During the EASST/4S conference in Amsterdam in 2024, we discussed data supply chains in the public sector. In our presentation, we showed that transport data does not simply flow, but moves along sometimes bumpy paths through a network of actors and exchange relationships. While city administrations, companies and citizens generate, use and share data, these processes do not always run smoothly. Using two case studies, we discussed how classic market mechanisms mix with informal exchange practices and what tensions this creates for urban transport policy.
Lighting Bumpy Data Roads: Investigating Heterogeneous Data Supply Chains in Urban Traffic Transformation
Panel
Demystifying Data Supply Chains: Perspectives from Markets of Data Sourcing, Production, and Brokerage
Authors
Catharina Dietrich and Janine Hagemeister
Abstract
Urban traffic infrastructure matters for a variety of actors: the municipal administration, private enterprises, and most numerously, citizens. Just as manifold as the relations between these actors are the traffic data they generate for different purposes at different locations, and the evolving supply chains.
This presentation is based on an ongoing research project on data politics in the proclaimed “sustainable traffic transformation” (Verkehrswende) of Frankfurt, Germany. We use the concept of data journeys (Bates et al. 2016) to trace how data is produced, processed, and shared within the complex networks at play.
Many actors obtain ambivalent roles in this entanglement: Citizens are simultaneously customers, objects of datafication, data consumers, or sometimes even data manufacturers, while the municipality acts as both a key data provider and a customer. In addition, relevant legal regulations and political interests contribute to a mixture of commodification logics and practices. As a public actor within private markets, the municipality finds itself in various double binds.
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We will illustrate the diversity of data trading practices on two examples. While the data purchases involved in the development of a new municipal traffic model follow traditional logics of marketization, other constellations elude those. In the case of pedestrian counters that were installed in Frankfurt, the agreements are based on an exchange of various services and mutual data provision instead of monetary payments. Attending to those diverse forms of bargain allows us to investigate the multifaceted practices of data valorization involved along different stages of the supply chains.