Building Trust Before Technology: Designing Data Sharing Programs for Climate Action

In the face of rising seas, more intense floods, shifting coastlines, and growing health risks, countries on the frontlines of climate change are searching for better tools and smarter systems to guide their responses. While advancements in technology—from satellite imagery to cloud platforms and AI—are expanding what’s possible, these tools can only deliver value when built on strong foundations of governance, institutional capacity, and trusted mechanisms for data sharing.

At D4DInsights, we’ve spent the past year working alongside governments in climate-vulnerable contexts to design national programs that enable shared use of climate-relevant data. These efforts were grounded in a simple but often overlooked principle: data sharing is not primarily a technical challenge—it’s a human, institutional, and political one.

Our work has focused on building the foundations of data sharing platforms that do more than just move bytes across systems. These platforms are meant to strengthen governance, build institutional capacity, support climate adaptation, and foster collaboration across ministries and sectors.

Here’s how we approached it—and what we’ve learned.

Listening First: Why Stakeholder Engagement Matters

Too often, digital initiatives are designed in isolation, with limited input from those who actually manage and use data daily. We flipped the script. Before drafting any architecture diagrams or technical requirements, we began with deep, sustained stakeholder engagement.

Through structured consultations, workshops, and one-on-one interviews, we brought together more than two dozen government agencies across two pilot countries (The Maldives and Sierra Leone). Ministries responsible for climate change, ICT, statistics, fisheries, health, agriculture, and more joined the conversation. In these sessions, we didn’t just talk about data formats or APIs—we asked real questions:

• What are the most urgent climate decisions your agency needs to make?

• Where does your data sit today? Who controls it?

• What would make you more willing to share data with others?

• What are the real political or institutional barriers to change?

These conversations helped identify not only technical pain points, but also trust gaps, governance issues, and opportunities for institutional alignment. Perhaps most importantly, they helped cultivate the buy-in and relationships needed to carry this work forward.

Participating stakeholders from the Government of the Maldives.

Participating stakeholders from the Government of Sierra Leone

Diagnosing Readiness: A Framework with Teeth

Next, we developed and deployed a diagnostic tool to assess readiness for data sharing at both the agency and national level. Built around six pillars—governance, data availability, institutional capacity, digital infrastructure, tools and technology, and stakeholder engagement—the tool provided a structured, web-based assessment that each participating agency could complete independently.

Home page of the data sharing readiness diagnostic tool

Each category was weighted to reflect its importance, with governance, data availability, and institutional capacity prioritized over purely technical elements. Agencies received clear recommendations and visual summaries they could use to advocate for support, while governments received a national readiness score that helped prioritize activities for developing a national data sharing program as articulated through a roadmap for each country.

Agency level results page indicating overall score, scores across the six categories, and recommendations per the given results. The report can be downloaded as a PDF with customized logos for each agency.

The tool didn’t just generate numbers—it created conversations. Agencies appreciated the chance to reflect on their own practices and needs. They gained insights into how their peers were operating, and how they could work together more effectively. In several cases, the tool also helped surface hidden data assets and unrecognized institutional strengths.

Designing Roadmaps That Work in the Real World

With diagnostic results in hand and stakeholder insights in mind, we co-designed country-specific roadmaps for implementation. These weren’t tech specs—they were strategic, phased plans to operationalize a national data sharing program.

Each roadmap was built around four pillars:

1. Platform Development – including infrastructure, standards, and technical design.

2. Governance and Policy – developing roles, responsibilities, agreements, and legal frameworks.

3. Capacity Development – tailored training, institutional support, and human resource planning.

4. Stakeholder Engagement – ongoing outreach, coordination, and trust-building.

Critically, each roadmap recommended starting with one or two priority use cases—specific, high-impact problems where data sharing could drive tangible climate outcomes. In the Maldives, for instance, use cases included coral reef monitoring, coastline change, and unlocking environmental impact assessment data. In Sierra Leone, use cases focused on early warning systems, water resource planning, and food security.

These early use cases serve as proof points: demonstrating value, fostering collaboration, and building confidence in the system before scaling up.

The Real Work Is in the Enabling Environment

What we’ve learned—repeatedly—is that technology is never the bottleneck. Cloud storage can be procured. APIs can be built. What’s harder is aligning incentives, clarifying mandates, and building a culture that values shared information as a public good.

That’s why our work has focused so heavily on:

• Defining governance models that clarify data custodianship, access protocols, and institutional responsibilities.

• Designing incentive structures that make data sharing valuable and recognized.

• Training and mentoring staff who will maintain, analyze, and apply shared data over time.

• Creating mechanisms for feedback, iteration, and adaptation as the program grows.

In short, we’re not just helping governments procure platforms—we’re helping them build resilient, adaptable data-sharing programs that support climate action today and into the future.

What’s Next

As we move into implementation, we’re continuing to work alongside governments to operationalize the roadmaps and build out pilot use cases. We’re helping define procurement requirements, set up monitoring systems, and train the teams who will carry the work forward. The platforms we’re supporting will become national infrastructure—but rooted in the human systems that make them meaningful.

And we want to scale. What we’ve built in can be adapted to many contexts—particularly other climate-vulnerable countries looking to connect their digital transformation to climate resilience. Because in the end, the real value of a shared data platform isn’t just in its architecture—it’s in the trust it enables, the decisions it improves, and the lives it helps protect.