PLUTO - Public Value Assessment Tool
Understanding and governing data use for the betterment of society has become increasingly important. Governments worldwide are formulating strategies to release 'high value' open data with the aim of benefiting the environment, economy, and society as a whole.
Solidarity-based data governance (data solidarity) helps to ensure that the benefits and costs of digital practices are borne collectively and fairly. Next to preventing harm, data solidarity foregrounds the public value that specific instances of data use create.
But what is the public value of data use? PLUTO is a tool for assessing the benefits and risks of specific instances of data use. The weighing of risks and benefits results in a score that indicates the public value of data use. PLUTO can be used by anyone wanting to assess how much public value the use of data for a specific purpose will likely generate. Representatives of companies or authorities can use it to learn how their data use could create more public value. Citizens who are considering sharing their data with companies or research organisations can use the tool to help them with this decision.
Please keep in mind that PLUTO is a research application that is still work in progress; it is meant to help people and organisations think about the public value of data use in a structured manner. It does not claim to give a precise and definitive score, and should not be used as the sole basis for any decision.
The tool asks 25 questions in four categories:
- Information about the data user
- Benefits of the data use
- Risks of the data use
- Institutional safeguards
You do not need to have access to proprietary or any other highly specialised information to use this tool - but it is helpful to know the basic conditions under which data is used, and by whom. If you are a citizen who is considering sharing your data with a company, charity, or any other organisation, and lack sufficient information to fill out this tool, we recommend that you contact the organisation that is asking for your data for more information.
You can find further details in our glossary and in our weighting appendix.
This tool was developed by Seliem El-Sayed, Barbara Prainsack, Connor Hogan, Torsten Möller, Bernhard Jordan, Laura Koesten, and Péter Ferenc Gyarmati within the project Digitize! Computational Social Science in digital and social transformation, funded by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research.
Please cite the tool as follows:
El-Sayed S, Prainsack B, Hogan C, Möller T, Ferenc Gyarmati P, Jordan B, Koesten L, Forgó N. 2023. PLUTO - Public Value Assessment Tool. University of Vienna, https://pluto.univie.ac.at/