Data work in a knowledge-broker organisation: How cross-organisational data maintenance shapes human data interactions

Abstract

The term Human-Data Interaction (HDI) conceptualizes the growing importance of understanding how people need and desire to use and interact with data. Previous HDI cases have mainly focused on the interface between personal health data and the healthcare sector. This paper argues that it is relevant to consider HDI at an organisational level and examines how HDI can look in such a context, where data and data maintenance are core assets and activities. We report on initial findings of a study of a knowledge-broker organisation, where we follow how data are produced, shared, and maintained in a cross-organisational context. We discuss similarities and differences of HDI around personal health data and cross-organisational data maintenance. We propose to extend the notion of HDI to include the complexity of cross-organisational data work.