ISTOCK/IGOR KUTYAEV We Need Standards for Digital Cooperation to Occur Michel Girard T his article makes the case for a new regional mechanism to coordinate the development of data standards. Data standards are necessary to achieve digital cooperation. We need standards to create data value chains that string together data collection through collaborative platforms in order to generate insights and solve longstanding problems. Organizations of all sizes, whether public, private, or not-for-profit, need a suite of data governance standards Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MTS.2020.2991501 Date of current version: 18 June 2020 68 0278-0097/20©2020IEEE IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE ∕ JUNE 2020