This report draws on a desk review of existing literature, a series of interviews with key experts, and the experience of the author. In it, we analyse the current situation, outline the risks that are involved in working in this new space, and present the members of the CCD Network with potential opportunities to engage with the issue of data portability as constructively as possible.

In the last two to three years there has been major progress amongst the larger humanitarian actors in the development of policy guidance relating to data, particularly around data protection and the emerging approach of data responsibility. This guidance has made greater alignment at the global level possible around key issues such as data protection (at least between a certain set of actors).

Meanwhile, outside the humanitarian sector, new socio-technological developments have emerged which create the possibility of fundamentally new architectures that might address long-standing coordination problems, specifically the challenge of data portability. In this report, we refer mainly to Data Stewardship and Self-Sovereign Identity as examples of these developments, but these two do not exhaust the design landscape.