Ruth Duerr, 27Jul 2023: Operationalizing the CARE Principles in repositories

Datasets, from the point of collection to analysis, storage, curation, and dissemination carry cultural and political context. Historically data repositories have taken their guidance and policies as a combination of mandates from their funding agencies and the needs of their user communities, typically universities, agencies and researchers. Consequently repository practices have rarely taken into consideration the needs of other communities such as the Indigenous peoples on whose lands data are often acquired.

In recent years, a number of global efforts have worked to improve the ethical conduct of research as well as the ethical treatment of data by the repositories that hold and disseminate it. One of these efforts, initiated by the Global Indigenous Data Alliance (GIDA), established the CARE principles of Indigenous Data Governance (Collective Benefit, Authority to Control, Responsibility, and Ethics) with intent of ensuring community benefit and control over Indigenous data.

In order to support these new Principles, repositories need to update the services they provide. The question is how? Operationalizing principles into ongoing repository activities is generally a fraught process. In this talk I will describe the work, arising from many of the repositories within the Earth Science Information Partners organization in conjunction with members of GIDA, to define and prioritize the set of activities repositories can take to become CARE Principles compliant in the hopes that this will help implementation in repositories globally.