
Empowering Digital Citizens
ONLINE CONSUMERS DESERVE CONTROL OVER THEIR OWN PERSONAL DATAWe are an international group of researchers, policy experts, civil society advocates, Internet technical and security experts and business people dedicated to ensuring that the rules of the digital economy are more directed to the broad interests of humans, not just businesses and governments.
A brief video overview of how online users’ data is being bought and sold in a shadowy marketplace where users have no voice, nor ability to profit. And, an exploration of the fix.
Human-centred Digital Governance
Governance That Serves People
A key difference between GIDE and other efforts seeking to influence Digital Governance is our Unit of Measure. Most take an institutional approach. We focus on the outcome on humans.
Many researchers and competition bodies take market participants as their main unit of attention. Other non-profits take the power relationship between nation states as their focus. Most economists focus on issues of inefficiency and inequality within a market framework. Even consumer organisations take the material benefits to consumers as their unit of analysis. But our focus is on the human – not just consumers but also those who are still not users.
Importantly we see humans as more than mere units of economic consumption and production. The last two centuries of capitalism have taught us that social solidarity, personal agency, environmental sustainability, as well as material gain, are each important and separate contributors to human flourishing.
Human-centred Digital Governance

The Global Initiative members
Our members represent 24 countries & cover the following areas of data governance:
Classification Models for Personal Data
Technical Digital Architecture
Personal Data Business Systems
Consumer Protection
Management of the Data Commons
Containment of Pandemics
Impacts on Innovation in the Economy
Digital Trade
Competition Policy
Taxation of Digital Goods & Services
Geopolitics of Technology
Privacy
Impact on Emerging Concepts of Digital Citizenship
Hate Speech & Misinformation
Impact on Human Rights
Cybersecurity
Means to Enable Collective Representation of Personal Data Interests



