Data Stewards Trends to Watch | December 2025 Session

2025 has been a busy, transformative year for data stewardship. We’ve seen new trends emerge, familiar themes evolve, and long-standing priorities gain fresh momentum. Across the globe, one message has come through loud and clear: the world needs more common-good–driven initiatives that place people and the planet at the heart.

To wrap up the year, our co-founder, Stefaan Verhulst, hosted the final edition for the year of our “Data Stewardship Trends to Watch” series for our growing alumni community, now 180+ strong and spanning the globe.

On December 3rd, Stefaan distilled the year’s most notable developments into the 10 S’s of 2025, spotlighting new research, field insights, and global discoveries across the following ten categories:

  • Simplification Narrative; 

  • Smart Data;

  • Scraping Concerns; 

  • Shifting Science; 

  • Sovereign vs Self-Determination; 

  • Scarcity Narratives; 

  • Sustainability; 

  • Social Responsiveness; 

  • Synthetic Worlds; 

  • Safety and Security. 

Check out a recording of the full conversation here. The following resources were discussed during the session:

Simplification Narrative

Digital Omnibus, Data Union Strategy, EU Business Wallets, The rise of simple, modular data governance templates (Data Safeguards, DPI Safeguards, AI transparency templates) 

Smart Data

UK Legislation, Smart Data Research, Social Data for Health 

Scraping Concerns 

Shifting Science

Sovereign vs Self-Determination

National DPIs (India, Ukraine, Africa AI Council) and sovereign AI infrastructure, AI-sovereign clouds, sovereign LLMs, and domestic compute strategies, and Eurostack

Scarcity Narratives

Data Winter

Sustainability

Environmental Sustainability: Carbon Cost of AI Training and Data Centers, Financial sustainability of open-source, public media, and civic data ecosystems. 

Social Responsiveness

From Open Data to Data Commons for AI

Synthetic Worlds

Explosion of synthetic datasets for health, mobility, labor, and training, Rise of simulated worlds (e.g., DeepMind’s Genie 3, Weather Lab AI), and Debate over synthetic data governance and its lifelong risk footprint. 

Safety and Security 

Security and Vulnerabilities

 

Interested to learn more about data stewardship trends? Sign up for the Data Stewards Network mailing at this link. Or contact datastewards@thegovlab.org to learn more.

Paulina Behluli headshot

Author

Paulina Behluli

Course Facilitator

Paulina is a Program Manager at the Data Tank in charge of the data stewardship program. She is a digital governance specialist, specifically, public sector innovation & transformation. At the Data Tank, she leads the Data Stewardship Program focusing on Data Stewards Bootcamps for senior executives across Europe. Paulina is also involved in fundraising and partnership building. In parallel, Paulina has supported in building the She Shapes AI initiative as a volunteer, and additionally served as an Expert Reviewer. She holds a Master’s Degree in Public Policy from the Hertie School in Berlin. Prior to joining The Data Tank, Ms Behluli has managed several projects at Open Data Kosovo - a Forbes 30 under 30 listed organization. She has led Kosovo’s membership in the Open Government Partnership leading a close collaboration with the Office of the Prime Minister. Ms Behluli has co-authored two reports measuring the openness and transparency of the Kosovo Parliament and the Office of the Prime Minister. She was also engaged in the Global Data Barometer study, where Open Data Kosovo acted as a regional hub responsible for monitoring data usage for public good in Kosovo and Albania. In Berlin, she worked for the Berlin Innovation Agency helping startups accelerate tech for social good. She also served as a student advisory board member at the Center for Digital Governance of the Hertie School for 2 consecutive academic years.

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