Who We Are

About Digital Trust for Places and Routines (DTPR)

Communities use DTPR to provide visibility and legibility for what are often invisible technologies, enabling a communication and feedback pathway between someone moving through a public space that has data-collecting technology, and the technology’s manager. The DTPR design system consists of a standardized data dictionary and structure that describe digital technology and data governance practices, and an associated set of icons and usage patterns designed to quickly and clearly communicate those concepts.

Use of DTPR helps organisations integrate and streamline internal processes for place-based operations, technology implementations, and community engagements – helping build organisational capacity to introduce and deploy technologies in public spaces in a transparent way.

DTPR originated as a collaborative design initiative and has since been an open-source project, accessible to all under the Creative Commons license CC BY 4.0.

About Helpful Places

Helpful Places is a social impact enterprise based in Toronto, Canada led by Jacqueline Lu, founder and CEO, and is responsible for the stewardship of DTPR. Since its beginnings in 2020, Helpful Places has worked with more than ten local organisations to deploy DTPR as a tool that supports their smart city and innovation strategies, by enabling the collection and communication of consistent, standardised information about technology in publicly accessible spaces.