Blog Post
Data Stewards Trends to Watch: October 2025 Session
Posted on 6th of October 2025 by Andrew Zahuranec, Paulina Behluli
Data is here to stay, and so is AI. We live in a world where datafication and the hype around AI continues to exponentially grow. Our responsibility as common-good driven organizations is to continue work towards enabling responsible, systematic, and sustainable data governance mechanisms; something we refer to as data stewardship. As our data stewards community continues to grow, our engagement “Data Stewardship Trends to Watch” series remains constant. On a bi-monthly basis, Stefaan Verhulst (Co-founder of The GovLab and The Data Tank) goes over emerging trends in data stewardship.
On October 1st, Stefaan led a session that discussed a variety of topics including:
New developments on data intermediaries and non-traditional datasets
People-led data innovations
The use of data and technology for peace
Emerging uses of technology
Changes in policy at the national, supranational, and international level.
Check out a recording of the full conversation here. The following resources were discussed during the session:
Data Developments
People-Led Data Initiatives
An effort to use a voice data commons for humanitarian response in Malawi
A proposal for rethinking official statistics for the 21st century
An effort to launch a decentralized, artist-owned data trust
Data for Peace and Tech
Emerging Tech Developments
The world’s first national AI agent for government service delivery
The ethical challenges presented by “Diella”, Albania’s AI minister
Policy Developments
A UN resolution on the establishment of an independent international panel on AI governance
Terms of reference for the independent international panel on AI governance
Reflections ahead of the UN’s Global Dialogue on AI Governance
An analysis of the B2G data-sharing mechanism in the EU Data Act
Interested to learn more about data stewardship trends? Sign up for the Data Stewards Network mailing at this link. Or contact [email protected] to learn more.