Taking Digital Responsibility for Data: Toward a Governance Model for User-Generated Data

As firms increasingly rely on user-generated data (UGD) to drive decision-making, questions of digital responsibility have become central to contemporary data governance. This article develops a governance model for UGD that integrates the ecosystem view with three complementary dimensions—object, authority, and subject—to clarify what is governed, who holds governing power, and who is affected. This model captures the distributed and relational nature of governance across interconnected actors and infrastructures. While the model is designed to be broadly applicable, we illustrate how governance responsibilities shift between different phases in the lifecycle of UGD, such as its initial capture and subsequent use. By linking these lifecycle moments to the roles and relationships within the ecosystem, we highlight how technical, organizational, and stakeholder considerations converge in practice. The model emphasizes transparency, contextual integrity, and distributed accountability as guiding principles for responsible data management, offering actionable guidance for managers and policymakers navigating the tension between data-driven innovation and digital responsibility.