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Paper Number
2237
Paper Type
short
Description
There is an increased interest in data infrastructures that accompany digitalization in the public sector where such infrastructures support serving the next generation of citizens better. Literature on information infrastructures provides a robust foundation, but so far theorization of what differentiates data infrastructures has been limited. We conducted a case study of a data infrastructure to share gender identity data in U.S. higher education. By tracing how a university navigated around the cultural, structural, content and material layers of the data infrastructure to share student gender identity data with the state and federal government, we uncover how data were flowing through the infrastructure. Because of differences in the layers of the data infrastructure between institutions, the flow was subject to blockages, bends and bottlenecks. Our findings demonstrate that the nature of data brings challenges in developing data infrastructures across four levels with implications for theory and practice.
Recommended Citation
Stelmaszak, Marta and Wagner, Erica, "What Flows Through Data Infrastructures: Blockages, Bends, and Bottlenecks in Sharing Gender Data Between Institutions" (2022). ICIS 2022 Proceedings. 9.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/icis2022/digit_nxt_gen/digit_nxt_gen/9
What Flows Through Data Infrastructures: Blockages, Bends, and Bottlenecks in Sharing Gender Data Between Institutions
There is an increased interest in data infrastructures that accompany digitalization in the public sector where such infrastructures support serving the next generation of citizens better. Literature on information infrastructures provides a robust foundation, but so far theorization of what differentiates data infrastructures has been limited. We conducted a case study of a data infrastructure to share gender identity data in U.S. higher education. By tracing how a university navigated around the cultural, structural, content and material layers of the data infrastructure to share student gender identity data with the state and federal government, we uncover how data were flowing through the infrastructure. Because of differences in the layers of the data infrastructure between institutions, the flow was subject to blockages, bends and bottlenecks. Our findings demonstrate that the nature of data brings challenges in developing data infrastructures across four levels with implications for theory and practice.
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01-Digitization