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PhD project within the Industrial Doctoral School at Umeå University
The project examines how organizations develop a sustainable data culture to enable responsible and effective AI use, while preserving sustainability goals and societal benefits. Its starting point is Vakin, Umeå’s publicly owned water and waste company; data quality is studied, how the work environment and organization affect the conditions for a data-driven culture. The aim is to map Vakin’s data cycle, identity opportunities, and obstacles for data-drivenness to understand how sustainable data cultures develop within the public sector. With a focus on human factors and leadership influence.
Industrial Doctoral School, 50 percent
Vakin, 50 percent
The research to be conducted within the project addresses the how both digitalization and data-driven change work are altering public operational governance, service delivery and efficiency development. How a municipal company can develop a sustainable data culture that enables good and effective use of AI, while retaining the company’s sustainability goals and socially beneficial values. The project has its focal point in Vakin- Umeå’s municipally owned water and waste company, which will contribute with a long-term research context.
The public sector hold complex responsibility and accountability measures towards efficiency improvements, as their efforts are intended to improve quality through sustainable change. The project focuses on how employees within Vakin work with data management, and how organizational structures affect the ability to create a data-driven culture where AI is utilized effectively in their operations. As AI continues to evolve, organizations are looking for answers on how their data can be used for algorithmic decision-making, data-driven operations, and business support.
The premise of this project is that the public sector must apply digitalization changes transparently, securely responsibly, and maintain citizen trust. The challenge for a municipal company like Vakin will be to navigate between new technology choices to utilize AIs potential for business development, while simultaneously protecting the organization’s sensitive, and sometimes security-protected data and information. The business is currently facing a crossroads, where questions about what is safe, economically sustainable, and scalable for the entire company are in focus, and what the path forward means for employees in the form of AI-strategy, policy and guidelines for how AI can or should be used in the business.
Vakins data processing will be mapped, everything from data generation to dispersal, where organizational structures and communication channels are examined. The mapping of the data life cycle aims to clarify the interaction between the formal and informal structures within the organization. Since the public sector is concerned with balancing efficiency and social responsibility, there is often a culture of caution regarding data. Pilot projects are often very successful, but rarely accompany a full-scale organizational change. As a result, technical investments alone are not enough for long-term successful organizational changes. Sustainable data cultures here is about several aspects of sustainability- from the sustainability goals that Vakin formulated for its own company, to a sustainable work environment, and the quality of data management in the company. The hope is that knowledge about how a sustainable data culture can be developed in turn can contribute to business development in terms of both the introduction of AI, and the development of the AI policy and the overall AI strategy for the business.
Within research, the research area for data cultures has increased due to the application of generative AI within organizations, as well as regarding algorithmic decision-making, and also regarding the importance of data and data cultures. Despite the growing interest, there is currently a gap with a lack of research at its intersections- which connects a focus on sustainable data with how generative AI can be used in businesses.
As a result, the PhD project aims to further develop the concept of data culture by examining how this is reflected in a municipal context. Hence, a need to examine the conditions characterized by political governance, work roles and municipal responsibility- whether these organizational structures enable or hinder a sustainable data culture.
