Back in 2020, together with Ana Brandusescu and Michael Cañares, we wrote a piece about the politics behind the design of open data standards. We were asking who gets to participate in these processes, whose expertise counts, and what happens when standards are implemented across very different legal, institutional and technical contexts.
I remembered that piece while reading Begoña Glez. Otero and Stefaan Verhulst, PhD’s new paper, “From Open Standards to Openly GovernedStandards-Setting Organizations as Stewards of Openness amid Platformization and Digital Sovereignty“. I was particularly interested in their idea of “governable openness.”
An open standard is not enough. We also need to look at the institutions that produce and maintain it, how decisions are made, who participates, and what happens in implementation.
This brought me back to a question we asked in 2020: whose context are we assuming when we design a global standard?
Countries and institutions have very different legal frameworks, resources, capacities and existing systems. That question seems even more important now, as standards increasingly shape AI and digital public infrastructure and, as Begoña and Stefaan argue, take on functions that are increasingly regulatory.
Really enjoyed reading the paper and revisiting some of these questions six years later.
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