Full report

The Community Data Playbook is a compilation of case studies and strategies related to environmental data governance. It is the result of OEDP’s collaboration with three community partners that are collecting environmental data. In 2024, we conducted workshops to identify and co-design governance solutions, and from the partnerships, we developed “plays,” or modular strategies and opportunities that data stewards can use to employ better data governance.

Readers interested in explorations of organizations working through data governance and stewardship challenges and building processes and tools, see Section 1: Community Case Studies. This section includes a discussion of the environmental justice (EJ) concerns in each area, the data each partner collects, and their current governance and management systems. It also includes our workshop process and major takeaways from each case. The case studies are also documented in About the Case Studies.

Readers interested in data governance and stewardship templates, see our Appendix. Throughout our workshop process, we derived landscape-level takeaways and created resources that can be adapted and used by others collecting and using community environmental data. These resources can be found in About Tools and Templates.

Readers interested in relational and technical strategies to employ as a data steward or as an intermediary supporter, see Section 2: A Playbook to Advance Environmental Data Governance. In Section 2, we synthesize takeaways from our partnerships and our broader research, and link them to specific “plays,” or modular strategies and opportunities that data stewards can use to employ better data governance. These plays demonstrate how networked data streams can preserve important local values while enabling timely, relevant, and trustworthy decision-making—both by and with community members. Additionally, we provide support plays for intermediary organizations to work with community data stewards as they build social and technical infrastructure for their environmental data. The plays are also documented in About the Plays.

Readers interested in a deeper dive of this project’s conceptual underpinning and what we’ve learned, see Section 3: Assessing the Community Data Hubs Model. In this section, we discuss the assumptions that were affirmed or invalidated from our original Community Data Hubs (CDH) model, and provide opportunities to explore the efficacy of this model in the future. Ultimately, our hope with this playbook is that we provide ample space for learning and exploration of the current and future landscape of environmental data governance.