Charters, Principles, and Resolutions

It’s that time of year again, when people around the world make their New Year’s Resolutions. For organisations, the equivalent is the adoption of new “guiding principles” or launch their new charters for organisation conduct or ethics. It’s a sad fact however that many of these initiatives go the way of the annual gym membership spike and don’t result in actual traction in the culture of the organisation.

For example, this morning (2nd January 2026) I learned that OpenAI had signed up to in the Irish Government’s Charter for Digital Inclusion. This Charter sets out seven Digital Inclusion Principles and six Commitments for Digital Inclusion. Organisations pick the commitments they are committing to from the list of six (Open AI picked five). The Irish Government’s Charter contains foundational principles to guide the commitments in the Charter. These principles are:

• Equity: Ensuring no one is left behind in the digital age. 
• Accessibility: Designing digital services that are usable by all, including people with disabilities or limited digital skills. 
• Affordability: Supporting initiatives that make devices and internet access affordable for underserved populations. 
• Digital Skills for Life: Promoting lifelong learning and digital literacy at all levels. 
• Trust and Safety: Upholding the highest standards in cybersecurity, privacy, and ethical data use. 
• Innovation through Collaboration: Encouraging partnership across sectors to drive local and national solutions. 
• Evidence-Led Action: Using data and research to guide, measure, and improve our efforts.

The six commitments can be found on the Department of Enterprise’s website.

The Importance of Language

In Castlebridge’s work on Data Governance, Data Ethics, and Data Protection we regularly work with clients to define core data principles for the organisation and develop robust and scalable data governance frameworks to put those principles in to practice. People are often sloppy with the language used to describe some fundamental artefacts of a data governance system. Principles and Charters are just two examples.

Defining Principles

The definition of principles needs to start with defining what a “Principle” is. Principles are foundational statements of belief or value that guide decision-making. They express the “why” behind governance and establish the philosophical grounding from which policies, standards, and practices flow. They help resolve ambiguity when rules don’t cover a specific situation by providing (no pun intended) a ‘first principles’ basis for judgement.

A Principle is an abstract description of Why and What that in turn must inform the definition of the How (process) and Who (accountability). The principle of Equity defined in the Irish Government’s Charter for Digital Inclusion describes in broad terms a commitment that ‘no-one is left behind in the digital age’. This principle should then guide deliberation on how organisations put it into effect in practice. What does it mean to not leave anyone behind? What policies and practices do organisations need to make that happen? From a governance perspective it also means determining what should happen if an organisation cannot meet that principle. From an ethics perspective it means thinking about how decision makers will address exception handling

A simple principle can lead to complex questions in design.

Charting a course with a Charter

From a Data Governance perspective a charter is a foundational document that establishes the authority, scope, and mandate of the data governance function itself. A charter defines what the governance body is empowered to do, who holds accountability, and how it relates to other organisational structures. It describes the decision rights and authorities, and reporting structures. It answers the two-part question: “By what authority does this governance function operate and what role do individuals play as decision-makers in it?”

A Charter defines a decision-making and accountability framework that ensures that policies are defined and implemented in a way that aligns to and gives effect to the principles, translating them into actionable practice. And if there is a divergence, it contains the mechanisms for re-aligning principles with policy. For example, the principle of “Accessibility” in the Digital Inclusion Charter would potentially give rise to a need for policies around accessibility standards and style guides for websites, document templates, and video production. But it might also require policies around classification and categorisation of data and content to ensure that people can find the correct and accurate information when searching for it.

A Data Governance Charter would then need to set out the decision making rights and authorities for, for example, changing document templates or over-riding accessibility standards in website content. It would also need to provide mechanisms for ensuring the application of relevant standards such as WCAG2.0 or requiring non-digital alternatives for accessing products or services. Castlebridge often works with clients to develop “principles in practice” guidance that explains the implications of the principle, maps out to relevant policies, and provides examples of the principle being applied in a day-to-day context. Principles need to be tangible for them to be relevant!

Manifesting a Manifesto.

The Irish Government’s Digital Inclusion Charter is a slightly different beast as it doesn’t address accountability or authority for decision-making. Rather it is a public facing statement of intent by organisations, a promise to the public that they will adopt the principles and will commit to certain things. In this regard it is similar in purpose, function, and intent to the Data Leaders’ Manifesto that Castlebridge signed up to nearly a decade ago. It’s like announcing loudly to the world on your social media account that your New Year’s Resolution is to recognise the importance of health and fitness and renewing your commitment (and subscription) to the gym.

The crucial next step for organisations (and recidivist gym-bunnies) is turning that affirmation of intent into actual practice through policies, procedures, and discipline. As the Sultans of Ping FC famously sang: “I like your manifesto, let’s put it to the testo“.

And this is the crux. Signing up to a Digital Inclusion Charter or Data Manifesto usually takes no more effort than filling out an online form. Integrating those principles and commitments into existing organisation principles may take a little effort to map and integrate them and then communicate them. The real effort comes when transforming those principles into organisational policies and, crucially, actionable processes and practices that are supported by standards, guidelines, and training.

That requires a little more effort than an announcement on social media that your organisation has adopted a set of principles. Tangible actions and artefacts are required to redefine the inherent webs of belief and knowledge of actors in the data governance decision-making chain. To return to the New Year’s gym membership analogy: announcing it is easy, but you won’t see any results unless you actually go and do the reps to build the capability and capacity to live up to the promise.

Useful Resources and Further Reading

• There is a good discussion of Principles, Policies, and the role of Data Governance in ethical data management in Data Ethics (2nd Edition) by myself and Dr Katherine O’Keefe
• My full-day tutorial at the Data Leaders’ Summit in Wexford in March will take a pragmatic look at some of the points raised in this blog post, and it’s bound to come up in the panel discussions on the Summit Day.
• It’s over a decade old now, but our first primer on Ethical Data Principles is still relevant (and informed what became the Data Ethics book in 2018 and the 2nd Edition in 2023).
• And this TDAN.com post from 2017 discusses Principles, but also gives an example of how Castlebridge has been applying the Principles in the Charter for Digital Inclusion for several years.