In the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic, regulatory data infrastructures (RDIs) have become central state technologies for managing and monitoring populations. Health dashboards, facial recognition systems, and digital identity systems – among other data-driven systems – operate through data assemblages that classify, count, and sort people. We use the term RDIs to describe data-driven infrastructures that do not merely store, process, or circulate data, but actively shape the polity. RDIs function as gateways to welfare, public services, and rights, mediating interactions between states and populations.
The notion of regulatory data infrastructure brings together governance processes (e.g., organizing the polity), sociological dynamics (e.g., conjecturing the polity through quantification), and sociotechnical artefacts (e.g., data mining and machine learning as the engines of governance by data infrastructure). DATAGOV deploys the notion as a heuristic device able to capture the tension between stability and transformation as these infrastructures gradually permeate society and get further entangled.
DATAGOV follows three large categories of regulatory data infrastructure: biometric technologies, digital IDs, and health techs. These technology cases have been selected based on three criteria: (1) they attempt at organizing human flows, social interactions, and welfare state services delegating to software the power of making determinations; (2) as consumer technology, they are built in everyday life, and it is difficult or even impossible to opt out; (3) they concern sectors of human activity affecting distinct age cohorts, scales, and pursuits. They intervene in social life separately or in combination with each other for augmented effects (e.g., biometrics in identity verification). Individually, they allow us to narrow down the rubric of regulation data infrastructure for empirical observation. Together, they help to understand regulatory data infrastructure as a key currency in local, regional, and global governance.
Biometrics
Biometric technology identifies a person on the basis of some aspects of their biology, using machine learning and probability to link individual features to a datapoint. It is spreading fast with facial recognition now embedded in police practice from the UK to Brazil to Uganda, it sits at the centre of the proposed Prüm II framework for police cooperation across the EU, and in 2023 France legislated for real-time AI-powered surveillance cameras at the Paris Olympics.
Biometrics is of concern to DATAGOV for three reasons. It alters the relation between identity and space, and the trust relation between a state and its citizens. It re-produces racial and gender-based discrimination by having matches being often inaccurate, especially for non-White and non-male individuals. And it is drawing sustained public and regulatory attention, from the Reclaim Your Face campaign’s push to ban facial recognition in public space to the debates around the EU AI Act. Studying biometrics lets us watch a contested technology become ordinary and see who bears the cost when it does.
Digital ID
Digital ID technology is an identity verification system whereby a user is authenticated by software without involving human operators. It is based on a registration process (e.g. passport), or can embed biometric authentication. It balances data security with portability and interoperability, with mixed outcomes. It is of concern for DATAGOV because 1) it mediates access to government (e.g. health care) and commercial services; 2) beyond merely recording IDs, it exerts certification and denial, linking ID to opportunities, and 3) it is amenable to purpose creep.
Digital IDs are often framed as solutions improving efficiency, objectivity, and service accessibility. However, this move toward governance by data infrastructure raises pressing questions about the datafication of public institutions and the remediation of citizenship. With COVID-19 and generative AI accelerating digital transition, an increasing number of countries across the world have rapidly adopted digital infrastructures for identity verification and population governance. Rather than simply enhancing access or efficiency, these infrastructures increasingly encode anxieties about state overreach, elite control, and identity itself, turning bureaucratic systems into sites of cultural and political contestation.
Our first study as DATAGOV Team at the 2026 Digital Methods Initiative showed that Digital ID systems are hybrid governance infrastructures, where public institutions partner with private and semi-public actors (e.g. banks, technology vendors, agencies, platforms) to operate and implement digital ID systems. No Digital ID is created purely inhouse. technological infrastructures are delegated to the private sector to implement national policies of technology. Public state actors typically hand over significant control to private actors to implement and execute national tech-policies.
Health Tech
From disease dashboards so typical under the pandemic, to health-related apps and wearables collecting ‘real world data‘, health technologies are increasingly turning our bodies into digital data. Digital health technologies expanded dramatically after COVID-19. Several liberal democracies – including Brazil, South Africa, India and EU countries – are implementing digital identity verification systems for accessing public health care services and personal health data. Patient portals and disease dashboards gather, match, and store personal health data, but these public data infrastructures are often developed and maintained by an intricate network of private and public actors. In many cases, transparency is absent. Patients don’t know where their data goes, who accesses it, or how it might be repurposed.
For example, Brazil’s digital health policy has moved from a broad modernization plan to a more data‑driven, operational model. The Digital Health Strategy 2020–2028 focused on national infrastructure, interoperability, and long‑term governance. The newer e‑SUS strategy shifts toward standardized data collection, municipal compliance, and performance‑based management. Governance increasingly relies on algorithmic systems, which shape regulatory decisions, resource allocation, and public health oversight across Brazil’s Unified Health System.
During the DATAGOV Kick-Off event, in March 2026, our expert guests participated in two collective conversations on the conceptual tensions that characterize the field of governance by data infrastructure. After these plenaries, we moved to three breakout sessions, one of which on health technologies. In turns, we invited a group of three guests to turn these tensions into concrete research directions. Which pressing questions do health data infrastructures raise? Health data was immediately identified as a site of experimentation and source for industrialization. The datafication of bodies has proceeded from health to wellbeing: wearables and preventive health apps increasingly collect wellbeing data, which too often falls unregulated. The group interrogated the issue of mission creep, or in Marjolein Lanzig’s terms, sphere transgression. Can interoperability support the circulation of health data within the domain of health and improve diagnostic precision? Does interoperability in the health sector extend the reach of other regulatory domains – policing, education, migration – and if so, with what consequences for democracy?
The connections between the three types of regulatory data infrastructures – health, e-education, and biometrics/digital IDs – were inevitable. Biometric systems and digital identity systems are not only mediating access to online health care portals, they are increasingly mediating access to private fitness and health infrastructures – such as fingerprint to access most gyms in Rio de Janeiro – often in the name of security. In Brazil, as recounted by Fernando Filgueiras, the Ministry of Education has recently halted a legislation which would implement facial recognition systems in schools to detect youths’ mental health conditions.