If you are an organisation in Bolivia, you cannot wait for a national law to decide how to handle personal data and AI responsibly; you need a workable playbook now.  

This workable playbook is exactly what a project winner of the first InDiCo-Global open call “Fostering data protection and responsible AI compliance in Bolivia” aimed on developing between January and July 2025.  The project focused on laying the groundwork to promote international standards—particularly the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the EU Artificial Intelligence Act—among private entities and academic institutions.

“Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.” — European Convention on Human Rights, Article 8, 1950 

GDPR translates this principle for the digital era, as personal data processing has permeated everyday life.

It began as a meeting of many worlds. On May 29–30, government officials, civil society organizations, and academics from Mexico, Latin America, and the European Union gathered for “Reconfiguring Open Government: A New Era for Open Data in Mexico,” organised by Indico Global open call winner Ethos and the Agency for Digital Transformation and Telecommunications. The shared question was simple: how do we make open data not just available, but useful?

Standards, when done right, can reshape everyday life by making complex systems interoperable and efficient. A classic example is the shipping container, which replaced slow, manual loading with a universal format that transformed global trade. In 1956, trucking entrepreneur Malcolm McLean patented the first container structure after seeing the waste in manual cargo handling; proof that a standard is always a trade-off with prior practice. Today, the vast majority of non-bulk cargo travels in containers.

In 2016, the European Union adopted the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a landmark law that set out to reshape the way personal data is handled in the digital age. Since coming into force in 2018, it has become a global benchmark for data privacy regulation.