI development remains a priority.
Building the Data Stewardship Foundational Skills
End of Data Stewardship Bootcamp in Turin
We started 2025 by ending a course that we successfully held in Turin, Italy. In January 2025, we held our virtual pitch sessions with bootcamp participants who presented their organizational data reuse strategies aimed at accelerating the common good. These pitch sessions were a final opportunity as such for the participants to meet with each other and bounce off ideas between them.
Data Stewardship Course in Switzerland
The Data Tank then joined forces with the Governance Data Lab, Swiss Data Alliance, Opendata.ch with support from Hasler Stiftung and hosted the first Data Stewards Intensive Course in Switzerland. The course was organized as a one-week intensive and took place in between two cities, Zürich and Bern. It brought together 21 participants across federal, cantonal, private sector, and civil society exploring relevant topics on data stewardship, decision intelligence, data spaces and collaboratives, and many more. Our updated data stewards canvas was the main toolkit that guided the course. The course was expert led (welcoming 14 incredible guest lecturers) and included 4 field visits to interesting institutions, including a public transport operator company owned by and located in the city of Zürich (VBZ), a prestigious local newspaper (NZZ), Federal Chancellery in Switzerland (Bundeskanzlei). We wrapped our five days with a special visit to the Hackdays in Bern event and a visit at the Bundesrat.
Data Stewardship Course in Maryland
Our partners at The Governance Lab then embarked on a journey to Annapolis, Maryland where they trained chief data officers across the state’s government in collaboration with the Maryland Department of Information Technology. This bootcamp aimed at strengthening responsible data use and re-use across Maryland. Participants used the course to develop a data reuse strategy for their department or agency.
Data Stewardship Course in Berlin | Second Edition
As part of our skills and training efforts, we ended the year with a very special bootcamp that took place in Berlin organized in collaboration with Bertelsmann Stiftung. This course was the second edition of this partnership and gathered 19 participants across civil society and social sector organizations in Germany and beyond. The bootcamp was organized as part of the Data Atlas for Civil Society initiative pioneered by our partners at the Bertelsmann Stiftung. It was made special by the community of alumni and partners that we have built, where a lot of participants from our first edition recommended the course to their colleagues who joined us. The course was organized as a one-month hybrid course taking place in-person and online. With 6 distinguished guest speakers (industry experts), the course tackled the use and re-use of data for the common good within the civil society landscape. For this course we paid a visit to Vodafone Institute for Society and Communications, City Lab Berlin, and Tactical Tech.
Strengthening the Data Stewardship Community
As we expanded our data stewardship skills development program, we further strengthened our existing network of more than 180 global data stewards. We held four virtual “Trends to Watch” sessions that provided a space for our alumni to meet and go over emerging data stewardship trends of 2025 delivered by our Co-founder Stefaan Verhulst. These sessions were organized exclusively for our alumni network and then made public for the wider audience. Working with a global community of data stewards is always exciting, as we hear views on data and AI that sometimes overlap, but at other times are quite different, depending on the part of the world they represent. What remains constant is the view that strategic and responsible data stewardship is needed for the landscape to continue to develop. Beyond the events, we also shared opportunities (funding and job opportunities) on a weekly basis to our alumni group.
Looking Ahead
As we enter a new year we already have a pipeline of bootcamps lined up, data stewardship community meetup and new programs that we will be launching. All of this will be shared via our brand new website dedicated to our data stewardship work solely. Our data stewardship journey has just begun, so stay tuned for future developments.
