Data Stewards Academy

Deep Dive Series

Data Stewardship at a Time of AI

Five-weeks of deep dives on how to make data AI-Ready. One live 90 min session each week, led by faculty from academia and practice.

Register

About the Series

Data Stewards Academy, a collaboration between The Data Tank and The GovLab, brings together faculty from academia and practice for five-weeks of deep dives into what it takes to make data AI-ready. The program treats AI-readiness not as a combined governance, standards, infrastructure, institutional, and implementation challenge. For data stewards, this matters because AI is changing the stewardship function itself: stewards are increasingly expected to determine whether it is fit for AI use, document its provenance and limitations, establish conditions for responsible access and re-use, and connect organizational data to emerging AI systems without sacrificing trust, accountability, or public value.

Format

Every session follows the same format. Two guest-faculty members will be deliver a lecture for 35 minutes each. The open Q&A session happening at the end will be moderated by Stefaan Verhulst. See the format below: 

Each session 1 h 30 min
  1. 0:00Welcome and Framing5 min
  2. 0:05Faculty Deep Dive35 min
  3. 0:40Faculty 2 Deep Dive35 min
  4. 1:15Open Q&A10 min
  5. 1:25Synthesis5 min

The Programme

Module Breakdown

  1. Module 01Week 1 · March 10, 2027

    What Does “AI-Ready” Actually Mean? | AI-Ready & Responsible Data Management

    • Data stewardship as a strategic function in the AI era
    • The FAIR principles and their adoption
    • FAIR-R principles and the Ready-for-AI component
    • Ready-for-AI data preparation use-cases
  2. Module 02Week 2 · March 17, 2027

    Module 2: From FAIR to AI-Ready | AI-Ready & Open Science

    • Defining demand for data stewardship
    • The problem definition tool
    • Questions science and question literacy
    • The 100 Questions Initiative use-case
  3. Module 03Week 3 · March 24, 2027

    Module 3: Connecting Data to AI | AI-Ready Infrastructure: MCP & Knowledge Graphs

    • Knowledge representations: key-value, resource-based, document-based, property graphs, triple-based
    • Linked data and the RDF data model
    • Linked data and its serializations
    • Building a linked-data vocabulary with RDF
  4. Module 04Week 4 · March 31, 2027

    Module 4: Making Public Data AI-Ready | AI-Ready, Official Statistics & Open Data

    • Participatory stewardship
    • The Civic Data Cooperative in Liverpool
    • The Community Charter on Data and AI
  5. Module 05Week 5 · April 7, 2027

    Module 5: AI-Ready Data in Action | Use Cases

    • From digital transformation to AI: are governments ready?
    • Lessons learned from OECD member countries
    • AI in government use-case

Learning Objectives

  • Position data stewardship as a strategic function in the AI era

  • Apply the FAIR principles and extend them to FAIR-R and Ready-for-AI data

  • Define demand for data through questions science and problem definition

  • Use linked data and knowledge graphs to connect and govern knowledge

  • Design participatory and community-led models of data stewardship

  • Assess what governments should prioritise in the age of AI

Expected Outcomes

  • 1

    Access to all course material after completion

  • 2

    Access to free webinars — Trends to Watch

  • 3

    Certificate of participation signed by The GovLab and The Data Tank

  • 4

    Live access to faculty across five sessions

Who Should Apply?

The series is planned for a European audience, and other global audiences are welcome wherever the time zone works.

It is built for people who hold or are building a data stewardship function: practitioners inside public institutions, researchers, civil-society data leads, and policy professionals working on data governance and AI readiness.

Live sessionsWednesdays 10 Mar – 7 Apr 2027
  1. Module 1What Does “AI-Ready” Actually Mean? 2:30–4:00 pm CET
  2. Module 2From FAIR to AI-Ready 4:30–6:00 pm CET
  3. Module 3Connecting Data to AI 2:30–4:00 pm CET
  4. Module 4Making Public Data AI-Ready 2:30–4:00 pm CET
  5. Module 5AI-Ready Data in Action 2:30–4:00 pm CET

Faculty

Reserve Your Spot

€1,000 (incl. VAT)

  • Wednesdays, 2:30–4:00 pm CET (90-minute sessions)

Select up to 3.

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