The other half of the watch. That page records what already happened; this one lists what has a date on it, so there is still time to do something about it. Soonest first. Every line carries a date, a place and a source.
Most of what follows is a meeting somebody else is holding. You can watch it, read what comes out of it, and hold it to what it said. That is worth knowing, but it is not participation.
A few entries are marked Open door. Those are consultations, calls for evidence and comment periods: a published process where an ordinary person or a small organisation can put something in writing and have it counted. Those are the ones that matter most here, because Q9 asks who the many are and how they are actually asked, and a door nobody walked through is part of that answer.
Dates are given as the source states them. Where a source says a month but not a day, the entry says so rather than inventing precision. Defence and military events are left out under the same standing rule as the watch.
The months ahead
The calendar draws itself from the entries below. With JavaScript switched off it does not appear, and every date, place and source is still on this page in the list.
Coming up
55th Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting
Koror, Palau
Palau hosts for the first time since 2014, with eighteen member states meeting under the theme B.E.L.A.U, Building Economies: Life. Action. Unity., and under the 2050 Strategy for the Blue Pacific Continent. There is now something specific on the table: at the Forum ICT Ministers Meeting held in Port Moresby in July, ministers supported the Pacific Digital and Artificial Intelligence Technology Principles for leaders to consider in Palau, and backed work on a regional AI governance framework, with the principles to be tested and adapted before leaders consider that framework in 2027. Ministers also supported a Pacific regional approach to safer digital spaces, to be built in phases. The meeting closes at 3pm on 4 September.
Woodbury County takes its data centre question to three small towns in turn Open doorQ10
Sloan Community Hall, then Moville Community Center, then Salix Community Center, Woodbury County, Iowa, United States
The county board of supervisors approved a one-year moratorium on data centres in June, and the zoning commission is using that year to work out what should replace it. Rather than call one hearing at the county seat, it has published three town halls in three different towns, each at 7pm: Sloan on 31 August, Moville on 21 September and Salix on 9 November. The commission says it is seeking input from residents on what the requirements and regulations should be, and what it is preparing is a recommendation to the supervisors on how data centre permits should be handled, which may come as a text amendment to the county zoning ordinance or as a separate ordinance. Two things make this worth reading beside the bigger entries on this page. The written door is open the whole time and does not close with any of the three meetings: comments go to Woodbury County Planning and Zoning at 620 Douglas Street, Sixth Floor, Sioux City, or by email to the planning and zoning coordinator, Dan Priestley. And the rules would reach only the unincorporated parts of the county, because the towns inside it set their own zoning, so a resident of Sloan or Moville is being asked about land that starts at the edge of their own street.
UNESCO opens somebody else's supercomputer to island and African researchers Open door
Online, on machines at the Brazilian Centre for Physics Research in Rio de Janeiro
UNESCO and the artificial intelligence laboratory at Brazil's Centre for Physics Research are taking applications for remote access to their AI and high-performance computing equipment. Master's and doctoral students, postdoctoral researchers and junior academic staff may apply, from Latin America and the Caribbean, from Africa, from Ukraine, and from Small Island Developing States, which is the category the Pacific sits in. An applicant needs a defined research project and enough English to work in it. This is a different sort of entry from the rest of the page, and it is marked as a door on a plainer reading of the word: it asks for applications rather than opinions, so it is not a governance process. It is a published window in which a person a long way from any of this equipment can ask for a share of it and be counted, and the reason it belongs beside the data centre hearings is that those hearings are about where the machines get built while this is about who gets to use one.
Australian Senate inquiry into artificial intelligence and data centres Open doorQ9Q10
Australia, written submissions
The Senate's Environment and Communications References Committee is taking written submissions from anyone on whether existing rules manage the growth of data centres, and on what that growth does to communities, industries, the environment, water and energy; the closing date was put back from 26 June to 1 September and the committee reports on 16 November 2026.
Lincolnton resumes a public hearing it stopped halfway through Open doorQ10
Lincolnton, Lincoln County, North Carolina, United States
The city council voted three to one on 6 August to postpone by a month a planning department recommendation for a one-year moratorium on data centres, and to resume the public hearing in September. The hearing had already heard from a land use attorney acting for Heathcote Capital LLC, which proposes a data centre at 232 Car Farm Road and asked the council to vote the moratorium down; the reporting puts the private investment at around 600 million dollars and the tax revenue to the city at 2.2 million. A hearing left open is a different thing from a hearing announced, because whoever did not get to speak on 6 August still can. The month is published and the day is not, which is why this entry carries no marked day on the calendar above; the council agenda is where the date will appear.
Charlotte asks its residents what should replace the data centre pause Open doorQ10
Charlotte, North Carolina, United States, and online
The city put a 150-day stop on new data centre approvals in June, running to 5 November, and before it lifts it the council has to propose changes, hold a public hearing and put new policy in place. Six sessions in September are where residents get asked first. Four are in person: Wednesday 2 September, 3pm to 5pm, at Hornets Nest Park; Thursday 10 September, 6:30pm to 8:30pm, at the One Water facility on West Tyvola Road; Tuesday 15 September, 6:30pm to 8:30pm, at Project 658 on Central Avenue; and Saturday 26 September, 4pm to 6pm, at University City United Methodist Church. Two run on Zoom: Friday 25 September, noon to 2pm, and Tuesday 29 September, 6pm to 8pm. Registration through the city's website is required for each. City staff and outside experts attend, and residents can ask questions and say what they think in the room.
Six speakers introduce a set of rules for handling Indigenous peoples' data in academic publishing Q9
Online, hosted by the Collaboratory for Indigenous Data Governance, University of Arizona, United States
A panel of six introduces new guidelines for the governance of Indigenous peoples' data in scholarly publishing. The question underneath them is a practical one that most publishing rules do not answer: what a journal, an editor or a reviewer is meant to do when a paper carries data that belongs to a people rather than to the researcher who gathered it. Registration is stated as open, which is what puts it on this page, and the hour matches the Taiwan session this page carried for 26 August, so the Fall 2026 Indigenous Data Exchange the Collaboratory announced as weekly on Wednesdays looks to be running. What is published beyond this date is not, so this is the one session that can be stated with a date. One caution repeats from last run. The Collaboratory's own pages refuse automated reading, so the date, the hour and the subject here come from what those pages have published elsewhere; the webinars page opens normally in a browser and is where to register.
Platte County decides whether five thousand acres of ranch land stop being ranch land Q10
Platte County, Wyoming, United States
The county planning and zoning commission voted unanimously to recommend rezoning 5,344 acres from ranch, agricultural and mining to industrial, for a proposed data centre. That is about twenty-two square kilometres, or a square roughly four and a half kilometres on each side. The recommendation goes to the Board of County Commissioners at 1pm on 2 September. The chairman was careful about what the commission had voted on: the zoning change, not the project. Three conditions came with the recommendation, and each is a hook a later decision can hang on. The land goes back to its old zoning if construction has not begun within five years. Any industrial subdivision has to be put to the commissioners before it is recorded. And any development still needs a special use permit, which is a second decision with a process of its own. Whether the public may speak on 2 September is not stated in the reporting, so the commissioners' agenda is the thing to read before turning up.
Hendersonville hears its residents on a one-year data centre pause Open doorQ10
Hendersonville, North Carolina, United States
The city council has set a public hearing on a moratorium of up to twelve months, which would stop building, zoning and special use permits for any data centre while the city rewrites its code. The city attorney told the council in July that the existing ordinance is out of date and not built to handle facilities that use this much water and electricity and make this much noise, and the mayor has said the city is looking at size caps, minimum distances and sound barriers. There is no data centre proposed in Hendersonville at the moment, which is the part worth noticing: a small city is being asked to write its rules before anyone applies. The reporting gives the date but not the starting time, so the council agenda is the thing to check before turning up.
Mexico's regional forums on children, platforms and AI, two of three still to come Q9
Chiapas, then Guerrero, Mexico
Three regional forums with parents, teachers and specialists were announced by President Claudia Sheinbaum. The north-east forum was held at Nuevo León on 19 August. Two remain: the south and south-east at Chiapas on 3 September, and the south and centre at Guerrero on 17 September. They follow talks the education ministry has already run in the metropolitan region, the north-west and the centre-west, which the government says drew twenty thousand people. What the forums produce is intended to go to the Congress of the Union as a bill on children's and adolescents' use of digital platforms and artificial intelligence, so the sequence of asking first and drafting second is checkable against what the bill ends up saying.
The United States asks how to count AI use before it starts counting Open doorQ9
United States, by email
The Bureau of Labor Statistics is taking comments on a proposed set of questions to add to the American Time Use Survey, asking people whether they use AI tools, what they use them for, and how that sits alongside work, study, housework and rest. The bureau says no federal survey currently links a person's AI use to a detailed record of their day. The questions are due to be asked from January 2027 for two years, so the comment period is the point at which the wording can still change. Comments go by email to the bureau's clearance officer.
Europe asks who else can reach the data its own organisations hold Open doorQ9
European Union, through the Commission's online survey
The Commission opened this on 8 July, and the subject is dependency: what stops a European organisation getting at data held in another country, and what risk comes from another country being able to get at sensitive European data. It sits inside the European Tech Sovereignty Package, which covers semiconductors, artificial intelligence, cloud and open source, and the Commission's own framing puts data at the centre of building AI, which is why it belongs on this page rather than only on a technology one. It runs alongside the Cloud and AI Development Act window that closed on 27 August and the Irish consultation that closes on 11 September, so three doors on European data and computing have been open at once this season. One caution and it is the reason this entry is worth reading before writing. It is described as a targeted consultation aimed at actors in the data value chain, and the page does not say whether a person writing on their own account may take part; the survey itself is where that becomes clear.
Minnesota takes comments on a second Google agreement, at Pine Island Open doorQ10
Minnesota, United States, through the commission's eDockets system
Docket 26-170 carries the electric service agreement between Xcel Energy and Echo Zone LLC, a Google subsidiary, for a facility at Pine Island. Written comments close on 8 September, and the commission then holds a public meeting to deliberate and decide. Two of these dockets are open at once, and both customers belong to the same parent company; the Hermantown agreement above closes on 28 August. Anyone may read the filing and file a comment on it.
Rockingham hears its residents on rezoning land for a data centre Open doorQ10
Rockingham City Hall, Richmond County, North Carolina, United States
The city council has set a public hearing on a conditional rezoning at 316 Old Cheraw Highway, from high-density residential to conditional light industrial, for a data centre the city puts at 1.2 billion dollars. Terra Nexus Land Fund I LLC bought the property in June and lodged the request. The planning board voted to back the rezoning on 13 August with residents split in the room. Richmond County is the same county where Amazon is building a campus with 1,600 megawatts of diesel generation behind it, and where the state's joint air quality hearing was held on 30 July, so this is a second decision in a county already carrying one.
LaGrange hears its residents on a data centre permit it says it has not decided Open doorQ10
LaGrange, Troup County, Georgia, United States
The city council called a public hearing for 8 September on a special use permit for a data centre at the Lafayette Logistics Center development off Old Hutchinson Mill Road. The planning commission recommended the permit in June with conditions attached: noise studies, and a hundred-foot planted buffer with a six-foot berm along Old Hutchinson Mill Road. Councillors made a point of saying that calling the hearing is a required step and does not mean they support the project, which is worth recording as they said it, because it is the distinction residents most often ask about when a hearing is announced. LaGrange decided earlier this year to handle data centres case by case through special use permits instead of writing a general rule, so each application comes with its own hearing, and a local coalition has said the ordinance behind that approach falls short.
Lubbock has to hear an ordinance its own residents wrote Open doorQ9Q10
Council Chambers, Lubbock, Texas, United States
Almost every other entry on this page starts with a council deciding to ask. This one starts the other way round. A residents' group, Save Lubbock, wrote an ordinance for an eighteen-month moratorium on high water use and high energy use data centres inside the city limits, and gathered signatures for it: more than three thousand against the 2,410 required. The city secretary verified them, the council accepted the petition on 26 August, and Texas law then obliges the council to act. A public hearing is set for 8 September at 2pm in council chambers, where members of the public may argue for and against the proposed ordinance. The council then has thirty days to adopt it or reject it, and if it rejects it the ordinance goes to the voters at the next regular election in November. That last step is what makes this different from the hearings above and below it: the room on 8 September is not the last word, because the ordinance has a second route to the same place. The hearing sits at two in the afternoon on a working Tuesday, which is worth knowing before planning to be there.
Lexington sets aside a whole council sitting to hear its residents on data centres Open doorQ10
Council Chambers, Government Center, 200 East Main Street, Lexington, Kentucky, United States
The Urban County Council voted in June for a pause on data centre permits, development plans and zone changes across Fayette County, running to 31 October, and started the formal process of amending the zoning ordinance. A planning commission hearing on the draft language was held on 30 July and drew hours of comment, and the council took the commission's updated recommendations at a work session on 25 August, which has now passed. Two dates remain, both published on the city's own engagement page. On 8 September the General Government and Planning Committee gets an informational presentation from planning staff. On 6 October at 5:30pm a special Committee of the Whole sits, and the city gives the reason for that one in plain terms: to gather public input, at a more accessible hour than the council's usual afternoon meetings. The October date matters because of what sits three weeks behind it. The pause runs out on 31 October, so that sitting is close to the last chance to say anything before the council has to either adopt rules or let the permits resume. Written comment can also go to the planning commission and to councillors by email, and both addresses are published on the city's page.
Eastport takes up two ordinances its own residents wrote, on a data centre that would sit under the sea Q9Q10
Eastport, Washington County, Maine, United States
DeepGreen Holdings, registered in Delaware a month before it applied to federal regulators, proposes tidal-powered artificial intelligence data centres on the sea floor of Western Passage in the Bay of Fundy. Two ordinances were put up by residents rather than by the council: one to ban data centres, and one to require a vote of the town before any large commercial project. The council adopted a 180-day pause in mid-August while both were considered. The planning board then held a public hearing, voted unanimously to recommend a permanent ban and widened it to cover every zoning district, and advised dismissing the voter-approval ordinance because a legal analysis found it conflicts with the city charter. Councillors take those recommendations at a special meeting on 9 September, with time still left on the pause to work on the wording. Two things make this worth following. The proposal is in the water rather than on land, which is the first of its kind this page has carried, and the same proposal is being decided in two places at once: the federal window on it is further down this page and closes on 19 October.
Prince William County hears its data centre proposal over again, because the notice was wrong Open doorQ9Q10
Prince William County, Virginia, United States
The Board of County Supervisors started an amendment on 9 June to cut back and redraw the boundaries of the county's Data Center Opportunity Zone Overlay District, limiting it to land that meets one of five defined pathways and ending data centre development that needs no further permission. On 9 September the planning commission is to rehear the whole proposal, because the mailers sent to the community gave improper notice of the first hearing. An email from the county's planning director on 23 July says staff expect the case to reach the Board of County Supervisors at a public hearing on 22 September. The reason for the rehearing is the part to keep: a hearing was held and then set aside, because the people who should have been told were not told properly, and that is the same question this site's ninth asks in a different form.
United Kingdom asks how data rules and AI actually meet Open doorQ9
United Kingdom, online
A call for evidence opened on 15 July asking for practical examples of how the rules covering personal and non-personal data work when they meet AI and other technologies that run on a lot of data, and where that leaves people uncertain. It asks businesses, researchers, civil society and individuals what is working, where the friction is now and where it is expected next.
The parliament opened a consultation on 23 June on what digital environments and artificial intelligence do to children and adolescents, run with the national council on the rights of children, the digital agency Agesic, Ceibal, UNICEF and UNDP. Anyone with an interest can write in through the citizen participation platform until 10 September. What is worth noting is the method: alongside the open form and the sessions for experts, there are separate sittings for children and adolescents, in formats matched to their age and language. The published phases run on to analysis between 10 September and 20 October and a final report on 30 November, so there is a date on which the answers are meant to surface.
Southport hears its residents on a fifteen-month data centre pause Open doorQ10
Southport, North Carolina, United States
The Board of Aldermen voted unanimously on 13 August to set a public hearing for 10 September on a moratorium of up to fifteen months, which would halt approvals for data centre projects while city staff write land use standards for any that come later. The town's planning board asked for the moratorium in July. This is the third small North Carolina town on this page taking the same step within a few weeks, alongside Charlotte and Hendersonville, which is worth noticing as a pattern. The reporting gives the date but not the starting time or the room, so the board's agenda is the thing to check before turning up.
Scott County puts its draft data centre rules to the room, and to a form Open doorQ10
Great Crossing High School auditorium, 120 Betsy Way, Georgetown, Kentucky, United States
The Georgetown-Scott County Planning Commission put a six-month stop on data centres earlier this year and has now published the draft ordinance meant to replace it. Two meetings are set, both at the school auditorium rather than the usual chamber, and both at 6pm: the regular commission meeting on 10 September, and a special meeting on 17 September given over to data centres, split off because a large turnout is expected. The draft asks for a setback of at least 500 feet from a property line, rising to 1,000 feet where the neighbour is a house, a church or farmland, closed-loop water cooling, and proof from a developer that its power demand will not push up what residents pay. Alongside the meetings the commission has opened a community feedback portal on its own website, so the draft can be read and answered in writing by anyone who cannot get to Georgetown on a weeknight. No closing date for that portal has been published, which is worth knowing before relying on it; the two meeting dates are the fixed points.
Ireland asks its own people what Europe should do about cloud and data centres Open doorQ9
Ireland, by email to the Department of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment
The department opened a consultation on 14 August to build an evidence base for Ireland's response to the European Commission's proposed Cloud and AI Development Act. It covers cloud and computing infrastructure capacity, support for AI innovation, how the public sector buys cloud services, and a European framework for cloud sovereignty. Submissions go by email to cada@enterprise.gov.ie and close on 11 September. The department says a respondent need not address the whole Act and that comment on any specific part is welcome, which lowers the bar a good deal for anyone who knows one corner of this well and the rest not at all. It belongs beside the European window further up this page rather than instead of it, and the pairing is the useful part: the Commission's own feedback period on the same proposal closes on 27 August, and this one runs a fortnight past it, because a member state gathers its own view before it argues for it in Brussels. Ireland asking is not a small thing either, given how much of Europe's existing data centre capacity sits around Dublin. One caution before writing. Submissions may be published on the department's website with personal details removed, and anything commercially sensitive or confidential needs to be flagged as such by the person sending it.
Ontario asks what a data centre should have to be worth Open doorQ10
Ontario, Canada, through the Environmental Registry of Ontario
The Ministry of Energy and Mines posted a thirty-day consultation on 13 August, with the Ministry of Economic Development, Job Creation and Trade, on how the province should decide which data centres to support and what they pay for their electricity. It proposes an assessment framework built on three pillars, economic development, digital sovereignty and community benefits, and a new electricity rate class with criteria for exemption from it. It asks directly whether those three pillars are the right priorities. The public may comment through the registry or by email, quoting the notice number 026-0853. Community benefit being named as a test a facility has to meet, rather than a thing a company may choose to offer, is the part worth watching in what comes back.
New South Wales asks who should pay for the wires a data centre needs Open doorQ10
New South Wales, Australia, written submissions
The state government opened consultation on 17 August on reforming electricity network connection and cost recovery arrangements for data centres, on the principle that a data centre pays for the network upgrades it requires so the cost is not shifted onto households and small businesses. Two other things were published on the same day and belong with it: a Data Centre Policy Framework with guidelines, and the Electricity Infrastructure Investment Amendment Bill 2026, which would let the state energy minister declare large load infrastructure access schemes and so regulate how data centres connect to the grid. The submission window covers that reform. The scale is the reason it is being asked: as at July, data centres seeking connections in New South Wales represented as much as 28 gigawatts of potential capacity, with about 13 gigawatts in advanced discussions, and 13 gigawatts is more than the state's average daily electricity demand. The closing time is confirmed in a second source this run as 5pm on 14 September. This is the closest open door on this page to where the site is written, and it is asking a question the Senate inquiry above does not: not whether the buildings should come, but whose bill they land on.
St Louis County decides what it does with what its residents told it Q10
St Louis County, Missouri, United States
The county planning department took public comment on draft data centre rules at a hearing on 10 August, where close to twenty residents spoke and most of them asked for a full stop rather than rules. On 14 September the department brings its revised recommendations to the planning commission's executive meeting, and if the commission approves them they go to the county council, which has the final say on whether the zoning changes become law. The draft keeps data centres out of residential areas, parks and floodplains, confines them to certain business and industrial zones, and sorts them into four sizes from micro to major, with the largest facing the most scrutiny. Two things make this worth following rather than filing. No data centre has been proposed in unincorporated St Louis County, so the county is writing rules before anyone applies, which is the same order of events as Hendersonville further down this page. And this is the meeting where it becomes visible what a planning department did with a room full of people asking for something the draft does not offer.
Kokomo takes the second reading of the rules it wrote for data centres Q10
Council Chambers, City Hall, Kokomo, Howard County, Indiana, United States
The plan commission voted five to one on 17 August to support an amendment making data centres an allowed use on industrial land and in part of the U.S. 31 overlay district on the city's east side. The common council introduced the ordinance on 31 August and passed it six votes to two on first reading, with two councillors against. The second reading is set for Monday 14 September at 6pm in the council chambers at City Hall, with an informational meeting half an hour before it. The standards in the draft are specific: data centres at least 200 feet from residential districts and 300 feet from any existing home, a five-foot berm planted with evergreens no more than twelve feet apart, power lines kept 100 feet from property lines, and any phased expansion disclosed. Residents spoke at length at the first reading and asked for things the draft does not contain, being water use studies, larger setbacks and tighter limits on light and noise, and the reporting notes that Kokomo is not adding the stricter noise and utility rules Indianapolis has. This entry replaces a note carried here since earlier in August that Kokomo had no published day. It carries no door chip because whether the second reading takes public comment is not stated in the reporting; the council agenda is where that will appear.
Co-hosted by UNESCO and Saudi Arabia, through its data and AI authority SDAIA, under the theme of transforming global cooperation for ethical AI governance. Registration opened on 27 July through the forum's own site. The calls that would have let an outsider shape the programme, for research papers and panel proposals, closed on 18 July.
Spokane County hears the pause in September and the rules in October, and gives each speaker three minutes Open doorQ10
County Commissioners' Hearing Room, Spokane County, Washington, United States
Two hearings are published, and they are on different questions. On 15 September at 2pm the county commissioners hear the public on the pause the county has put on data centre land use and permit applications. Anyone testifying gets three minutes, and may only address the pause. On 15 October at 4:30pm the planning commission hears the public on the proposed data centre zoning code, which is the text meant to replace the pause. Both sit in the commissioners' hearing room. A planning commission work session falls between them on 17 September, and it is not a hearing, so it is not a place to speak. The narrowing on the September date is the part worth reading twice: residents came to the county asking for a moratorium, and the hearing they were given is about the moratorium alone, with the rules that follow it held for a month.
Mississauga puts its data centre pause into law Q10
Mississauga, Ontario, Canada
Councillors voted in July for a pause of one year, and up to two, on new AI data centre developments, after residents spoke at the council meeting. The interim control bylaw that makes the pause law comes back to council for approval on 16 September. Staff are also to bring an interim report to council later this year setting out the scope of the study, the consultation strategy and the review timelines, which means the date on which residents get asked properly is itself still to be published, and that report is the thing to watch for. A proponent is expected to appeal.
Britain's energy regulator asks how to clear out the data centres that are only holding a place in the queue Open doorQ10
United Kingdom, by email to Ofgem
Ofgem opened a consultation on 29 July on reforming the process by which large electricity users connect to the grid. The problem it names is the queue itself. A project that may not go ahead can still occupy grid capacity for years while it waits, which pushes back the projects behind it, so the regulator proposes a commitment fee for new data centres and a set of queue management milestones a project has to meet to keep its place. That is a different question from the one New South Wales is asking further down this page. New South Wales asks who pays for the wires; this asks who is allowed to stand in the line at all. Ofgem says it is working on this with government, the National Energy System Operator and the network companies. Who is invited is worth reading carefully before deciding whether to write: the regulator names data centre developers, operators and network operators, and then opens it to anyone with an interest in the demand connections process, which is the phrase a person outside the industry would be relying on. Responses go on a template by email, and alternative formats are available on request.
Pottawatomie County takes written comment on its data centre rules until the night it meets again Open doorQ10
Sunflower Room, 612 East Campbell Street, Westmoreland, Kansas, United States, and in writing
The planning commission heard 33 speakers on its draft data centre overlay district at a church hall in Wamego on 20 August. The county planner, Bridget Snow, has since said no further public comment meetings on the draft will be held, and that written comments stay open until the commission next meets, at 7pm on Thursday 17 September in the Sunflower Room at Westmoreland. Comments go through the county's online form, by email to zoning@pottcounty.org, or by post to the planning and zoning office. After that the planner expects at least one and probably several meetings of discussion, with changes possible in response to what came in. This entry replaces a note carried here since 21 August that the further meetings had no dates: the date is published now, and the writing window with it. A separate draft published in the county gives limits on noise, height and vibration, so there is a text to answer rather than a principle to argue.
Spain reopens its digital roadmap, artificial intelligence included Open doorQ9
Spain, through the ministry's electronic office
The Ministry for Digital Transformation and the Civil Service opened a consultation on 20 July on the 2026 update of Spain's national Digital Decade roadmap, the document that carries the country's digital targets to 2030. Take-up of artificial intelligence, cloud and data analytics by companies is one of the areas it covers, alongside connectivity, digital skills, quantum technologies, cybersecurity and digital sustainability. The list of who may contribute is wider than most: people writing on their own account, companies, business associations, universities and research centres, public administrations, civil society organisations, unions, consumer organisations and professional bodies.
French Guiana, hosted with the Collectivité Territoriale de Guyane
Five days under the theme of advancing resilience, inclusion, cybersecurity and innovation in Caribbean digital development. The week carries the union's statutory meetings, the Conference of Ministers responsible for ICT and the 24th Strategic ICT Ministerial Seminar, alongside regulatory collaboration platforms and innovation showcases. Artificial intelligence and data governance are named in the programme with connectivity, digital government, the digital economy, workforce development and regional collaboration. The invitation is wide: ministers, regulators, operators, technology companies, private sector leaders, development partners, researchers, civil society organisations and youth representatives from the Caribbean and beyond, with measures to bring in women, young people and people with disabilities. Registration is through a form linked from the announcement, and no closing date for it is published.
United Nations Headquarters, New York, United States
The International Telecommunication Union holds this on the eve of the general debate of the 81st session of the General Assembly, which opens on 22 September. The published framing covers artificial intelligence, quantum computing, space technologies and other frontier innovations, alongside partnerships for digital transformation and youth leadership, with the Digital@UNGA awards attached. How anyone outside the building registers or takes part has not been published: the ITU's page says more information is coming. That is worth stating rather than glossing, because an evening event at UN Headquarters with no published way in is only a diary entry until there is one.
Marion County moved its own workshop back, then told staff to draft a year-long pause anyway Q10
McPherson Governmental Campus Auditorium, 601 SE 25th Avenue, Ocala, Marion County, Florida, United States
Commissioners voted unanimously on 21 July to hold a workshop on how the county should handle data centre applications, after a meeting where public comment ran heavily against them on water, power, noise and the county's rural character. It was set for 1 September. On 4 August the board moved it to 21 September, and in the same sitting directed staff to start drafting a twelve-month permitting moratorium, which the county administrator recommended over the six-month pause first suggested. The sequence is the part worth keeping. A petition asking for the workshop to be delayed until newly elected commissioners take office in November passed five thousand signatures, residents held their own citizens' workshop in Ocala on 24 August without waiting for the county's, and the board has now set staff drafting a pause before the workshop that was meant to decide whether there should be one. What sits underneath all of it is state law: Senate Bill 484 leaves local zoning powers alone but sets requirements on how utility costs are allocated and how water use is permitted, so the county is working out what is left to it. This carries no door chip because a commission workshop is not a formal public hearing; the reporting says residents will have a chance to speak, and the moratorium itself has to go through the Land Development Regulation Commission, which is where a formal hearing would sit.
Spartanburg County put off its data centre vote so it could hear people first Open doorQ10
Spartanburg County, South Carolina, United States
The county council delayed third and final reading of a proposed twelve-month countywide moratorium at its meeting on 17 August, after residents filled the chamber and spoke against the NorthMark project during public comment, and moved the reading to the council meeting on 21 September. The reason given for the delay is worth recording as the reason: the county is to hold another public safety committee meeting before then, and this time the public is invited to give input alongside experts and other organisations. That committee meeting has no published date yet, which makes it the thing to watch for; 21 September is the date the decision lands. If it passes, the moratorium would pause new data centre development across the county for a year.
Denton sets three dates, and the residents get two of them Open doorQ10
Denton, Texas, United States
The council voted four to three on 18 August to proceed with a possible ninety-day pause on data centre approvals and with amendments to the development code, and fixed the dates that had been proposed a fortnight earlier. The first public hearing is set for 22 September, the second for 27 October, and final adoption for 2 December. Residents can speak at both hearings. The council's own utility warned that the grid is close to capacity, which is what put this in motion. Adopting the pause takes a supermajority of the council, not the four votes that have carried it this far, so the arithmetic in December is different from the arithmetic in August.
Smart Africa's Director General speaks, for the alliance of forty member states endorsed by the African Union. The programme is billed as keynotes, ministerial dialogues, roundtables, a hackathon pitch competition, a masterclass and an exhibition, with more than 1,800 delegates expected. No open call for proposals or submissions was found, so what is available to an outsider here is attendance.
St Joseph County decides whether to capture a Microsoft data centre's taxes Q10
St Joseph County, Indiana, United States
The county council has postponed to 22 September a vote on expanding the AM General tax increment financing district to take in the Microsoft data centre site at Granger. A tax increment financing district freezes property tax revenue inside its boundary at the current level and captures the growth above that line for spending within the district; this expansion would let the county borrow up to four million dollars against it. The vote was delayed to give officials and the public more time to look at the proposal. The question here comes after the ones filling the rest of this page. The building is going up; what is being decided is what the public purse does with the money it throws off. Both candidates for the county council seat have called for a two-year halt on new data centres in the county, so the other argument arrives at the same table.
Fairfax County hears the substation rather than the data centre, which is where the decision actually is Open doorQ10
Board Auditorium, Fairfax County Government Center, 12000 Government Center Parkway, Fairfax, Virginia, United States, and online
Starwood Capital Group has filed permits and building plans for a data centre on a thirty-four acre site at 6299 Edsall Road at Lincolnia, on the edge of Alexandria. Dominion Energy needs a substation and new transmission lines to power it and to reach the existing Van Dorn substation, and it is the substation, not the data centre, that comes to the planning commission. The hearing is a public facilities review under section 15.2-2232 of Virginia code, which asks whether a proposed public facility fits the county's adopted plan, and it sits at 7pm on 24 September in the Board Auditorium, carried on the county's cable channel and online. The Mason District Land Use Committee makes its recommendation two days earlier, on 22 September. What makes this worth marking is the shape of it rather than the size. The data centre itself is a by-right use and does not need this hearing; the substation does, so the substation review is where the proposal comes up for public comment at all, and a good deal of weight has landed on it. The Mason District supervisor has asked the planning commission to reject the application, Representative Don Beyer has called on the county to deny it, more than 1,300 people signed a letter to the Governor opposing it, and a community forum at Beatley Library in Alexandria was packed. Alexandria is a different jurisdiction from the one deciding, which is the other thing to notice: the objections loudest here come from people whose council does not get a vote.
The department of Innovation, Science and Economic Development asks how people should be told when they are dealing with an AI system or with AI-generated content, and names individuals and residents, business, researchers, civil society and Indigenous groups including First Nations, Inuit and Métis among those it wants to hear from.
United Kingdom, data centres inquiry taking written evidence Open doorQ10
United Kingdom, by email
The all-party parliamentary group on data centres, chaired by Chris Curtis MP, is taking written evidence for an inquiry into whether policy and regulation are supporting the growth of the sector, with three oral sessions between September and November on energy infrastructure, investment and planning, and sustainability, and recommendations due in December. The list of who is invited is worth reading before writing: it names operators, investors, energy and water suppliers, local authorities and trade associations, and it does name environmental groups and organisations representing community interests, but it does not name individuals. Submissions go by email.
St Louis calls a special sitting on data centre zoning, and the arithmetic changed under it Q10
St Louis, Missouri, United States
Board Bill 49 would add a section to the city zoning code creating rules for data centres, sorting them into three sizes and putting the strictest requirements on the largest: greater distance from homes, schools and parks, cool or green roofs to cut heat, and renewable power phased in over ten years. The planning commission approved it on 10 June. Aldermen then amended it, the bill sponsors said the amendments weakened it, and the planning commission rejected those amendments. That rejection is what makes the date worth marking rather than filing. Because the commission said no, the bill now needs ten votes rather than a simple majority to pass in its amended form, so a bill that could once have passed narrowly cannot. A special meeting is planned for 28 September. Whether the public may speak at it has not been published, which is why this carries no door chip; the board's agenda is where that will appear. This is the city sitting alongside the county entry above, which brings its own revised rules to a planning commission meeting on 14 September.
France asks whether an algorithm that prices you is treating you fairly Open doorQ9
France, written contributions to the ACPR
The Autorité de contrôle prudentiel et de résolution, which supervises French banks and insurers, published a discussion document on algorithmic fairness and put it out for public consultation. Algorithmic fairness here means designing and supervising systems so they do not produce unjustified inequalities, particularly on sensitive personal characteristics. The question it puts is old in insurance and sharpened by AI: how to reconcile pricing that varies with risk against treatment that is discriminatory. The document covers transparency, accountability and explainability of automated decisions, and the technical side of auditing an algorithm, data quality and managing bias. The authority intends to publish final guidance by the end of 2026, so the consultation is where the wording can still move. Who is invited is the reason this counts as a door: insurers, banks, fintechs and insurtechs, and alongside them consumer associations and academic researchers, so the invitation reaches past the firms the authority already supervises. Two cautions. The ACPR's own pages refuse automated reading, so the dates here are taken from French trade reporting; the opening date is given as late July with a further report on 3 August, and the closing date of 30 September is consistent across both.
New South Wales is due to report on what its data centres are doing to the state Q10
Parliament House, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
The Legislative Council's Public Accountability and Works Committee, chaired by Abigail Boyd, was set up on 29 January to inquire into data centres in New South Wales: the planning frameworks that let them be built, what they draw from the grid and what that does to emissions targets, how much water they use, and what they do to the local environment and the people living beside them. Submissions closed on 27 March and the committee sat at Parliament House on 1, 8 and 22 May. Its report is due by 30 September. This is on the page as a date to hold rather than a door: the asking is finished, and what is left is whether the answers surface on time and what they say. It is worth reading beside the state government's separate consultation on who pays for network connections, which closes on 14 September, and beside the federal Senate inquiry closing on 1 September, because the same buildings are being examined by three processes at once and only two of them are still taking anything in.
South Australia's royal commission into artificial intelligence starts Q9
South Australia, Australia
The Premier of South Australia, Peter Malinauskas, announced on 11 August a royal commission into artificial intelligence, to begin on 1 October and to report to government no later than 1 July 2027. Three commissioners are to be appointed, with expertise in current AI technology, in work and employment, and in economics and business, at a cost put at more than three million dollars. It is to look at what AI does to work, the creative industries, education, health and public services, and it is expected to take evidence and submissions from business, industry bodies, unions, developers, academics, independent experts and the creative sector. Two things are worth holding on to while waiting for it. The terms of reference were said at the announcement to be about six weeks off, so what it may look at is still being written, and no submission window has been published. And the Premier said infrastructure such as data centres sits outside it, which puts the buildings, and the water and power they draw, beyond the reach of a state inquiry into what AI is doing to that state.
Bay City sends its draft data centre rules to a subcommittee and will take them up again in October Q10
Bay City, Bay County, Michigan, United States
More than a dozen residents spoke when the planning commission reviewed the draft ordinance, and the commission then formed a subcommittee to study it further and revisit it in October. The city's planning and zoning manager describes the draft as guardrails, covering facility size, power demand, water use, noise and what happens when a facility is decommissioned. Decommissioning is worth noting because few of the drafts on this page name it: it asks what the building becomes when the machines are no longer wanted. The city commission had earlier asked planning staff and the zoning consultant, nine votes to none, to study data centre zoning, environmental limits and public engagement. The month is published and the day is not, which is why this entry carries no marked day on the calendar above; the planning commission agenda is where the date will appear.
Northern Ireland asks about its draft AI strategy Open doorQ9
Northern Ireland, United Kingdom, online
The Executive Office opened an eight-week consultation on 12 August on Northern Ireland's draft artificial intelligence strategy, which sets out how AI is to be taken up across the public sector. The draft is built on eight principles: human oversight, accountability and redress, data governance, technical safety and security, fairness and transparency, sustainability, societal benefit, and training and literacy. It states that AI should add to what people can do rather than replace them, and that human decision-making is to be kept. The First Minister said the office wants to hear directly from people, communities and organisations, so the strategy is shaped by those it affects most, which puts individuals inside the invitation. Responses go through the Executive Office's consultations page.
United States asks how to rebuild its vulnerability database for machines to read Open doorQ9
United States, online through the federal rulemaking portal
The National Institute of Standards and Technology opened a request for information on 12 August on modernising the National Vulnerability Database, the public catalogue of known software flaws that security tools around the world read from. It asks how to improve the quality, governance and machine-readability of that data, how AI tools should be used to find and fix flaws earlier while keeping human oversight, and what the database should be able to do over the next five years. The reason it is being asked now is worth stating plainly: AI has made it much faster to find flaws, and the shared catalogue cannot keep up with the volume. Comments go through regulations.gov under docket NIST-2026-0100, and anyone may send one.
The United States takes comments on a data centre proposed for the sea floor Open doorQ10
United States, through the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's filing system
The commission accepted for filing on 19 August a preliminary permit application from DeepGreen Western Passage SPV LLC, and the notice published in the Federal Register on 25 August solicits comments, motions to intervene, competing applications and notices of intent to file one, all due by 19 October. A preliminary permit is not permission to build: it holds a site for up to forty-eight months while the applicant does the engineering and environmental studies needed to raise money and apply properly. What is being held is about twenty-seven acres of sea floor in Western Passage in the Bay of Fundy, for tidal-powered underwater artificial intelligence data centres put at a hundred million dollars. This is the federal half of the Eastport entry above. The town has paused data centres for 180 days and its planning board has recommended banning them outright; the commission's window opened a week after that pause was adopted, and it is the door through which someone outside the town can be heard on the same proposal. Accepting an application for filing does not mean the permit will be granted.
The United States asks whether computing power should be traded like wheat Open doorQ9
United States, through the commission's comment portal
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which oversees futures and derivatives markets, announced on 19 August that it wants comment on the listing of compute derivatives contracts, and the request was published in the Federal Register on 21 August with a sixty-day window. A derivative is a contract whose value follows something else, and what is being contemplated here is contracts that follow the price of computing power itself. The commission asks about the size and liquidity of the underlying cash markets in compute, about market oversight and manipulation, about customer protection, and about perpetual compute futures. It matters on this page because it is the same subject as the council chambers further up, taken to its other end. Those meetings ask where the machines are built and who pays for the power; this asks whether the output of those machines becomes something bought and sold ahead of time by people a long way from the site. The commission says it is an early step before any rules are drafted, which is the point at which a comment can still change the shape of what follows, and anyone may file one.
Singapore asks what is owed to the people whose work a model was trained on Open doorQ9
Singapore, online form or by email to the Ministry of Law
The Ministry of Law and the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore opened a consultation on 26 August on what artificial intelligence does to the country's intellectual property regime. Five questions are put, three on copyright and two on patents. The copyright ones ask who is accountable for the material a model is trained on, how the risk of infringement should be managed, and where human creativity sits in a work made with a machine's help. The patent ones ask whether the existing principles of who counts as an inventor still hold, and what it does to prior art when a machine can generate technical disclosures faster than anyone can read them. It belongs on this page for two reasons. Asia barely appears here, and this asks the question the rest of the page does not: the council chambers above argue over where the machines are built and who pays for their power, and this asks what is owed to the people whose work went into them. Submissions go through separate online forms for copyright and for patents, or by email, and close at 5pm. One caution before writing. The ministry reserves the right to publish all or part of a submission and to name who sent it; anything commercially sensitive has to be marked in a separate annex, and confidentiality cannot be claimed over substantially all of a submission.
Colorado takes comments on the rules under its AI and chatbot laws Open doorQ9
1300 Broadway, Denver, Colorado, United States, and by videoconference
Proposed rules were filed on 11 August to implement two state laws: the Automated Decision-Making Technology Act, which is the revised version of the Colorado AI Act, and the Chatbot Safety Act. The rules cover how automated systems may be used in decisions about people, including in hiring and employment. Two dates matter. Comments sent by 4 September are considered for any revisions put to the hearing. The hearing itself is on 26 October at 10am, in person and by videoconference, and written comments stay open until 11:59pm Mountain time that day. This is one of the few places on this page where a person can read a draft rule and answer it clause by clause before it binds anyone.
The UN human rights office asks about children and safety in digital spaces Open doorQ9
Online, submissions to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights
A call for inputs on child rights and safety in the digital environment is listed as open with a closing date of 30 October. The office has been running focus groups with children themselves on their rights in the digital world, and the standing framework it works from is general comment No. 25, adopted by the Committee on the Rights of the Child in 2021, which covers privacy, safety, participation, non-discrimination, education, play and protection from exploitation. Two cautions belong with this entry. The opening date is not given on the listing, and while the listing itself opened to this scan and confirms the 30 October date, the individual call page still refuses automated reading, so the detail here comes from the listing rather than the call document; anyone planning to write should open the call page directly and read the questions and the page limit before starting.
Europe asks who may scrape the web to build a generative model Open doorQ9
European Union, through the board's online form
The European Data Protection Board, which is the body the national data protection authorities sit on together, adopted draft Guidelines 03/2026 on web scraping in the context of generative AI on 7 July and opened them for public consultation the following day. Web scraping here means running automated tools across publicly reachable web pages and taking what is on them, and the guidelines deal with what happens when the material taken includes personal data about people who were never asked. They cover a company scraping sources outside itself, a company paying somebody else to do the scraping, and a company buying a dataset from a broker that was built that way. Two things make this one of the wider doors on the page. It reaches every member state at once, because the guidelines are what the national regulators will read from afterwards. And the board names individuals in the list of who may contribute, alongside academic institutions, businesses, consumer organisations, non-government organisations, public authorities and professional associations. Contributions are published on the board's site, with an option to withhold your personal details, and they go through a form with room for an attached document.
The continental forum, hosted by the Government of Ghana. The call that let an outsider shape the programme closed on 31 July, and it was addressed widely: policymakers, researchers, youth leaders, civil society advocates, technical experts, academics, parliamentarians, members of the judiciary and private sector representatives, as organisations, institutions, networks or individuals. What is left now is to register and attend. It sits five weeks before the global Internet Governance Forum in Nairobi, so the two together are the year's clearest picture of what the continent brings to a conversation the rest of the world holds in December.
Cape Town International Convention Centre, Cape Town, South Africa
Convened by AiForAfrica International Inc., based in New York, with partners including the World Bank, the International Finance Corporation, Google, Microsoft, OpenAI and NVIDIA. About 1,500 attendees are expected, described as heads of state, Fortune 500 executives, institutional investors, venture capitalists and AI innovators, with the chief executives of NVIDIA, Microsoft, Google and OpenAI listed as speakers. Entry is by application through an invitation process, and no call for papers, sessions or speakers is published. It runs in the same week as the Africa Internet Governance Forum in Accra, and the two are worth reading side by side: one is convened from New York around capital and the firms that hold it, the other is hosted by a government and opened its programme to individuals.
Two Ohio towns put the data centre question to their own voters Q9Q10
Pataskala, Licking County, and Sunbury, Delaware County, Ohio, United States
Every other American entry on this page ends with a council or a commission deciding. These two end with a count of ballots. Residents in Pataskala and in Sunbury gathered signatures for amendments to their municipal charters that would prohibit building any data centre with a peak load above 25 megawatts, which is a threshold set low enough to rule out the hyperscale facilities being built across central Ohio. Pataskala's council voted on 3 August to place the amendment on the ballot, moving its vote forward to meet the filing deadline of 5 August for the general election on 3 November. Organisers there gathered more than five hundred signatures. The council separately accepted its planning and zoning commission's recommendation to refuse a proposal from Aligned Data Centers for a 200 megawatt campus of three buildings in the city's industrial park, so the vote in November is about what happens next rather than about that application. Granville village council heard the first reading of an ordinance on 5 August that would put the same question to its own voters, and Heath, Johnstown and Newark could follow if organisers gather enough valid signatures. One thing is worth setting beside it, because it cuts the other way: a statewide constitutional amendment to prohibit data centre construction did not gather enough signatures to reach the 2026 ballot, so what is being decided in November is town by town.
The highest decision-making meeting of the International Telecommunication Union, held every four years, where all 194 member states set what the UN's digital agency will do for the next four years and elect the people who will run it. The published agenda covers connectivity, internet governance, child online protection and the governance of emerging technologies including artificial intelligence. Three weeks of it, and the decisions run until 2030. One item on it reaches this part of the world directly. Pacific foreign ministers have supported setting up an ITU area office in the Pacific and asked that the needs of the smaller island states be taken into account; the ITU Council has already agreed to strengthen the agency's presence in the region and told the secretariat to plan it in detail, and the final decision on what that presence looks like is expected at Doha. Whether the region gets an office of its own, and what it is given to do, is settled three weeks into a conference held on the other side of the world.
Fort Worth holds two public hearings before it pauses data centres Open doorQ10
Fort Worth, Texas, United States
The council voted unanimously on 11 August to start the process for a ninety-day pause on data centre rezonings and permits, and to set up a data centre and infrastructure committee. Texas law makes a city hold two public hearings before a moratorium can be adopted, and residents may speak at both. The published timetable puts the notice on 9 October, the committee's findings before council on 3 November, the first hearing on 10 November, the second notice on 13 November, the second hearing on 5 January, a first reading on 12 January and adoption by supermajority on 16 February, with the pause ending on 17 May 2027. What staff are to study in that window is set out: noise, effects on water supply, long-term water availability, land-use compatibility and the infrastructure that comes with the buildings. Projects whose zoning applications are already in are exempt, which is the part worth reading twice.
Australia gives itself three months to inquire into artificial intelligence, and has not yet said how to write to it Q9
Parliament House, Canberra, Australia
A Joint Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence was appointed on Thursday 20 August, drawing members from both houses, and it is to present its final report no later than 30 November 2026. The published remit is broad: what AI does to national security, productivity, competitiveness and living standards; whether existing laws are adequate; data sovereignty; sovereign AI capability; employment and worker displacement; AI-driven scams; intellectual property; the rate and depth of take-up in Australian businesses with particular attention to small and family businesses; and the effect on communities. The establishment was announced jointly by government and opposition, so it starts with support from both sides. It sits here as a date and carries no door chip, because of the gap between those two facts. A committee with that remit has about fourteen weeks to report, and no window for public submissions has been published yet. If one opens it will be short, which makes the committee's page worth checking on. Two other Australian processes are already asking about pieces of this and are further down the page: the Senate inquiry into AI and data centres, closing on 1 September, and the New South Wales consultation on network connections, closing on 14 September.
EU AI Act, the grace period ends and two prohibitions begin
European Union, all member states
Two things land on this date. Generative AI systems that were already on the market before 2 August 2026 were given until now to carry machine-readable marking on what they produce, so the transition period for labelling synthetic content runs out. And two practices become prohibited outright under article 5: AI systems designed to generate intimate images of a person without their consent, and AI systems that generate child sexual abuse material. Both prohibitions were added by the Digital Omnibus on AI, which entered into force on 27 July 2026 and moved most of the high-risk obligations to December 2027.
Held as a hybrid meeting, so it can be joined without travelling, under the theme "Governing the Internet in the Age of Intelligence: Our Shared Responsibility". The calls to shape the programme have closed: session proposals, IGF Village booths and remote hub applications all shut on 31 July at 23:59 UTC. A remote hub is a local gathering that watches the sessions together and sends interventions in, which was the way in for anyone who could not travel, and that window is now shut. What is left is to register and attend remotely.
South Africa is to reopen its national AI policy for comment, after withdrawing the first draft Open doorQ9
South Africa, written comment
The Department of Communications and Digital Technologies published a draft national artificial intelligence policy on 10 April 2026 and gave the public sixty days to comment on it. The draft was withdrawn on 12 June, because it cited sources that do not exist; the reporting puts that down to AI having been used in writing it without the citations being checked. The department said in May that a revised policy would go to Cabinet by November and that public comment would be invited from January 2027. That is why this is on the page with a month and no day: the month comes from the department's own statement, no notice has been published, and until one is there is nothing to write into. It is worth holding the whole sequence together rather than only the ending. A government put out a policy on artificial intelligence that artificial intelligence had partly invented, the public comment window ran over a document that could not be relied on, and the correction is a second window nine months later. Whether it opens in January is the first checkable thing; whether the sixty days come back with it is the second.
Brunei hosts the digital ministers of the ten member states and their dialogue partners. The sixth meeting adopted an expanded ASEAN framework on AI governance and ethics covering generative AI, and set work going on a regional AI safety network, so this is where that work is next reported on. The host and the month are published; the days are not yet, which is why this entry has no marked day on the calendar above.
Second session of the UN Global Dialogue on AI Governance
New York, United States
The Global Dialogue was set up by the General Assembly as a yearly meeting on how AI is governed, open to all member states and to stakeholders including civil society. Its first session was held in Geneva on 6 and 7 July 2026. The second is set for New York, alongside the Multistakeholder Forum on Science, Technology and Innovation for the Global Goals. The submission portal that fed the first session has closed, and how anyone registers or contributes to the second has not been published; the secretariat says it will go on the Dialogue's own site, which makes that page the one to keep checking. Support for travel to the Dialogue is handled through the Digital Cooperation Fund and is described as open on a rolling basis.
26th session of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues Q9
New York, United States
Meeting under the theme of twenty years of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, at the forum where the siting of data centres has been raised as a question of consent.
The next state-level summit in the series that ran at Bletchley Park, Seoul, Paris and New Delhi. Swiss President Guy Parmelin announced the host city in New Delhi in February 2026; the dates have since been published, which is why this is on the page now and was held off before. It is run by the Federal Department of the Environment, Transport, Energy and Communications with the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, and is to draw from governments, academia, the private sector and civil society, though the organisers say capacity at the core venue is limited and places will be allocated. Three ways in are named without dates: a Road to Geneva strand of pre-events, submitted through an online form, opening in late summer 2026; a Call for Issues gathering stakeholder perspectives, launching in autumn 2026; and a call for side event proposals in early 2027. Those are the doors to watch for, and the summit's own site is where they are to be announced.
The International Telecommunication Union's yearly summit, at the same venue and in the same week as the state-level Geneva summit, which the Swiss organisers say runs back to back with it. The two published date ranges overlap: the ITU gives the week as 21 to 25 June, and the Swiss site gives 21 and 22 June for its own two days, so which days belong to which meeting is not settled in what either has published. No dated call for papers, sessions or speakers has been posted for 2027; the ITU points people to its engagement page.
Seventy-one entries, forty-one of them doors, and the first entry this page has carried that ends in a ballot.
Start in Pataskala, a city of about 18,000 people in Licking County, Ohio. Residents there gathered more than five hundred signatures for an amendment to the municipal charter that would prohibit building any data centre with a peak load above 25 megawatts, a threshold set low enough to rule out the hyperscale facilities going up across central Ohio. The council voted on 3 August to put it on the ballot, moving its own vote forward to meet the filing deadline two days later, and Sunbury in Delaware County has done the same. Granville heard the first reading of an ordinance to join them, and Heath, Johnstown and Newark could follow if organisers gather the signatures. Every other American entry on this page ends with a council or a commission deciding. This one ends on 3 November with a count of ballots, which is why it is worth marking as a different kind of thing rather than as one more town on a long list. The other half of the picture belongs with it: a statewide constitutional amendment to prohibit data centre construction did not gather enough signatures to reach the same ballot, so what is being decided in November is town by town.
Nothing moved off the page this run. No entry's date fell between yesterday's scan and this one, which is the first time that has happened in some weeks, so what already came is unchanged and the whole list is still ahead. That changes tomorrow: the Pacific Islands Forum leaders meeting opens at Koror today and runs to 4 September, and on 31 August the UNESCO window for remote access to computing in Rio closes on the same day Woodbury County holds the first of its three town halls at Sloan.
One other entry is added, and it closes a gap this page has been carrying. Kokomo in Indiana has been listed here for weeks as a place with no published day. It has one now: the common council introduced its data centre standards ordinance on 31 August, passed it six votes to two on first reading, and takes the second reading on 14 September at 6pm in the council chambers at City Hall, with an informational meeting half an hour before. The draft sets a 200 foot setback from residential districts, 300 feet from any existing home, a planted berm and disclosure of any phased expansion. Residents spoke at the first reading and asked for water use studies and tighter light and noise limits, none of which are in the draft, and the reporting notes that Kokomo is not adding the stricter noise and utility rules Indianapolis has.
What the search checked and found shut, so it does not have to be searched again. India's ministry of electronics and information technology closed its consultation on labelling AI-generated content on 7 May. Brazil has two shut: the justice ministry's guide to the ethical use of AI closed on 4 May, and the national education council's consultation on guidelines for AI in schools and universities, run through the Brasil Participativo platform, closed on 17 June. Canada's engagements on its next AI strategy closed in 2025 and the civil society People's Consultation on AI closed on 23 March; the transparency consultation still open is already on this page. Griffith City Council in New South Wales exhibited a draft AI policy but that closed in November 2025. Two European windows are shut that a search turns up first: the consultation on machine-readable opt-out protocols for text and data mining under the AI Act, and the targeted consultation on classifying high-risk AI systems, which closed on 23 July. The Alabama Public Service Commission's review of how Alabama Power contracts with data centres above 150 megawatts took comments to 6 August and replies to 21 August, and both are past. The World Bank's regional consultations on its World Development Report on artificial intelligence are finished, because the report itself was published in August. At the UN human rights office, the listing carries two calls in this territory: the one on children and safety in digital spaces is on the page, and a call on technologies related to climate change closing 30 September is a different subject, recorded here in case it is the right door for somebody else.
Six things found this run have a place but no usable date, and are held in the file rather than written onto the page. Lake County in Illinois had its zoning board of appeals vote unanimously on 18 August to recommend an eight-month moratorium on data centres in the unincorporated parts of the county, running to May 2027; it goes next to the county board's planning, building and environment committee, and no date for that has been published. Manatee County in Florida is drafting a moratorium ordinance of up to a year on large-load customers, with public hearings promised before the planning commission and the commissioners, but the county has published no dates and the two dates that appear in secondary reporting could not be confirmed against the county itself, so they are not written here. The Tenth Ministerial Conference on the Information Society in Latin America and the Caribbean is to be held in Brazil in 2026 and no dates are published. Australia's Joint Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence, which has to report by 30 November, still has no submission window. Martin County in Florida and Lincolnton in North Carolina are both unchanged: each has a decision coming and neither has named a day. Bay City, Henry County in Virginia, Hall County in Georgia, Doylestown Township, Cumberland in Rhode Island, Minot, Northfield, Salem in Oregon, Grayslake, Cumberland County in North Carolina, Louisville, Fayetteville, Chesapeake, Salem Township and Spartanburg's extra committee meeting are unchanged from last run and still without published days.
Nothing was dropped under the defence rule this run. Fourteen doors close within a fortnight of this scan: the UNESCO computing applications on 31 August; the Australian Senate inquiry into AI and data centres on 1 September; the Hendersonville hearing on 3 September; six on 8 September, being the United States time use survey questions, the European data sovereignty consultation, the second Minnesota agreement at Pine Island, and the hearings at Rockingham, LaGrange and Lubbock; the United Kingdom call for evidence on data regulation on 9 September; the Uruguay consultation and the Southport hearing on 10 September; the Irish consultation on the Cloud and AI Development Act on 11 September; and the Ontario consultation on what a data centre should have to be worth on 12 September. The soonest things on the page are the Pacific Islands Forum leaders meeting opening at Koror today, and on 31 August the first of Woodbury County's three town halls at Sloan and the closing of the UNESCO window.
Entries move to what already came once the date passes. They are kept there with a note of what came of it where the watch logged an outcome, so an announcement can be checked against what actually happened. Every entry is also held one per line in a machine-readable file.
GAJRA Earth