Date: Wednesday, October 15, 2025
Hello, colleagues. I’m Nick Gilla based in Portland, Oregon. I’m positioned as a queer Romani/white man, internal evaluator, and consultant in evaluation, technology, and data science. I work to build complex yet accessible methods and tools for anti-racist policy development. Much of my work is in data justice and data sovereignty, with the Coalition of Communities of Color’s Research Justice Institute (RJI), and on hundreds of grants for the Native American Youth and Family Center (NAYA).
In data and research, effort by communities toward self-representation and leadership (justice), and effort by Indigenous nations toward ownership (sovereignty) is in many subdomains. My colleagues and I advocate in many of these subdomains, but today I will focus specifically on a key part of administrative data: demographics. We have had significant success working with many institutions that are sources of administrative data, such as foundations and governments.
Struggling as a small team toward change within enormous and firmly established systems feels daunting in the best of times, and impossible in the worst. So has every struggle toward justice. When livelihoods and program funding are on the line? Wow, right?
Something as seemingly small as moving upstream partners from single-select to multi-select ethnicity has become an entire effort. It started with 1:1 conversations and voices raised during partner meetings. A major branch of our local work started in public health, but has grown into addressing broader response-option disparities and ensuring that each respondent feels seen when receiving services. We are now expecting adoption of the resulting, community-informed data standard to move beyond health services into our state-level human services work too.
This humble but consistent effort has resulted in more accurate data, and truer stories of the needs and successes of our communities. It required following a simple pattern:
Many networks and literature bases are growing, focused on data justice and data sovereignty. It has been amazing to see increasing attention and growth of this movement, including alignment with international frameworks such as the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
It’s an exciting time to be in this work. We will not be slowed or stopped; we will grow and we will succeed.
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