Playbook: Snapshots

The Soil Inventory Project

Data platforms combine data from multiple sources, offering a way for individuals and institutions to contribute, create, and share datasets generated from their combined and aggregated data.

The Soil Inventory Project (TSIP) builds one such tool. Its flagship Fieldvision platform is a mobile and web system used by farmers, researchers, trusted industry partners, and others to manage their land, study agricultural outcomes, and gain novel insights based on the data. TSIP’s goal is to provide free access to multi-model predictions for soil carbon, emissions, and yields across the country, critical because soil data has historically been fragmented and locked away in proprietary systems. As a nonprofit, they build neutral, science-based infrastructure that serves everyone, not just commercial interests, while keeping the data they hold secure and under their contributors’ control.

The TSIP team was introduced to Better Deal for Data while they were in the process of revising the Fieldvision Data Use Policy. They were seeking a way to communicate to their community that they would be a steward for their stakeholders’ data, decreasing uncertainty and increasing trust. Initially, they’d planned to simply reference the BD4D Commitments in their policy. However, by inserting BD4D directly into the Fieldvision signup process, they are able to highlight and demonstrate their commitment to the BD4D principles:

• When a user first creates an account on Fieldvision, they are asked a series of questions through a “wizard” that guides them through the onboarding process.
• Users are given a brief overview of TSIP’s mission, and why data sharing is essential to the organization’s success. This section includes a link to view their Data Use Policy, a statement that the policy is consistent with the Better Deal for Data, and a link to the BD4D website.
• Next, the new user is given the option to have their personal information anonymized, and to select which level of spatial anonymization they are comfortable with. (Spatial anonymization removes identifiable or sensitive information from geographic and land data.)

Adopting Better Deal for Data involved much of TSIP’s small organization, engaging leadership, operations, and data teams to work through the details of implementing BD4D into Fieldvision. First, they reviewed how their Data Use Policy aligned with the BD4D Commitments, and how it did not. Next, they determined how to change policies and practices that did not meet the Standard. In some cases, this meant working through existing challenges to identify creative solutions. In others, it required revisiting previous decisions about data practices and policies, considering why they were made and discussing how they could be adapted.

TSIP has now fully implemented Better Deal for Data on the Fieldvision platform, and is looking ahead to benchmarking the impact of BD4D on data sharing and trust in their community!