In today’s AI-driven world, the reuse of data beyond its original purpose is no longer exceptional - it is foundational. Data collected for one context is now routinely combined, shared, or repurposed for others. While these practices can create significant public value, many data reuse initiatives face persistent gaps in legitimacy.

Existing governance tools, often centered on individual, point-in-time consent, do not reflect the collective and evolving nature of secondary data use. They also provide limited ways for communities to influence decisions once data is shared, particularly as new risks, technologies, partners, or use cases emerge. Where consent is transactional and static, governing data reuse requires mechanisms that are relational and adaptive.

A social license for data re-use responds to this challenge by framing legitimacy as an ongoing relationship between data users and affected communities. It emphasizes the importance of clearly articulated expectations around purpose, acceptable uses, safeguards, oversight, and accountability, and of revisiting those expectations as circumstances change.

In April 2025, The GovLab, in collaboration with Agence Française de Développement (AFD), released Reimagining Data Governance for AI: Operationalizing a Social License for Data Reuse. That report introduced a community-centered framework for governing data reuse in the development and deployment of AI systems in low- and middle-income countries. It articulated a three-phase approach to establishing and maintaining a social license for data reuse:

1. Establish preferences and expectations through structured engagement

2. Document preferences and expectations so they translate into clear governance terms

3. Enforce and revisit expectations through oversight, review, and adaptation

To support this work in practice, The GovLab has now released Operationalizing a Social License for Data Re-Use: Questions to Signal and Capture Community Preferences and Expectations. This new facilitator’s guide is designed for people who convene and lead engagement around data reuse and need practical tools to support those conversations early.

The guide focuses on the first phase of operationalizing a social license: establishing community preferences and expectations. It provides a structured worksheet and facilitation guidance to help practitioners convene deliberative sessions that uncover priorities, acceptable uses, safeguards, red lines, and conditions for reuse as data is shared, combined, or scaled.

The worksheet is organized around six governance dimensions:

• Why data is reused

• What data is involved

• Who can access and steward it

• How reuse is governed

• When permissions should be reviewed or revoked

• Where data is stored and governed

It is intended for use in workshops, focus groups, assemblies, and other participatory settings.

The guide also supports facilitators in documenting disagreement, uncertainty, and non-negotiable boundaries. In some cases, engagement may indicate that reuse should pause or not proceed at all.

Policymakers, development agencies, researchers, and data stewards can use the guide to translate engagement into actionable governance inputs that inform agreements, safeguards, and oversight over time.

Click here to read the guide.

The guide is intended to be used alongside other resources developed by The GovLab and the Open Data Policy Lab, many of which are available through the Open Data Policy Lab Tools Library. Taken together, these tools support different stages of responsible data reuse - from identifying demand and structuring partnerships, to designing governance mechanisms, to establishing a business case for data re-use in the public interest..

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