How UNGA 80 Could Shift Power in the Data Economy

The global economy runs on data, yet those who generate it — individuals, communities, and entire societies — remain largely powerless over its use and excluded from its economic value. Many tech giants have built vast, multi-billion‐dollar businesses whose core revenue streams depend heavily on collecting, analyzing, and monetizing user data. However, alternative models that give people genuine control over their digital assets struggle to scale beyond promising pilots.

As the UN opens the 80th General Assembly this week and declares 2025 the International Year of Cooperatives, amid a new phase of AI development that demands higher-quality data, the moment for systemic change has arrived. The question is whether policy will seize it.

Two models have emerged from years of experimentation, with proven potential to challenge data extractivism at scale: data cooperatives that apply century-old cooperative principles to digital assets, and government-led digital infrastructure designed around a citizen data agency. Both exist today in operational form, from Indian agricultural cooperatives strengthening climate-resilient crop markets to Estonia's interoperable X-Road system that puts citizens in control of their data across government services. Yet, without coordinated policy intervention, these alternatives will likely remain niche experiments while extractive platforms continue to dominate globally.

Building on these lessons and use cases, the Aapti Institute, Data2X, Data Privacy Brasil, the Decentralization Research Center, the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data, the Global Solutions Initiative, the Project Liberty Institute and 1014 convened an ITU-UNDP official UNGA affiliated session that brought together organizations and policymakers from the Global North and South, both builders and rule-makers, to unpack the regulatory, financial, and cultural pathways needed to scale data cooperatives and citizen-centered digital infrastructure.

Here are the key takeaways from the discussion:

Proven models awaiting legal frameworks

Data cooperatives represent community-owned enterprises where members pool their data and collectively govern its use. Unlike platform capitalism's extraction model, cooperatives allow members to vote on governance rules, decide which uses to permit, and share the economic benefits when value is generated. The model has already shown real-world success across sectors.

In India, farmers are leveraging data cooperatives to strengthen markets for indigenous, climate-resilient crops, improve agricultural planning, and build more robust financial institutions. European medical cooperatives enable patients to contribute health data for research while maintaining protections against misuse. These are not theoretical constructs; they are operating businesses with measurable impact.

AI development raises the stakes. As leading AI systems exhaust easily accessible web data, the demand for high-quality, carefully curated datasets is intensifying. Cooperatives offer strong incentives: contributors improve data quality because they directly benefit from the cooperative’s sustainability. This alignment could help scale better AI models while distributing value more equitably.

However, data cooperatives face a fundamental constraint: legal frameworks designed for physical assets do not easily accommodate digital ones. Traditional cooperative law enabled millions to benefit from collective ownership of tangible resources. Data cooperatives need similar legal clarity to operate at scale, covering everything from data ownership rights to profit-sharing mechanisms for digital assets.

Beyond reactive regulation

While governments initially drove the creation of the internet, they have since taken a backseat as corporations have shaped the direction of the digital economy. Today, a few tech companies control nearly two-thirds of global cloud infrastructure. Public services increasingly depend on private infrastructure, creating vulnerabilities and misaligned incentives.

Digital infrastructures for data agency, encompassing advanced identification systems, interoperable data architectures, and next-generation protocols, offer an alternative approach. Estonia's X-Road system demonstrates how governments can build infrastructure that prioritizes citizen control and data sovereignty. Citizens decide which services can access their data, maintain audit trails of all access, and retain ultimate control over their digital identity across government interactions.

This is not merely about privacy protection, it is about embedding transparency, accountability, and data agency as foundational principles rather than regulatory afterthoughts. As governments increasingly rely on AI systems for public services, building trustworthy infrastructure becomes a necessity, not a luxury.

Yet most governments lack the technical capacity and institutional knowledge to build such systems independently. The expertise remains concentrated in private tech companies, creating a dependency cycle that reinforces existing power structures.

From recognition to enabling action

Existing frameworks acknowledge the problems but fall short of enabling solutions. National privacy laws, G7 and G20 communiqués, and the UN Global Digital Compact all recognize the risks associated with concentrated digital power. However, this recognition has not yet translated into meaningful support mechanisms.

Cooperative law remains unprepared for digital assets. Regulatory sandboxes for experimental governance models are rare. Public funding for alternative digital infrastructure is limited compared to private sector investment in extractive technologies. The result is that extractive models dominate by default while alternatives struggle to reach critical mass.

Shifting this balance requires treating fair data governance as core economic policy, not a peripheral concern. Currently, outdated legal structures leave builders in uncertain legal territory. Without modernizing cooperative law to account for digital assets, entrepreneurs and communities will struggle to build cooperative alternatives. And without dedicated funding streams for building data agency into public services, the technology gap between public and private digital infrastructure will only widen. These steps would need to go beyond cybersecurity to encompass user control, transparency, and interoperability as design requirements.

In order to succeed, alternative models need access to patient capital and revenue models that can compete with advertising-driven platforms. This might include public procurement preferences, cooperative development funds, or new forms of social impact investment. And while the European Union engages in the bloc-wide Digital Decade Policy Programme 2030, most national programs risk remaining isolated silos without mechanisms for international coordination. Standards for data interoperability, cooperative governance, and digital rights all require multilateral development.

The implementation challenge

The window for action is narrowing. As AI systems become more sophisticated and data more valuable, the incentives for maintaining extractive models intensify. Platform companies are rapidly expanding into new sectors, including healthcare, education, and public services, where data concentration could have profound social implications.

Yet momentum is building. Civil society organizations have laid the foundations for a sustainable change in the digital economy by demanding digital services that provide genuine agency over their data and economic participation in value creation, not just privacy protection. Technologists have proven these alternatives can work. Policymakers increasingly recognize that reactive regulation is not sufficient when market failures are embedded in system design.

A great number of projects worldwide are building pieces of cooperative and citizen-centered digital infrastructure. Coordination mechanisms could allow this energy to be harnessed, rather than dispersed across incompatible systems. If policymakers enforce frameworks for consolidating and scaling successful experiments, these projects will be able to compete.

These movements toward scale will also allow alternative models to harness network effects as more and more people use their services. Policies that help them reach critical mass, potentially through public procurement, interoperability requirements, or user data portability rights, can help them take advantage of these effects.

Finally, many alternative models depend on grant funding, which does not provide long-term sustainability. Revenue models and investment structures that can compete with venture capital-backed platforms designed for exponential growth and market capture could allow more models aligned with the public good to prosper.

Closing the implementation gap

These models have proven successful for over a century in traditional sectors. The foundation exists, the technology is ready, and global recognition of the problem is unprecedented. What remains is translating awareness into sustained political will and collective action.

The cooperative movement succeeded historically because it combined grassroots organizing with enabling policy. Credit unions, agricultural cooperatives, and worker-owned enterprises required legal frameworks that recognized their distinct governance models and economic structures. Data cooperatives and citizen-centered digital infrastructure need similar institutional support

The UN's designation of 2025 as the International Year of Cooperatives provides a platform to align legal frameworks and financial mechanisms with cooperative approaches to data governance. This moment of international attention will not last indefinitely. The choice is between scaling alternatives that distribute voice, choice, and stake broadly, or allowing extractive models to deepen their control over the digital infrastructure that increasingly mediates human interaction and economic activity.

The technology and models exist. The policy frameworks are understood. The question is whether there will be a collective will to implement them before the window closes.

Disclaimer: The authors were involved in organizing the opening session of the Digital@UNGA UNDP-ITU program on the sidelines of the 80th United Nations General Assembly.