‘Unsolvable within existing regimes’: Using a systems thinking approach to co-design for data governance in cities

Status: Completed in 2025

Collaborators: Dr. Misita Anwar, Prof. Lyn Bartram, Dr. Darren Sharp, Dr. Sarah Goodwin

Despite people’s significant role in generating urban data, their involvement in data governance (DG) remains limited. Meaningful participation in DG is difficult because (1) data governance is a complex system shaped by entrenched structural dynamics, and (2) views on what a people-centred DG model should look like are heterogeneous, spanning varied normative visions, goals, and expectations of public involvement. These challenges motivated us to explore how to enable people’s participation in DG amid complexity.

In this work, we propose a collaborative systems thinking approach as a scoping tool for co-design. The approach enables researchers and designers to work with participants to build a shared understanding of the systemic structures underpinning DG in cities, and to develop prototypes and interventions informed by those structures. Using causal loop diagrams, we facilitated the development of a conceptual model of DG. Participants, representing diverse perspectives, created individual causal loop diagrams that were merged into a collaborative causal loop diagram (C-CLD). We used the C-CLD in an interactive workshop to identify leverage points and develop targeted solutions. Our findings show how C-CLDs can accommodate multiplicity, foster productive contestation (agonism), and support participants in interrogating the political dimensions of DG and the systemic structures that sustain it. Moreover, the process revealed the complexity of DG in the city, as perceived by the collective of participants, resulting in three key submodules that highlight tensions between citizen sensitisation to data collection, the private sector’s role in meeting citizens’ needs, and the constraints and struggles faced by local governments. Overall, this work builds on and extends HCI research engaging with systems thinking ontologies, contributing to an HCI thatincludes the political, moves beyond solutionism, and advances social justice-oriented approaches.

The work was published and presented at the ACM SIGCAS/SIGCHI Conference on Computing and Sustainable Societies 2025.