Governing Data: Relationships, Trust & Ethics in Leveraging Data & Technology in Service of Humanitarian Health Delivery

Abstract Across the humanitarian sector, “data”permeate and inform responses to violence, disaster, and health-related crises. Delivering health care in humanitarian emergencies or conflict contexts requires many types of data: numbers and narratives about patients, staff, disease, treatment, and services. Multiple demands drive data collection at various levels, too often resulting in a mismatch between the tenets of data minimization (collect only what you need) and usage (use all you collect). Donors mandate specific data collection via both official reporting and ad hoc, informal requests, and humanitarians share data with other humanitarians and with donors. In this essay, I examine the specific issue of sharing data between and among humanitarians and donor governments. I pay particular attention to governance and the often-overlooked relational dimension of data, their implications for trust, as well as the ethical questions that arise in light of existing debates about localization and decolonizing the humanitarian sector.