Purpose
Clause 7 records the types and sources of the data and shows how fully the data represents the identified stakeholders.
What clause 7.1 asks
This step records where the data comes from, what type it is, how the setting shapes it, and how far it stands for the people identified earlier. The team studies the data to understand what using it could do to those people. Representation here means the presence of people in the data, not the way the data is coded. A schema is a different piece of work.
Why it matters
The clause separates two questions that are often merged. The first is where the data came from and what it can carry. The second is whether the people in the stakeholder set are visible in it. A team can answer the first with a data catalogue and still fail the second. The exclusion of computational representation keeps the clause at the level of meaning: the team is not asked to design a schema, but to show that the data stands for the people it will affect.
What good looks like
Build the data representation record in two layers. The first is the provenance and metadata layer, which describes each data set and its conditions. The second is the stakeholder layer, which maps each group to the data and records coverage, imbalance and gaps. Keep the layers linked, so a change to a data set can be traced to the groups it affects. Record the context of use at the top, because representation is always representation in a context.
Evidence an assessor asks for
The assessor will ask which stakeholder groups the data can and cannot see. A data inventory with no coverage map answers a different question.
- Data inventory Each data set, its type, its source and its context of use
- Stakeholder coverage map Each group mapped to the data, with coverage and gaps
- Effect note The possible effect of using the data on each identified stakeholder
- Scope note A line recording that computational representation is outside the clause
Where it commonly fails
- The team produces a schema and calls it data representation
- Coverage is asserted from the data volume
- The context of use is missing, so representation cannot be judged
What to do before publication
Write the context of use at the top of the record. Then build the two layers and link them.