Knight News Challenge: Data from Knight Foundation on Vimeo.

Danna Ingleton and Zara Rahman of the engine room share their thoughts on the question posed by the Knight News Challenge on Data: How might we make data work for individuals and communities? Winners of the challenge will share in $3 million. Apply at newschallenge.org by 5 p.m. ET Wednesday, Sept. 30.

We’ve seen among the community of tech for social good that attention is too often focused on the desire to collect more data, process more data, combine more data – all the data! No doubt that the data race we find ourselves in is fostering innovation and leading to unparalleled efficiencies. But we make a key—and potentially dangerous—assumption: that all this data can fit into our existing systems and ways of working.

Coming from the “responsible data” perspective, the question for this year’s Knight News Challenge on Data—how might we make data work for individuals and communities—is very relevant. Almost daily, we see evidence of a proliferation of projects collecting data in new and innovative ways, accompanied by new ways of accessing and processing data sets, and all too often, these projects are not taking responsible data practices into account.

We seem to be assuming that our foundational systems and institutions, which themselves were developed in very different contexts and situations, are still relevant. But what if they’re not? Thanks to the data deluge, we have a powerful tool and a great opportunity to challenge and change these foundations to better include individuals and communities in ways that were not possible in the past.

Inclusion and participation of the individuals many humanitarian and human rights initiatives are meant to support has often been questionable. Too often, we see inclusive intentions undermined by competing priorities. Urgency overtakes privacy. Consent isn’t genuinely addressed.

So perhaps now is the time to ask how we can use data—and all the technologies that help us collect it—to stem and redirect this tide, towards a more responsible way of using data. For data to reach its full potential in our societies, we need to think about more than digital security, trending infographics and using big data to prove individualized harms. We have vastly unexplored territories of using data to put the power of shaping social movements and advocacy back in the hands of the people for whom we all claim to work.

Arguably data—and the technologies we use to collect, process it and communicate it—has the potential to be the most powerful tool for social justice, human rights, development and humanitarian work. But for this to happen, we need to take a more inclusive approach to the way in which we use, manage and mobilize data. Shortcuts taken now will have negative effects in the future, and a way to mitigate this is to use responsible data practices from the very foundations of projects.

The potential is almost overwhelming, but the ideas that are coming in for this year’s Knight News Challenge about how to make data work for individuals and communities are inspiring to see. Yes, we have data—and lots of it—but for this to lead to positive social change, we need to focus on developing policies and projects that are strongly connected to the people actually reflected in the data.

Knight Foundation is collaborating on the Knight News Challenge on Data with Data & Society and Open Society Foundations. Apply and give feedback on other projects at newschallenge.org. The challenge closes at 5 p.m. ET Wednesday, Sept. 30. Winners will be announced in January 2016.