Data and their flow, including across borders, underpin economic activity and well-being in global digital economies and societies. The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted data’s potential to underpin crucial, life-saving services. However, it also underscored persistent gaps in the availability of data, notably real-time health data, that diminish this potential and could affect countries’ preparedness for future crises. Access to data can empower consumers to make better purchasing and lifestyle decisions, including embracing societal goals such as sustainable consumption patterns. However, this opportunity remains largely untapped. For firms, the use of data can spur productivity and innovation, but uptake of crucial data processing technologies like data analytics and artificial intelligence remains skewed towards larger firms. Governments can use data to improve the design and delivery of public policies and services, but public sector data governance frameworks are often siloed and restricted to specific domains or applications, and thus fail to address policy issues applicable to data governance across the board.