Data Privacy Week 2026

What if you could create one account, just one, that you could use to share proof of your identity with every research system you use?  

What if that proof did not release any of your private information, but just a “yes” statement that you are who you say you are?

And, what if the platform offering these accounts was organized as a co-operative which you as a user-member govern?  And have a say in the privacy policies?

Wouldn’t that be awesome?

This is VeriMe’s first International Data Week (#DPW26).  As I’ve been taking a look at themes and campaigns for participating organizations, I see a lot about managing data sharing preferences.  As well as exhortations for companies to understand why it is important that they respect their users’ data.

We’ve been trying to bring these two pieces together, so that users are part of how interfaces are designed, making decisions about how – and what – data are collected.  As well as how those data are shared. We take the position that people who use digital platforms should be an integral part of how those platforms are built and governed.  

But that also means we need to figure out how to make this work in practice.  Designing governance for a platform that can have potentially millions of users, anywhere in the world, involves a lot more than enticing images and engaging text.   

We’ve started with the co-operative model.  On a call last week, a lawyer who specializes in setting up companies said that more and more of the entrepreneurs he works with are starting to ask about cooperative structures for digital platforms.  And then he called co-ops “weird”.  And I laughed.

Weird, is defined as odd, unusual, unsettling, strange or extraordinary character, very strange and unusual, unexpected, not natural, bizarre.  

Co-ops are only weird because they are uncommon.  They challenge assumptions about corporate governance, ownership, and revenue distributions. 

In the research infrastructure space, folks have defaulted to two states: non-profit organizations to signal community-driven, or for-profit corporations to raise funds and build equity.  Co-ops are a middle way that more directly engage community through direct involvement in governance and priority setting.  Co-ops offer a model for truly open research infrastructure.

But, yes, they are uncommon in the research ecosystem.  We’d like to change that. There is no cookie cutter approach – and that is part of the beauty of org design, of which legal structure is only one component.  How better to demystify co-ops than by sharing our experiences — articles we’ve read, other orgs we look to for inspiration, internal questions we’ve struggled with.  You can access our governance documents on our website. And, over the next few months, we’ll be running a series of posts about our co-op journey.

We invite you to send in your questions – as well as ideas and suggestions for other organizations to learn more about.  You can reach us at info@verime.coop.