Entries from Ahead move here once their date passes. They are kept with what came of them, where the watch logged an outcome, because an announcement is only worth as much as what followed it.
A summit is easy to announce and easy to forget. Keeping the announcement next to the outcome makes one particular thing checkable: whether a meeting that promised inclusion delivered it, whether a consultation that opened was ever answered, whether a deadline that was set actually held.
Nothing here is deleted when it stops being current. That is the same rule the watch archive runs on, and for the same reason: a record that keeps only its wins is not a record.
What already came
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 no later than 1 July 2027. Three commissioners were 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 was to look at what AI does to work, the creative industries, education, health and public services, and to take evidence and submissions from business, industry bodies, unions, developers, academics, independent experts and the creative sector. Two things were held open while waiting for it. The terms of reference were said at the announcement to be four to six weeks off, which would have put them out by late September, and none had been published; and the Premier said infrastructure such as data centres sits outside it, in his own words because how the technology is used in society is far more consequential than where a data centre gets built.
What came of it. It started on the day, and the two things held open went opposite ways. The commissioners were named on 1 October: Dr Iain Ross AO as chair, a former Federal Court judge, former president of the Fair Work Commission and chair of the Net Zero Commission; Kate Pounder, former chief executive of the Tech Council of Australia; and Professor Christopher Manning of Stanford University. The terms of reference were published with them, and they reach further than the announcement suggested. Alongside the opportunities and barriers for AI to improve productivity, innovation and economic growth, and the policy, legislative and regulatory frameworks needed for safe and responsible adoption, the commissioners are directed to have regard to data sovereignty and South Australia's strategic autonomy over AI systems, data and critical capabilities, and to approaches taken in other Australian and international jurisdictions. They are also directed to have regard to the views of community representatives, business and industry bodies, unions, technology developers, academia, creative industries and governments at local, national and international levels, which puts community representatives in the text rather than only in a media release. It reports to the Governor by 1 July 2027. What is still not published is the door. Reporting says public call-outs for formal submissions follow shortly after the launch, and none has appeared, so there is nothing yet for a person to write into; when one opens it belongs on the forward page as its own entry. The data centre exclusion stands, and it is the part to hold beside the rest of that page, where most entries are about exactly where a data centre gets built. The watch has not logged an outcome.
Baltimore County's data centre study had to reach its council by the first of the month Q10
Baltimore County, Maryland, United States
Council Bill 3-26, passed in February, told the county planning board to study what data centres do to the power grid, to local water and to the county's revenue against other large developments, and to report by 1 October. The board held its public hearing on 3 September and voted on the report on 17 September. What the study asks for was on the record before the deadline. No data centre would be approved by right; each would go through the full development process. A site would need at least 25 acres and a 750 foot setback from homes, with limits on noise and special-exception review for anything proposed in an overburdened community. A developer would have to show the utilities can carry it, cut its water use, and sign agreements on limiting environmental effects. And the study floats charging a data centre a tariff or a higher fee if it uses too much water, which is the rarer of the two moves available: pricing the resource rather than only restricting the building. This carried no door chip, because the asking was done at the September hearing and what happened on 1 October was a document changing hands.
What came of it. No confirmation that the report reached the council has surfaced. The county's own data centre study page refused automated reading for this scan, returning a forbidden response rather than a page, so this is read from searching and not from the source; a report delivered quietly on the deadline would not necessarily show up straight away, and that page is the thing to open. What is published there is the interim report of 16 July, and the recommendation reported from the September hearing is the restrictive one: data centres prohibited in agricultural and residential zones, and allowed sparingly in office and commercial zones on minimum lot size, setbacks and adjacency to industrial land. Residents who spoke at the September hearing told the county to reject large data centres. The separate question of whether the council extends the pause it already has past 1 January 2027 is still open, and it is the one with a date attached. The watch has not logged an outcome.
California's Governor had until the last day of September to decide five data centre bills Q10
Sacramento, California, United States
The legislature had to finish by 11.59pm on 31 August, and on the final night it passed a run of bills on data centres. SB 886, from Senator Steve Padilla, would have the Public Utilities Commission set an electricity rate specifically for data centres so their costs are not passed on to other customers. SB 887 would require environmental impact reports. SB 1168, from Senator Jerry McNerney, directs the commission to examine data centre energy use against the risk of rate rises. AB 2469 would bar a local government from approving a new or expanded data centre unless the developer discloses its water plans and pays for the new water infrastructure. AB 2619 would require operators to report their water sources and use under penalty of perjury when seeking or renewing a licence or permit. The Senate's own published calendar gives 30 September as the last day for the Governor to sign or veto bills passed before 1 September, so five separate arguments were settled by that date. One thing sat behind it. The Governor vetoed a data centre water reporting bill in 2025, saying he was reluctant to impose rigid reporting requirements without understanding the full effect on business, which made AB 2619 the same question asked a second time.
What came of it. He signed, and he signed early. The bills were approved on 21 September, nine days before the deadline this entry was written against, and as a package of seven rather than the five tracked here: AB 1577, AB 2383, AB 2469 and AB 2619 alongside SB 886, SB 887 and SB 1168. AB 2619 is the water reporting requirement he refused the year before, so the second asking carried. SB 886 has the Public Utilities Commission set a data centre electricity rate by 2028 and requires the buildings to pay for the network upgrades they cause. The Governor's office calls the package the most comprehensive data centre laws in the nation, which is that office's own claim rather than a checked one; what is checkable is the count, the bill numbers and the date, and those are on the record. The two entries this sat beside on the forward page were both due the same day and neither has produced a document: the New South Wales committee report and the French consultation below. The watch has not logged an outcome.
New South Wales was 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 in May. Its report was due by 30 September. This was on the forward page as a date to hold rather than a door: the asking was finished, and what was left was whether the answers surfaced on time and what they said.
What came of it. No report has been published. The committee's own inquiry page refuses automated reading, so this is read from searching rather than from the page, and a report tabled quietly on the last day would not necessarily show up straight away; the page itself is the thing to open. Two things did surface while checking. The committee sat on 29 May as well as on 1, 8 and 22 May, which is a fourth hearing day this entry did not carry, and its uncorrected transcript is published. And the submission count is high for a state inquiry: submissions numbered into the hundreds are published individually, from the distribution network businesses, the Business Council of Australia, Veolia, the Clean Energy Council, the Green Building Council, the Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, the Climate Council and the Justice and Equity Centre among others. So a large body of written evidence is on the public record whether or not the report that reads it arrived on time. The watch has not logged an outcome.
Britain asked whether a worker should be told before the software starts watching Open doorQ9
England, Wales and Scotland, through the government's consultation page
The government opened this on 8 July and it ran to 30 September. The subject is workplace monitoring technologies, and the definition is wider than the name suggests: it takes in the ordinary sort, access control, attendance tracking, email and communications monitoring, and it also takes in algorithmic management and decisions about a worker made by software alone. Three options were put up. A statutory code of practice with guidance behind it. A new legal duty on an employer to consult and negotiate with a union or with elected staff representatives before bringing such a system in. Or guidance on its own, with no statutory force. The middle one was why this sat on the forward page rather than on an employment law page, because it is the same question the site's ninth asks, moved indoors: whether the people a system is pointed at have to be asked before it is switched on, or told about it afterwards. It was also one of the few doors where the evidence somebody has is their own working day.
What came of it. The window closed and nothing has been published about what came in: no response count, no summary, no timetable for a decision. The government stated no preference between the three options and said it may adopt one, a combination, or none, so the outcome is open and the thing to watch for is the response document. One detail reported while checking belongs here, because it is what would give the middle option teeth: a code of practice would create no new legal duty on its own, but an employment tribunal could take compliance with it into account in a claim such as unfair dismissal or discrimination, and compensation could be raised by up to 25 per cent where an employer unreasonably failed to follow it. The watch has not logged an outcome.
France asked 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 put 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. Who was invited was the reason this counted as a door: insurers, banks, fintechs and insurtechs, and alongside them consumer associations and academic researchers, so the invitation reached past the firms the authority already supervises.
What came of it. Nothing yet, and the authority said when to expect it: final guidance by the end of 2026, so the wording that the consultation could still move has about three months to settle. One thing this entry could not fix while it was live, and still cannot. The ACPR's own pages refuse automated reading, so the dates came from French trade reporting, and the reporting does not agree with itself on when it opened: one account gives 1 July, another late July with a further report on 3 August. The closing date of 30 September is consistent across all of them, and the framework being consulted on is described the same way throughout: legal, statistical and governance, aimed at bias in life and health insurance pricing in particular. So the door and its closing are sound, and the opening date is not.
Centre Wellington gives its one-year pause the reading that makes it law Q10
Centre Wellington, Wellington County, Ontario, Canada
Councillors supported a township-wide moratorium on artificial intelligence data centres, and the interim control bylaw that turns it into law came back to council for final approval on 28 September. It would stop the construction of AI data centres across the township for a year while the study behind it is done. The reason councillors gave is worth recording as they gave it: the province has not set a regulatory framework for these buildings, so a township is holding ground that nobody above it has covered. It carried no door chip because whether delegations were heard at that sitting was not published; the council agenda was where that would have appeared.
What came of it. No account of the vote has been published. This page keeps Brisbane time, which runs ten hours ahead of Ontario, so the sitting fell on the day this entry moved across; the result belongs to the township's own minutes and to local reporting, and it is worth opening the two sources below rather than taking silence for a decision. Two other Ontario municipalities were at the same stage with the same instrument, Mississauga and Oakville, and Hamilton's council voted its own bylaw down. Cambridge was reported as heading the same way and was not: the wording suggesting a freeze was published in the agenda in error, and the motion council actually passed calls on the province to finish its data centre playbook and approval framework instead. The watch has not logged an outcome.
Kenya's Senate asks the public how the public should be asked Open doorQ9
Nairobi, Kenya, written memoranda to the Clerk of the Senate
The Public Participation Bill, 2025 was read for the first time in the Senate on Tuesday 8 September 2026 and sent to the Standing Committee on Justice, Legal Affairs and Human Rights, which took written memoranda until 5pm on Monday 28 September. The Bill would set common rules for how public participation is run across national and county government decisions, parliamentary business and public finance, and would name the authorities responsible for organising it and writing the guidelines for it. It has neither artificial intelligence nor a data centre in its title. It was on the forward page because it is the site's ninth question written as a Bill: the reporting names the gap it is meant to close as people attending meetings or sending in memoranda without ever being told how their views affected the final decision.
What came of it. The window closed on time. Nothing has been published on how many memoranda came in, which is the number this particular Bill should be judged on before any other: a Bill about public participation that draws few submissions has answered its own question. What to look for next is whether the committee publishes a count, whether it holds public hearings, and whether the Bill as reported back keeps the duty to tell people how their views affected the decision, since that is the clause the reporting identified as the point of it. Kenya is also where the global Internet Governance Forum meets in December, and where the communications regulator's own data centre licence consultation closes on 8 October; both are on the forward page. The watch has not logged an outcome.
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.
What came of it. Written evidence closed on time. Three oral sessions follow between September and November, on energy infrastructure, investment and planning, and sustainability, with recommendations due in December; none of the three has a published date, so there is nothing yet to put on the forward page. The thing to hold this inquiry to is its own invitation list, which named operators, investors, energy and water suppliers, local authorities and trade associations, and named environmental groups and organisations representing community interests, and did not name individuals. Whether the oral sessions seat anyone from the last of those categories is the test. The watch has not logged an outcome.
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.
What came of it. No outcome document, ministerial communique or attendance figure from the week has been published in a form this scan could reach. The week carried the union's statutory meetings, the Conference of Ministers responsible for ICT and the 24th Strategic ICT Ministerial Seminar, so decisions were taken by ministers of the region on a programme that named artificial intelligence and data governance. Whether any of it is published is the open question, and it matters more here than for a summit with a press office, because the Caribbean and the Pacific are the two regions this page watches for whether small island states get a say or a readout. The watch has not logged an outcome.
Palm Beach County takes the second and final vote on pausing the biggest data centres Open doorQ10
Palm Beach County, Florida, United States
County commissioners voted unanimously on first reading for a one-year moratorium on new hyperscale AI data centres, and the second and final vote is set for 24 September. The threshold is an anticipated monthly peak electrical load of 50 megawatts, and what the moratorium stops is the county accepting, processing or approving new applications for anything above it, which buys staff a year to write proper rules. The regulations being weighed for afterwards include landscape buffers, separation distances, sound studies and coordination with the utility. Two things belong with the date. One report describes the adoption hearing as tentatively at the end of September while another gives 24 September for the final vote, so the county agenda is worth checking before making the trip. And the county is the fourth in this part of Florida to take this step, alongside Sarasota, Hernando and Pasco, with Martin County having instructed staff to draft one and no date yet published.
What came of it. The commissioners approved it unanimously, six votes to nil, on second and final reading. The one-year moratorium stops the county accepting, processing or approving new applications for large-scale data centres in its unincorporated areas, with the line drawn at an anticipated peak electrical load of 50 megawatts, and it adds a definition of large-scale data centre use to the county's Unified Land Development Code so there is something for the rules to attach to. The year is for research and for drafting those rules, which were already being weighed in the form of landscape buffers, separation distances, sound studies and coordination with the utility. The date held: the entry noted that one report gave the end of September and another gave 24 September, and 24 September is what happened. The watch has not logged an outcome.
A Grant County commissioner puts a neighbouring county's ordinance on her own agenda Q10
Grant County, New Mexico, United States
Commissioner Nancy Stephens is proposing a one-year pause on data centres in Grant County, and asked for it to go on the commission's agenda for 24 September. She has not drafted it from nothing: it is modelled on the ordinance Socorro County adopted, which is the pattern this page keeps finding in New Mexico, where Sierra and Santa Fe counties have both passed pauses this year. What put it on the agenda is a proposal residents say they learned too little about too late, and secrecy is the word the reporting uses. New Mexico has a second layer to this one. Lawmakers have announced a proposed statewide moratorium for the 2027 legislative session, so a county acting now is acting ahead of a state that may act later, and the county pause would be the thing holding the ground in between.
What came of it. No account of what the Grant County commission did with Commissioner Nancy Stephens's proposed one-year pause has been published in a form this scan could reach. The proposal was modelled on the ordinance Socorro County adopted, and it was put on the agenda because residents said they learned too little about a data centre proposal too late. New Mexico lawmakers have announced a proposed statewide moratorium for the 2027 legislative session, so whether the county acted or waited is the question, and either answer is informative: a county that holds the ground, or a county that leaves it to a legislature that has not sat yet. The watch has not logged an outcome.
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.
What came of it. The summit ran at the Kempinski Hotel Gold Coast City on its dates, on the theme of scaling Africa's ethical AI ecosystem through youth empowerment, policy, partnerships and skills, and the organisers said this second edition was meant to move past awareness towards implementation. No outcome document, declaration or attendance figure has been published in a form this scan could reach, which is worth recording rather than passing over: the entry noted when it went up that what was available to an outsider here was attendance, and what is available now is not much more. It sits beside the Africa AI Council that Smart Africa set up in November 2025, chaired by President Paul Kagame of Rwanda and made up of heads of state, which is where continental AI decisions are being taken. The watch has not logged an outcome.
A Virginia county hears whether to take the words “data centre” out of its zoning ordinance altogether Open doorQ10
County Administration Building, Frederick County, Virginia, United States
Two hearings sit on the same evening and they point at each other. The board of supervisors takes a conditional use permit for Winchester Gateway, a data centre campus of nearly 72 acres proposed in the Kernstown area, which the planning commission has recommended be refused. And it takes an ordinance amendment that would remove data centres as a permitted or conditional use in every zoning district in the county and delete the term from the ordinance entirely. The planning commission heard that amendment on 2 September and recommended it be approved. Most entries on this page are a council deciding where a data centre may go and on what terms. This is a county being asked whether the use should exist in its rules at all, and deciding it in the same sitting as an application. Written comment through the county's e-comment system goes on the record and reaches the supervisors before they vote. Dates in this county have shifted with the board's schedule before, so the meeting portal is the thing to check before travelling.
What came of it. The board of supervisors voted six to one to remove data centres as a permitted or conditional use in every zoning district in Frederick County, and the same vote struck the definitions and the additional data centre regulations out of the ordinance. Reporting describes the county as the first locality in Virginia to restrict data centre development this way. The Winchester Gateway application that was to be heard the same evening never reached the board: the applicant pulled the conditional use permit before the meeting, so it is off the county's agenda rather than refused. And the supervisors passed a resolution, unanimously, grandfathering two data centre proposals already under review, on the condition that those applicants come before the board at a public hearing by 28 October. That hearing is now an entry of its own on the forward page. So the county did the larger of the two things it was weighing and took the word out of its rulebook, and then held a door open for two proposals and put a date on it. The watch has not logged an outcome.
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. The planning commission reheard the whole proposal on 9 September, 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, which is the date still ahead. 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.
What came of it. The Board of County Supervisors voted eight to nil to end by-right data centre development across the county. The Data Center Opportunity Zone Overlay District shrinks by about 62 per cent, from roughly 9,700 acres to about 3,641, and a new project inside what remains needs a special use permit and rezoning rather than arriving with permission already granted. Existing projects and established legal rights are not touched. Property owners have ninety days from the vote to qualify to stay inside the reduced district, which puts that deadline around 21 December. The hearing this entry was kept for was the one held a second time because the mailers gave improper notice, and the second time it was held the county changed the rule for everybody. The watch has not logged an outcome.
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.
What came of it. No account of the council's vote on expanding the AM General tax increment financing district to take in the Microsoft data centre site at Granger has been published in a form this scan could reach. The decision was worth four million dollars of borrowing capacity against the growth in property tax inside the district, and it had already been put off once to give officials and the public more time. Both candidates for the county council seat had called for a two-year halt on new data centres in the county, so the November election is the other place this question gets answered. The watch has not logged an outcome.
Four hundred people put comments in at North Port, and the final vote then moved back a fortnight Open doorQ10
North Port, Sarasota County, Florida, United States
The city commission voted four to one on 31 August, at first reading, for an eighteen-month moratorium on new data centre applications, which would also hold back final approval of an 896,000 square foot project already lodged with the city. An amendment moved by Commissioner Phil Stokes lets the review of that project carry on while stopping any final decision on it until the pause ends; Commissioner Demetrius Petrow was the vote against. That sitting ran close to seven hours. More than four hundred people put comments in, by speaker card, by voicemail and in writing, and the reporting counts three of them in favour of the project, with one person speaking for it in the room; the chamber filled and the overflow space filled with it. The date has moved, and that is what this entry now carries. This page listed the second and final reading as 8 September, which is what the reporting said on the night of the first vote. It is 22 September. The workshop that sits between the two readings was held on 3 September and heard from Florida Power and Light and the Peace River Manasota Regional Water Supply Authority on electricity demand, water use and infrastructure planning. So the expertise arrived a few days after the first vote and now sits nearly three weeks ahead of the last one, and the residents who filled the building have that time as well.
What came of it. The commission passed the eighteen-month moratorium on second and final reading, three votes to two, so the margin narrowed from the four to one of the first reading. The pause stops the city accepting and approving new data centre applications. The roughly 900,000 square foot project already lodged is carved out to the extent that staff may keep accepting, processing and reviewing it, but the city cannot grant it final approval without a decision of the commission. Hundreds attended again to oppose it. Set against the first reading, this is the shape worth keeping: more than four hundred comments came in, three of them in favour, and the vote that followed moved two commissioners the other way. The watch has not logged an outcome.
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.
What came of it. Held on the eve of the general debate, and nothing further was published about it: no readout, no list of who took part, and no answer to the question this entry was written around. When it went on the page the ITU's own site said more information was coming about how anyone outside the building could register or take part. That information did not arrive before the event did. An evening at UN Headquarters on artificial intelligence, quantum computing and space technologies came and went without a published way in, which is a small, exact example of the gap this page exists to record. The watch has not logged an outcome.
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.
What came of it. The workshop was held, and the moratorium it was supposed to help decide on had already been settled: commissioners passed a twelve-month pause on large commercial data centres, with a cut-off at an anticipated peak load of 50 megawatts, so ordinary IT for local businesses, schools and hospitals is exempt. What the year is for is now published. Growth services staff and the Land Development Regulation Commission are to study aquifer withdrawals, grid demand, cooling technology, noise, setbacks and spring protection, and bring draft standards back through workshops and public hearings. None of those workshops or hearings has a date yet, which is what to watch for, and the petition asking for the decision to wait for commissioners elected in November did not change the sequence. The watch has not logged an outcome.
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 meeting now has a date, 9 September, and is a separate entry above. The one it follows sat on 12 August from 5.30pm until 10.20pm and heard an air regulation expert from the state environmental services department, a Spartanburg Water System representative and the president of Lockhart Power. If it passes, the moratorium would pause new data centre development across the county for a year.
What came of it. The council passed the moratorium five votes to one on third reading, with Councillor Jessica Coker against on the ground that no evidence of a clear threat to residents had been put before them. Four amendments narrowed it first. The freeze now reaches only facilities above 65 megawatts and does not touch data centres already approved by the county. Anything under 65 megawatts may still proceed if it sits inside an established industrial park or on a former industrial site, cannot generate its own electricity except for emergency backup, and is used mainly for storing, managing and processing data. Then something happened that belongs on this page more than the vote does. After adjourning, the council reconvened and voted to reconsider the third reading. An attorney for the South Carolina Press Association said that because the reconvening was not publicly posted it was an illegal meeting and the vote is not in effect. So a pause that residents filled a chamber twice to ask for was reopened in a sitting nobody was told about. Whether the reconsideration stands is the thing to check, and it is the ninth question asked in its sharpest form: not whether the many were asked, but whether the decision they were asked about was taken in the room they were told to come to. The watch has not logged an outcome.
Colorado Springs rations the microphone: one hundred and twenty speakers, two minutes each Open doorQ9Q10
Pikes Peak Center for the Performing Arts, Colorado Springs, Colorado, United States
The city council takes the final decision on Project Taurus at a special meeting starting at 9am, moved out of its chambers and into a concert hall. The proposal would put the city's first artificial intelligence data centre on the site of a former Intel plant near Garden of the Gods Road, drawing up to 50 megawatts of power and 200,000 gallons of water a day. That is about 760,000 litres, or roughly a third of an Olympic pool, every day. The planning commission approved it six votes to two in July after a sitting that ran fourteen hours, with opponents speaking for three of them, and two groups lodged appeals by the deadline of 3 August. What makes this one worth marking is what the council has done with the asking, before it decides anything. Public comment is capped at 120 speakers at two minutes each, about two hours in all. Places go first come first served to anyone who emails or telephones the council with a name, an address and whether they support or oppose. Time may not be ceded to another speaker and no multimedia may be shown. A residents' group, Integrity Matters, speaking for neighbours at Chelsea Glen, is contesting the cap, and a council spokesperson has said the council decides how many may comment and for how long at meetings of this kind. Most entries on this page record whether a door is open. This one records the size of it, and the sign-up sheet has now given that a number. On the morning of the hearing, 22 people had put their names down to speak in support and 126 against, which is 148 for 120 places. So the cap bound, and it bound on the fuller side.
What came of it. The council did not decide. It voted seven to two to put the whole question off to its meeting on 13 April 2027, which is after the city's April election, and that date is now an entry of its own on the forward page. Councillor Roland Rainey moved the delay and gave two reasons for it: negotiations with Colorado Springs Utilities over a large load tariff contract are unfinished, and city staff need time to write rules for data centres generally. Councillors Kimberly Gold and Nancy Henjum voted against the delay. On the asking, which is why this entry was kept: 148 people signed up to speak for the 120 places, 126 of them against the data centre and 22 in support, so the cap bound and it bound on the fuller side. Reporting describes a raucous meeting, with three people taken into custody. So a hearing built around a rationed microphone produced a postponement of nearly seven months, and the residents who did not get one of the 120 places now have until April to ask for one. The watch has not logged an outcome.
Baltimore County heard the study, and votes on it a fortnight later Open doorQ10
Baltimore County, Maryland, United States, in person and online
The county planning board has a fifty-one page study before it, and what it recommends is now published in detail. Data centres would be concentrated in industrial zones and kept off agricultural land, outside the county's Urban-Rural Demarcation Line and within 750 feet of a house. A developer would have to show there is enough utility capacity, cut its water use, and enter agreements setting out how it will limit environmental effects. And a project proposed in an overburdened or underserved community would go to case-by-case review by an administrative law judge, which is the recommendation that speaks most directly to who gets asked. The hybrid public hearing on the report was held on Thursday 3 September, so it could be joined without travelling to Towson. The board votes on the report on Thursday 17 September, and the recommendations then go to the county council, due there by 1 October. An earlier input meeting packed the Jefferson Building at Towson and drew more than fifty speakers, on the environment, health, zoning and energy, with a proposed 150 megawatt facility at Woodlawn behind much of it. Running alongside on its own timetable is council legislation to extend the pause the county already has: Council Bill 3-26 holds a moratorium until at least 1 January 2027, and a hearing on extending it through 2027 was set for the council's sitting that week, with the council agenda the place that date and the room appear. The two processes need each other, because the pause is what holds the ground while the rules the board is voting on get written.
What came of it. No account of the board's vote was published in time for this scan, and the deadline that matters is two days away: Council Bill 3-26 requires the planning board's report to reach the county council no later than 1 October, which is now an entry of its own on the forward page. What the study asks for is on the record in more detail than when this entry was written. No data centre would be approved by right; each would go through the full development process. Siting would need at least 25 acres, with a 750 foot setback from homes, limits on noise, and special-exception review for anything proposed in an overburdened community. A developer would have to show there is enough utility capacity, cut its water use, and enter agreements on limiting environmental effects. The study also floats charging a data centre a tariff or a higher fee if it uses too much water, which is the rarer move: pricing the resource rather than only restricting the building. The watch has not logged an outcome.
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 were set, both at the school auditorium rather than the usual chamber, and both at 6pm: the regular commission meeting on 10 September, which has been held, and a special meeting on 17 September given over to data centres, split off because a large turnout is expected. That second one is the date still ahead, and it now carries more than it was meant to. At its sitting on 15 September the commission tabled the data centre ordinance rather than voting on it, so the question it was to have settled that week is the question in the auditorium. 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.
What came of it. No account of the special meeting was published in time for this scan. What is on the record from two days earlier is that the commission tabled the data centre ordinance at its 15 September sitting rather than voting on it, so the special meeting carried the whole question. The written door may still be open: no closing date has ever been published for the community feedback portal on the commission's own site, which is worth knowing either way, because a door with no stated closing time is one nobody can plan around. The watch has not logged an outcome.
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.
What came of it. No account of the sitting, and no count of the written comments that came in, has been published. What the county planner said would follow is the thing left to watch: at least one and probably several meetings of discussion, with changes possible in response to what arrived in writing. None of those meetings has a published date, so a process that closed its only written window on a Thursday evening has published nothing about what happens next. The watch has not logged an outcome.
The last of Mexico's three regional forums on children, platforms and AI Q9
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 and the south and south-east forum at Chiapas on 3 September. One remains, 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. That check is the reason this entry stays on the page rather than closing with the last forum.
What came of it. No account of the Guerrero forum was published. So the series of three regional forums has run its course without a public tally of who came to the last one or what was said there, on top of the twenty thousand the government counted at the earlier talks. The check this entry was kept for does not depend on that reporting and is still ahead: the forums are said to feed a bill to the Congress of the Union on children's and adolescents' use of digital platforms and artificial intelligence, and no date for that bill has been published. The watch has not logged an outcome.
Australia puts a draft privacy Bill out for comment, with artificial intelligence named in the reasons for it Open doorQ9
Australia, through the Attorney-General's Department consultation portal
The Attorney-General's Department released a consultation paper and the Exposure Draft Privacy Amendment (Personal Data Protection) Bill 2026 on 31 August, and is taking submissions until Friday 18 September. There are around forty changes to the Privacy Act in it. Four are the ones a person outside the field can weigh without a law degree. A fair and reasonable test, so an organisation can no longer justify collecting more than it needs or using information for purposes people would never expect. A right to erasure, letting a person ask a large digital platform to destroy personal information it holds about them. A stronger standard for consent, aimed at hidden terms and take-it-or-leave-it conditions. And a stop on trading in personal information without clear permission, so shopping habits, online interests and location data are not bought and sold without the person knowing. The government's own reason for the timing puts new technology at the centre: it describes the reforms as meeting emerging risks from artificial intelligence and from wearable devices such as smart glasses. Who is invited is listed widely and individuals are named in it, alongside regulated entities, non-government organisations, industry, consumer organisations, legal experts, privacy advocates and academia, and the department asks for concise submissions of around a thousand words, which is a low bar to clear. One thing belongs with it because the department says it plainly on its own page: it may use AI tools to analyse the submissions it receives. This is the closest open door on the page to where the site is written, and the one that reaches furthest into an ordinary day.
What came of it. The window shut on time, eighteen days after it opened, on around forty changes to the Privacy Act. No count of submissions has been published. Two things from the entry are worth carrying forward as the things to check. The department said it may use AI tools to analyse the submissions it receives, so a consultation about automated decision-making will itself be read in part by software. And the department asked for submissions of about a thousand words, which is a low bar to clear, so if the count when it appears is small that will not be because the form was hard. What the government does with it next is a Bill; no date for one has been published. The watch has not logged an outcome.
The UN's digital agency is taking applications for a free course in working out what an AI system does to people Open door
Online, run by the ITU Academy with the UN Development Programme
Applications opened on 11 August and close on 19 September for a four week course running from 6 to 27 October, with five live sessions on 6, 8, 13, 15 and 27 October, four of them at 07:30 to 09:30 UTC and the last an hour later. That is late afternoon and early evening in eastern Australia and across much of the Pacific. It is free for those selected, paid for through the European Union's Global Gateway strategy, and there are 35 places. What it teaches is the UN Development Programme's human rights impact assessment method applied to artificial intelligence, digital public infrastructure and data-driven public services: scoping a case, identifying the risks and the effects on people, and writing mitigation and governance recommendations. Each participant finishes with a draft impact assessment on a real case from their own institution. Who it is for is stated narrowly and the priority is stated plainly. It asks for people in public sector bodies that design, buy, regulate or oversee these systems, with a relevant degree or three years of experience, at least two years in digital policy, information technology or governance, and fluent English. Applications from women and from developing countries are strongly encouraged, and least developed countries and small island developing states are named. That last phrase is the Pacific, and it is the same shape of door as the computing window that closed on 31 August: not a consultation, but a published way for somebody a long way from where this is decided to ask for a share of the training and be counted.
What came of it. Applications shut on time for the 35 places. The course itself runs from 6 to 27 October, with live sessions on 6, 8, 13, 15 and 27 October, so the training is still ahead even though the way in has closed. Who was selected has not been published, and that is the part this entry was kept for: the call named least developed countries and small island developing states, which is the Pacific, so whether the places went there is the only test of whether naming a region in a call does anything. The watch has not logged an outcome.
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.
What came of it. The window shut on time, two months after it opened, on how people should be told when they are dealing with an AI system or with AI-generated content. No count of responses and no date for what the department does next has been published. The part to hold this one against is who it named: individuals and residents, business, researchers, civil society, and Indigenous groups including First Nations, Inuit and Métis. Naming Indigenous groups in a call for views on transparency is the easy half; whether what comes out reflects them is the half that can be checked when it appears. The watch has not logged an outcome.
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.
What came of it. The window shut on time, two months after it opened, on the 2026 update of Spain's national Digital Decade roadmap and its targets to 2030. No count of contributions and no publication date for the updated roadmap has been found. The wide list of who could contribute, from people writing on their own account through to unions and consumer organisations, is the part of this one worth remembering if the final document turns out to read like the narrower list. The watch has not logged an outcome.
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.
What came of it. The forum ran to its dates and the reporting puts the community represented at 194 countries. What it produced is a joint statement from Saudi Arabia, UNESCO and the International Centre for AI Research and Ethics, issued after a closed ministerial meeting with more than sixty ministers and delegates in it, co-chaired by the head of SDAIA, Abdullah bin Sharaf Al-Ghamdi, and UNESCO's Deputy Director-General, Asa Regner. The statement reaffirms UNESCO's 2021 Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence as the global benchmark, and commits the parties to AI that contributes to human well-being, sustainable development and the common good. Two parts of it belong on this page. It names the active involvement of women and young people, and puts special focus on the needs of developing nations, particularly in Africa, to close the gap in AI infrastructure and capability. And it asks UNESCO to step up its support for member states building national strategies, through the Readiness Assessment Methodology and the Ethical Impact Assessment, accounting for differing national capacity, context, and cultural and linguistic diversity. One thing sits beside that. The ministerial meeting where the statement was settled was closed, and the forum around it was open, so the document that came out of the week was written in the part of it nobody could walk into. This entry was carried here on the run of 18 September because 17 September had ended in Riyadh, which is two hours ahead of Greenwich; the other entries dated that day sit in the Americas and stayed one run longer. The watch has not logged an outcome.
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.
What came of it. Council approved the interim control by-law on 16 September. It stops new major digital infrastructure facilities with a total peak power demand of 10 megawatts or more for up to one year, across the whole city, and it reaches conversions and expansions of existing facilities as well as new ones. Ten megawatts is roughly five thousand kettles boiling at once. The city says there will be opportunities for public engagement during the review, and the interim report setting out the scope and timeline of the study is still due to council later in 2026, so the date on which residents are asked is still not published. Whether the expected appeal is lodged is the next thing to check. The watch has not logged an outcome.
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 asked until 14 September, now recorded in what already came. New South Wales asked 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.
What came of it. The consultation closed on 16 September and no extension was found. Ofgem has said decisions will be taken later in 2026, so the published decision is where what the regulator heard can be checked against what it adopts, including whether any response came from outside the industry and was taken up. The watch has not logged an outcome.
Missouri cancels the hearing where residents were to testify, and a rally takes the day Q9
Capitol rotunda, Jefferson City, Missouri, United States
In late June the House Special Committee on Intergovernmental Affairs, chaired by Representative Tricia Byrnes, announced a public hearing on data centres for 16 September, the day of the annual veto session, with the Speaker's approval. What it offered was set out plainly at the time: Missourians would have the opportunity to speak to state lawmakers about their opinions on data centres, and personal testimony about projects in their own areas would feed legislation Byrnes is preparing on disclosure of agreements, public comment periods, noise standards, water permits and compliance oversight. The hearing has since been cancelled. Byrnes announced it on Facebook, saying the decision was taken with the organisers of a rally happening the same day so that the two would not compete. What remains on 16 September is that rally, at 1pm in the Capitol rotunda, sponsored by No MO Dirty Data Centers and the Missouri Rural Crisis Center. It carries no door chip, and the difference is the reason it is on the page at all. A rally is a room where people speak to each other. A committee hearing is a room where what they say is taken down and goes into a record a bill can be written from. The first has replaced the second here, in a state whose legislature passed nothing on data centres in the session just gone.
What came of it. The rally was set for 1pm in the rotunda on 16 September, with a march to the Governor's mansion at 3pm. The organisers set it up as a hearing of their own, with farmers, landowners and other residents describing what data centre development would do to their property, livelihoods, water, utility bills and communities, and the demand they carried was a moratorium until protections are in place. What this scan could find was the reporting published on the day; no account of how many came, or of any response from lawmakers or the Governor, was found. So the entry stands where it started: testimony was given, and it went into no committee record. The watch has not logged an outcome.
Gallatin takes the vote its own planners asked for, on a pause it already knows how it wants to spend Q10
Gallatin, Sumner County, Tennessee, United States
The city council voted unanimously at a work session on 8 September to send a twelve-month pause on new data centre development to a formal vote, and the next council meeting is 15 September. Two ordinances run together, one on data centres and one on apartments, and both take a first and a second reading before they can be adopted. What is worth reading here is the reason the planning commission gave for recommending it, because it is narrower and more practical than most on this page. Gallatin already adopted data centre regulations. The commission wants the year to work out whether those rules should differ by the size of a facility, its energy use, or what it does to the people nearby, so that a small edge facility and a hyperscale campus are not held to one standard. Staff say the concerns neighbours raised were noise and the effect on utilities. Residents who spoke at the work session supported the pause, and Gallatin sits near one of the largest data centres in Tennessee, which is the experience those residents were describing. The entry is still here although 15 September has passed in Brisbane, because an evening council meeting in Tennessee on the 15th sits on the morning of the 16th in Brisbane, after this scan ran. It moves to what already came on the next run.
What came of it. The council met on the evening of 15 September. On the data centre ordinance, Mayor Paige Brown cast a tie-breaking vote to cut the pause from twelve months to six, giving as the reason that data centres come in very different scales. That is the same distinction the planning commission wanted the year to study, now given half the time. The apartment pause passed its first reading. Both come back for a second reading at the council's next meeting before either takes effect, and the reporting does not give that date. The watch has not logged an outcome.
A village of a few hundred people has to decide the thing its county already decided for everyone else Open doorQ10
Tigerton Community Center, 221 Birch Street, Tigerton, Shawano County, Wisconsin, United States
Shawano County adopted a twelve-month moratorium on data centre siting, construction and operation while it works out permanent rules. It reaches the unincorporated towns that have adopted county zoning, and it does not reach the village of Tigerton, which sets its own. So a village inside a county that has paused is not paused, and a proposal for an artificial intelligence data centre is in front of it. Two meetings were published. The first was held on 9 September. The second is the public hearing on the village's own moratorium, on 15 September from 5pm to 7pm at the community centre on Birch Street. What residents have asked for, at meetings already held, is not a decision either way but time and information: they say they want to understand the benefits and the risks before anything is settled. The gap this entry marks is the one between a county boundary and a village boundary, and how much difference it makes to who is protected by a pause. The date here has already turned in Brisbane, where this page is scanned, but 5pm on 15 September in Wisconsin is 8am on 16 September in Brisbane, so the hearing had not sat when this scan ran. The entry moves to what already came on the next run.
What came of it. The hearing was held on the evening of 15 September. Residents spoke to the village board about wildlife, noise, the character of the village and how little say the public had been given, and two political candidates also addressed the room. The village board then approved a one-year moratorium on AI data centre projects, so the village is now paused as well as the county, and the gap this entry marked is closed for the year. The reporting does not say how many spoke, or when the permanent rules are to be worked out. The watch has not logged an outcome.
Aberdeen asks three groups in turn, and the residents are the last of the three Open doorQ9Q10
Aberdeen, Brown County, South Dakota, United States
The city is writing an ordinance to govern data centres while a moratorium holds, and it has split the asking into three council meetings, one for each group it wants to hear from. The first, on 17 August, was for people who know data centres from the industry side. The second, a special meeting on 31 August, was for local businesses. Both have now been held. The third, a special meeting on Monday 14 September, was for the general public, and it was the last of the three. The order is the part worth reading, because it is the reverse of most entries on this page: the people who live beside the thing are asked last, after the industry and after the businesses, and the city attorney then takes what all three said and drafts the text. What follows is set out plainly by the city attorney, Ron Wager: the draft goes to the planning commission, then to a first reading before the council, and the process may need several revisions. His best case is finishing by 25 November. The moratorium runs out on 18 November, which is a week earlier, so on the city's own timetable the pause lapses before the rules that were meant to replace it are in place. The reporting gives the dates but not the times or the room, so the council agenda is the thing to check before turning up. Even at the first, informational meeting the council let a resident speak in the open microphone period.
What came of it. The meeting was held at the Aberdeen Civic Theatre from 5:30pm, with three minutes a speaker and sign-in closing at 6pm. Nineteen people spoke. Eighteen raised concerns, among them noise, utility rates, projected water use, the environment, housing and tourism, and health, and one spoke in favour. What they asked for was specific: that the moratorium be extended past November, that a task force be set up on residents' concerns, and that the council keep its work on this in the open. The council took no action that night, which is what a listening session is for. The timetable after it runs from a staff report on 21 September to a possible final approval on 2 November, with the moratorium still due to lapse on 18 November, and it is carried as a new entry on the page ahead. The watch has not logged an outcome.
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 as 5pm on 14 September. This was the closest open door on the page to where the site is written, and it asked a question the Senate inquiry does not: not whether the buildings should come, but whose bill they land on.
What came of it. The watch has not logged an outcome and this scan found none published. Submissions closed at 5pm on 14 September, with no extension found; they went by email to Infrastructure NSW. The reform sits beside the Electricity Infrastructure Investment Amendment Bill 2026, so the Bill's passage through the state parliament is where what was heard can be checked against what was written into law.
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 order of events several counties on this page have taken. 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.
What came of it. The watch has not logged an outcome and this scan found none published. The revised recommendations were due before the planning commission's executive meeting on 14 September, and whether the commission forwarded them to the county council has not surfaced. The largest facilities were to be confined to industrial zones and to need public hearings and council approval, with noise studies, energy and water reporting, landscape buffers and limits on testing backup generators, so the county council agenda is where the recommendations will reappear if they were sent on. The City of St Louis finished its own rules first: its Board of Aldermen passed Board Bill 49 unanimously on 11 September, recorded below.
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 took the ordinance on first reading on Monday 24 August at 6pm and passed it six votes to two, with councillors Plough and Bob Stephenson against. The second reading is set for Monday 14 September at 6pm in the council chambers at City Hall, 100 South Union Street, 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. The first reading date is corrected in this entry: it was carried here earlier as 31 August, and two sources give it as 24 August. 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.
What came of it. The watch has not logged the vote and this scan found no report of it. Coverage published on 12 September confirmed the second reading was on the council's agenda for 14 September, beside the city's 2027 budget. The first reading carried six votes to two over residents asking for a moratorium, water studies and wider setbacks, so whether the second reading carried, on what count and with what amendments, is the thing still to confirm.
Australia's committee on artificial intelligence published its submission window, and it shut on 14 September Open doorQ9
Parliament House, Canberra, Australia
This entry carried no door chip for three weeks, and the reason was a gap: a Joint Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence was appointed by both houses on Thursday 20 August with a final report due no later than 30 November 2026, and no window for public submissions had been published. One was published since, and it closed on 14 September. That is about three and a half weeks from opening to shutting, which is the short window this entry said to expect. The 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. PauseAI Australia has been encouraging people to write in on their own account rather than through an organisation, which is worth recording because it is a direct answer to how the many get asked. The committee's own page at the Parliament of Australia carries the form for lodging a submission. The other Australian process on this page is the Senate inquiry into AI and data centres, whose own submissions shut on 1 September and whose hearings sit on 22 and 23 September.
What came of it. The watch has not logged an outcome. No extension was found in this scan, and the committee's own page refused automated reading, so the closing date is recorded as published. What was gathered goes into a report due no later than 30 November, which is carried as a new entry on the page ahead. Whether the committee publishes the submissions, including those sent by people writing on their own account, is the next checkable thing.
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.
What came of it. The watch has not logged an outcome and this scan found none published. The consultation shut on 12 September; Ontario has not said when it will publish what it heard, or whether the submissions themselves will be released. The thing to watch for is the playbook it was gathering evidence towards.
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.
What came of it. The date this entry marked was overtaken before it arrived. The Board of Aldermen passed Board Bill 49 unanimously on Friday 11 September and sent it to Mayor Cara Spencer, who is expected to sign it; the reporting gives no count beyond calling the vote unanimous. The rules classify data centres by size, set where each may go, and carry renewable energy requirements and limits on light and sound. The floor-amended text is published by the city. Whether the mayor has signed it is the next thing to check. The watch has not logged it. So the entry is moved on the date the decision was taken rather than the date it was expected, because a calendar that kept pointing at 28 September would be pointing at a sitting the reporting no longer mentions.
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. The pairing is the useful part: the Commission's own feedback period on the same proposal shut 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. So this one is still taking submissions after the Union's own has shut. 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.
What came of it. The watch has not logged an outcome and this scan found none published. Submissions closed on 11 September. The department said responses may be published on its website with personal details removed, so whether they appear is itself checkable, and it is the clearest test on this page of whether a consultation that asked in the open answers in the open.
Europe asks artists and rights holders what an AI strategy for culture should say Open doorQ9
European Union, through the Commission's Have your say portal, in every official EU language
The European Commission opened a call for evidence on 29 July towards an artificial intelligence strategy for the cultural and creative sectors, and it closes on 11 September. The stated aim is that artificial intelligence complement human creativity rather than replace it, which is a sentence that means very little until somebody writes the rules underneath it. This window is where the rules get argued. The invitation names artists, creators, rights holders, professional associations, AI providers, developers, researchers and public authorities, and it is open to any member of the public as well. One detail is worth marking on its own: the consultation is published in all official EU languages. Most of the doors on this page are open in one language only, and a door you cannot read is a door for somebody else. It sits alongside the European data protection board's consultation on who may scrape the web to build a generative model, further down this page and open until 30 October. Between them they are where Europe is asking what a model may learn from, and who is owed something when it does.
What came of it. The watch has not logged an outcome and this scan found none published. The window closed on 11 September. What was being gathered feeds an artificial intelligence strategy for the cultural and creative sectors, so the strategy is where the answer, if there is one, will show up.
Spain gave nine days to answer a decree on data centres, then gave six more Open doorQ9Q10
Spain, through the ministry's public hearing procedure
The Council of Ministers approved a draft royal decree on 25 August setting energy sustainability, environmental, resilience and digital sovereignty requirements for data centres, and it went out to public hearing on 27 August under the urgent procedure, which is why the window was nine days rather than the usual month. It was to close on 4 September. It now closes at five in the afternoon on 10 September: the Ministry for Ecological Transition extended it after SpainDC, the association the operators belong to, asked for more time to read the text and for a technical working group with the sector. The obligations would reach any facility with access power of one megawatt or more, and cover energy and water efficiency alongside a tie to new generation. The requirement drawing most of the argument is that a data centre back at least 80 per cent of the electricity it consumes with new renewable generation in each hour it operates, rather than averaged across a year, which is a much harder thing to meet. The association says up to 60 billion euros of planned investment is at risk. The extension is the part worth keeping either way, because it is a rare case of a window being widened after somebody said it was too narrow, and it is on the record now for whoever asks next. This is a second Spanish door, and a different one from the digital roadmap consultation further down this page, which closes on 18 September.
What came of it. The watch has not logged an outcome and this scan found none published. The extended hearing closed at 5pm on 10 September. The draft royal decree now goes back to the Ministry for Ecological Transition, and the question left open is whether the hourly renewable matching requirement, the part the operators' association argued hardest against, survives into the final text.
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.
What came of it. The watch has not logged an outcome and this scan found none published. This one published its own timetable in advance, which most do not: analysis of the submissions runs from 10 September to 20 October and a final report is due on 30 November. So there is a date to hold it to, and this page will be looking for that report.
Since then. In reporting published on 10 September, the day it was due to close, the parliament extended the consultation to 30 October, after participation passed four thousand contributions. It is open again and back on the page ahead. The analysis window and report date above were set for the original closing date, and whether they move has not been published.
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.
What came of it. The watch has not logged an outcome and this scan found none published. The hearing was held on 10 September and no report of the result has surfaced in this scan.
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.
What came of it. The meeting was held on 9 September at 6pm and the council's decision has not surfaced in this scan, which is worth stating rather than filling in. What is documented is everything up to the door of that room. The planning board voted unanimously on 24 August to recommend the permanent ban, widened to cover every zoning district rather than the downtown business zone alone, and to recommend declining the voter-approval ordinance. The city's attorneys found the ban legally sound and the voter-approval ordinance unenforceable and unlawful, on the ground that elections can be called only under the city charter and not by ordinance. So the council went in with a clear recommendation on each of the two ordinances its residents wrote. What it did with them is the thing still to confirm. The proposal itself is not finished with either way: the federal comment window on the subsea data centre closes on 19 October and is on the page ahead, and residents have been seeking formal intervenor status in that review.
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.
What came of it. The watch has not logged an outcome and this scan found none published. The call for evidence closed at 11:59pm on 9 September. A government response is the usual next step and none has been published.
The Spartanburg meeting that had no date has one now Open doorQ10
Council Chambers, North Church Street, Spartanburg County, South Carolina, United States
This page carried the Spartanburg entry further down with a gap in it: the county council had put off the final reading of a twelve-month moratorium to 21 September so that a second public safety committee meeting could be held first, and that second meeting had no published date. It has one now. The committee sits at half past five on 9 September, with further speakers and, this time, an opportunity for public comment. The first meeting, on 12 August, ran from half past five until twenty past ten and heard an air regulation expert from the state environmental services department, a representative of Spartanburg Water System and the president of Lockhart Power, with no comment taken from the room. So the order here is the thing to watch: the experts were heard first and the residents second, and the vote lands twelve days after the residents speak.
What came of it. The committee sat on 9 September and heard residents for the first time, having heard the experts on 12 August. It drew a large crowd, ran for hours, and council members clashed with attorneys, developers and residents; several residents left before it finished. The committee took no vote and, as reported, has no power to halt construction at the NorthMark site. The Southern Environmental Law Center argued for a pause and raised the data centre already being built on South Pine Street. The full council vote on the twelve-month moratorium is still listed for 21 September and is on the page ahead.
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.
What came of it. The watch has not logged an outcome and this scan found none published. Comments closed on 8 September. The questions are due to be asked through the American Time Use Survey from January 2027 for two years, so the final wording is what to look for, and whether it changed.
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.
What came of it. The watch has not logged an outcome and this scan found none published. The targeted consultation closed at 11:59pm on 8 September. It feeds the European Tech Sovereignty Package, and the caution in the entry above still stands unresolved: it was never made clear whether a person writing on their own account could take part.
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 were open at once, and both customers belong to the same parent company; the Hermantown agreement, docket 26-159, shut on 28 August and is recorded further down this page. This was the one still taking comments. Anyone may read the filing and file a comment on it.
What came of it. The watch has not logged an outcome and this scan found none published. Written comments on docket 26-170 closed on 8 September. The commission then holds a public meeting to deliberate and decide on the Xcel Energy agreement with Echo Zone LLC at Pine Island, and no date for that meeting has been published.
Lake County takes its eight-month pause to the full board Q10
Lake County Court and Administrative Complex, 18 North County Street, Waukegan, Lake County, Illinois, United States
The county zoning board of appeals voted unanimously on 18 August to recommend an eight-month moratorium on data centres in unincorporated Lake County, which would give the county time to study them as a land use and to work out what they do to infrastructure and the environment. The planning, building, zoning and environment committee took it at 10:30am on 2 September, in the room and on video, with public comment taken at the meeting, and it now goes to the full county board on 8 September. This carries no door chip because whether comment is taken at the board sitting is not stated in what is published; the board agenda is where that appears, and the county has published each earlier step on its own news page. Lake County has been on this page for weeks with no date against it. It has one now.
What came of it. The county board voted unanimously on 8 September to adopt the eight-month moratorium, which holds data centre applications in unincorporated Lake County until May 2027. The county's own bulletin gives the reason as time to evaluate the land use and to write regulations for future proposals. So the sequence that started at the zoning board of appeals on 18 August and ran through the committee on 2 September carried unanimously at every step.
Wyoming County hears its ordinance at half past nine and may adopt it at ten Open doorQ10
Wyoming County Courthouse, Tunkhannock, Pennsylvania, United States
The county commissioners hold a public hearing at 9:30am on revisions to the county subdivision and land development ordinance covering what the draft calls high intensity non-residential development, which is the category data centres fall into. The commissioners' business meeting starts at 10am the same morning, and the vote is expected there; the planning director, Matthew Jones, says that if it is adopted the ordinance takes effect the following day. The revisions have been before the county planning commission since Jones presented a first draft in May, and they deal with water and electricity use, noise levels and fire safety. No data centre has been proposed in Wyoming County. That is the reason to read it rather than file it, and it is the same order of events as Hendersonville and St Louis County further up this page: a county writing the rules while it still has nothing in front of it to decide. The half hour between the hearing and the vote is worth knowing before deciding whether to be in the room.
What came of it. The watch has not logged an outcome and this scan found none published. The hearing sat at 9:30am on 8 September and the vote was expected at the 10am business meeting. The planning director said that if adopted the ordinance would take effect the following day, so 9 September is the date to check the county's own records against.
A township writes data centre rules while saying plainly that it does not want one Open doorQ10
Birmingham Township, Chester County, Pennsylvania, United States
The board of supervisors holds a public hearing at 7pm on an ordinance that would define a data centre and allow one in the township's heavy-commercial and limited highway-commercial districts through a conditional use approval, with regulations attached. The township's own notice sets out why in a sentence worth quoting as it stands: the purpose of the amendment is not to invite or encourage the development of a data centre in the township, but to better protect the township by adopting clear, reasonable data centre regulations. The reason it has no choice about the first half is Pennsylvania law, which requires a municipality to make room somewhere for a lawful use. So the question in front of the room is not whether to allow one, but on what terms and where. This is the second Pennsylvania hearing on this page on the same day, alongside Wyoming County, and both start from the same legal position.
What came of it. The watch has not logged an outcome and this scan found none published. The hearing was held on 8 September. Whether Birmingham Township adopted the ordinance, and on what terms, is not yet visible.
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.
What came of it. The watch has not logged an outcome and this scan found none published. The hearing on the conditional rezoning at 316 Old Cheraw Highway was held on 8 September and no report of the council's decision has surfaced in this scan.
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.
What came of it. The watch has not logged an outcome and this scan found none published. The hearing on the special use permit was held on 8 September and no report of the decision has surfaced in this scan.
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. One complication is worth carrying with the date, and it is not the council's doing. A Texas law passed in 2025 says a governing body may not enforce a moratorium for more than 180 days in total, and the petition asks for eighteen months, so city officials have said what the residents wrote may not be lawful in the length they wrote it. That does not decide anything on 8 September; it is the argument the room is walking into. The hearing sits at two in the afternoon on a working Tuesday, which is worth knowing before planning to be there.
What came of it. The hearing was held on 8 September. The council did not vote the eighteen-month moratorium up or down. It passed a non-binding resolution, unanimously, saying large-scale data centres will not be developed inside the city limits until the council has adopted regulations protecting public resources, public health and safety. Some who spoke said that did not go far enough. The petition ordinance itself is still to be formally considered, and the thirty day clock and the November ballot route described in the entry above have not gone away. Two days later, on 10 September, the assistant city manager put a framework of possible regulations to the planning and zoning commission, which was reported as wary of hindering development.
The House of Lords asks whether Britain's online safety law is doing what it was passed to do Open doorQ9
United Kingdom, written evidence to the House of Lords Communications and Digital Committee
The committee opened an inquiry in July into the implementation, enforcement and impact of the Online Safety Act, and takes written contributions until 5pm on Monday 7 September. Its call for evidence is built around three things: what the Act has actually done in the world, how Ofcom has implemented and enforced it, and whether there is anything in the legislation itself that stops it working as well as it should. It sits on this page because the Act is the instrument the United Kingdom points at the systems that rank, recommend and now generate what people are shown, so what a committee finds about its enforcement is a finding about how those systems are governed. It is also one of the few doors here where an account of what happened to a person counts as evidence rather than as anecdote, alongside the Uruguayan and Mexican processes on children and digital platforms further up this page.
What came of it. The watch has not logged an outcome and this scan found none published. Written evidence closed at 5pm on 7 September. Committee evidence is ordinarily published, and the committee reports in its own time, so the submissions are likely to become readable before any finding is.
The Council of Europe will pay for somebody to come and learn how a citizens' assembly is started Open doorQ9
European Youth Centre, Budapest, Hungary
Applications close on 7 September for a workshop titled Deliberative Democracy and Citizens' Assemblies: How to Start?, held from 19 to 21 October at the European Youth Centre in Budapest, with a public panel discussion alongside it. It is run by the Council of Europe Youth Department and the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities with the DemNet Foundation. Who it asks for is set out narrowly and usefully: young activists and civil society people working on democratic participation, youth organisations or civic advocacy; representatives of local and regional authorities responsible for citizen engagement, youth policy or democratic innovation; staff of youth centres, civil society organisations and schools working on political education who are interested in participatory methods; and anyone with a concrete idea or a project already under way for a citizens' assembly or a deliberative process in their own municipality, region or organisation. Travel, accommodation and meals are covered for those selected, under Council of Europe rules. It has neither artificial intelligence nor a data centre in its title, and it belongs here for the reason this page exists. Almost every entry above is a room where somebody has already decided how the many would be asked. This is a published and funded way to learn how that is done before having to do it.
What came of it. The watch has not logged an outcome and this scan found none published. Applications closed on 7 September. The workshop itself runs from 19 to 21 October at the European Youth Centre in Budapest, with a public panel discussion alongside it, so there is still something to watch even for those who did not apply.
Wixom ends its own pause early so the rules that replace it can start Q10
Wixom, Oakland County, Michigan, United States
The council voted on 26 August to write data centre restrictions into the city's zoning ordinance, and passed a resolution putting them into force no later than 6 September. That ends the six-month moratorium the city has held since March about two and a half weeks before it was due to run out, which is the opposite of nearly every other pause on this page. The amendments define a data centre and make one a special land use in the light industrial and general industrial districts, which means each application goes to the planning commission against set standards, with a public hearing held alongside the request. There are requirements for setbacks, sound studies and water use. One thing sits behind the date. A developer, Wixom One, is suing the city, arguing the moratorium is unlawful and was meant to kill its Midwinds Park proposal, and the city has argued the new rules make that case moot. So the rules take effect while a court is being asked whether the pause that produced them was lawful, which is the second time this page has carried that question this run, the first being Imperial County in California.
What came of it. The watch logged the substance on 26 August, before the date this entry marked: the council ended the six month pause by vote and adopted setbacks of 1,500 feet from homes, parks and schools and a ban on well water. The resolution put the new rules into force no later than 6 September, so as of that date Wixom has data centre rules rather than a moratorium. The lawsuit brought by Wixom One over whether the moratorium was lawful was still live at that point, and no ruling has surfaced in this scan.
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.
What came of it. The watch has not logged an outcome and this scan found none published. This entry only ever carried a month. The council voted on 6 August to postpone the planning department's recommended one-year moratorium by a month and to resume the public hearing in September, and no day was ever published for it. September is not over, so whether the hearing resumed at all is the open question, and the council agenda is the place it would appear. An entry that could never be given a day is worth keeping visible for that reason alone.
Palau hosted 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 was 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.
What came of it. Leaders endorsed the Pacific Digital and Artificial Intelligence Technology Principles, and those principles are to guide the region's first artificial intelligence governance framework. The framework itself is not written; the principles are to be tested and adapted first and the framework goes to leaders in 2027, so the next date on this thread is a year away and there is no published draft to read in the meantime. Five leaders were absent and reporting from the meeting described it as less productive for it, which belongs beside the endorsement rather than in place of it. What can be checked from here is narrow and worth naming: whether the testing and adapting happens anywhere a Pacific citizen can see it, or whether the principles arrive in 2027 having been worked on in rooms nobody could enter.
Tucson's data centre rules come into force, and every future application gets a hearing Q10
Tucson, Pima County, Arizona, United States
Mayor and Council adopted regulations for large-scale data centres on 5 August by six votes to one, and the city's own page gave 4 September as the day they take effect. Large-scale means more than 25,000 square feet or more than 20 megawatts. A facility has to sit at least 2,640 feet, half a mile, from residential zoning and from schools, and 1,000 feet from commercial and office zones. Applicants must study sound, install noise barriers and meet operating noise limits, submit to environmental review, disclose their energy mix including renewables, keep to a 50 foot height limit and plant 40 foot buffers around the site. An applicant not already caught by the city's large water user limits may not use drinking water for cooling, which is a plain rule to write in the Sonoran Desert and a rare one on this record. The part worth marking is procedural rather than numerical. The rules put every large application through neighbourhood coordination, a public hearing, review by the Zoning Examiner and then Mayor and Council.
What came of it. They took effect on the day, with nothing published to suggest a delay or a challenge. A rule coming into force is not yet a rule working, and what this one is worth will only show in the first large application filed under it: whether the neighbourhood coordination step is a meeting or a mailout, and whether the Zoning Examiner hearing changes anything. Nothing in the city's own material sets a date for that, because it depends on somebody applying. This is the entry to come back to rather than one that is finished.
Louisville votes on a draft its own hearings changed Q10
Old Jail Auditorium, 514 West Liberty Street, Louisville, Jefferson County, Kentucky, United States
The Metro Office of Planning released draft data centre regulations in June and then held four public hearings on them through July and August. The planning commission worked through changes at its meeting on 20 August, a revised draft was to be published before this sitting, and commissioners were expected to vote at 1pm on 3 September and send the text to Metro Council. What moved between the two drafts is the readable part, because it shows what the hearings did. Closed-loop cooling, which limits how much water a facility draws, went from recommended to required. Developers are to direct waste heat away from neighbouring properties. And the list of sensitive uses that have to be kept at a distance grew to include nursing homes and hospitals.
What came of it. The commission voted five to three to recommend rules tighter than the ones it was handed, and sent them to Metro Council. Two changes carry the most: nearly every new data centre would have to go through a rezoning, which means public comment on each one and a final vote by elected councillors rather than a staff approval, and new data centres over 500,000 square feet would be banned outright, which is how the city is defining hyperscale. Closed-loop cooling stayed required. So four public hearings produced a draft, and the vote on that draft made it stricter again rather than softer, which is the opposite of the direction this page usually records between a consultation and a decision. It is not law yet. Metro Council debates and takes the final vote, with no date published for that, and the council is where the pressure now goes.
Hendersonville hears its residents on a one-year data centre pause Open doorQ10
Hendersonville, North Carolina, United States
The city council 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 was asked to write its rules before anyone applies.
What came of it. Not known. Nothing had been published on the hearing or on any vote following it as at 5 September, which is ordinary this soon for a city this size and is recorded as not known rather than left blank. The thing to check is whether the moratorium was adopted on the night or held over, because a pause with no application in front of it is easier to delay than one holding back a project.
Dougherty County extends a pause it can extend again, and its residents go to planning and zoning Q10
Dougherty County, Albany, Georgia, United States
Commissioners passed a resolution on 20 July starting a county-wide review of large-scale data centre development, running 45 days. On 31 August, with those days almost up, every commissioner voted to extend the pause by a further 180 days. What officials said alongside the vote is the part worth keeping, because it is rarely said out loud: there is no limit to how many times they can pause the decision. A pause that can be renewed without end is a different instrument from one that runs out, because nothing in it obliges anyone to write the rules the pause was bought to write. Residents said the next step is ordinances, and what they asked for is specific: limits on noise, a minimum distance between a facility and a house, and rules on water use. They planned to attend the county planning and zoning meeting on Thursday 3 September.
What came of it. Not known. The meeting was reported in advance as a sitting to continue drafting rules, and nothing has been published on what it produced. That is the ordinary shape of it: the vote to extend a pause draws cameras and the drafting meeting after it does not, which is one reason a renewable pause is easier to sit on than to finish. The next checkable thing is whether a draft ordinance appears carrying the three items residents named, and the 180 days run to the end of February 2027.
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 introduced new guidelines for the governance of Indigenous peoples' data in scholarly publishing. The question underneath them is one 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. Four of the speakers were named in advance: Jane Anderson of Local Contexts, Kristina Vrouwenvelder of the American Geophysical Union, Lydia Jennings of Dartmouth, and Joseph Yracheta of the Native BioData Consortium. The work behind the guidelines is described as convening scholars, publishers, editors and metadata experts to put Indigenous data sovereignty and the CARE principles into practice across the research and publishing cycle.
What came of it. It went ahead, and the caution this entry carried on Ahead for two runs is now settled. The Collaboratory's own webinars page had been listing past sessions only, so the September date could not be confirmed at the source and was carried from the announcement text instead. That page now carries the session with its date, its hour and a registration link, and the watch logged the panel as held on the day. What the guidelines themselves say, and whether any journal adopts them, is the thing to hold this against; a set of publishing guidelines is only as real as the first editor who applies one. Two further things are worth carrying forward. The same page announces a Fall 2026 series of weekly sessions on Indigenous data sovereignty and governance, Wednesdays at 2pm Pacific, and publishes no individual dates for them, so that series is held in the record rather than written onto the page until it has days. And the session before this one, on 26 August, heard Margaret Yun-Pu Tu on the development of Indigenous data sovereignty in Taiwan, which is the same argument arriving from a part of the world this page rarely reaches.
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 land sits northeast of Wheatland in the area known as Goshen Hole and is owned by Gregor and Cindy Goertz; the applicant is a company called Site Layer 4, and what it describes is a data centre campus with its own utility-scale generation beside it, put at 26 billion dollars. The recommendation went to the Board of County Commissioners at 1pm on 2 September. The commission chairman was careful about what had been 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.
What came of it. Not known yet. The vote was taken at 1pm Mountain time on 2 September and nothing has been published on how the commissioners went, which is ordinary this soon after a weekday afternoon sitting in a county of this size and is worth saying rather than leaving blank. The watch has logged nothing. Two things make this one worth returning to rather than filing. Whether the public was heard at that sitting was never published either, so the record of this decision may end up showing a recommendation, a vote and no account of anybody speaking between them. And the three conditions matter more than the vote does: even a yes leaves a special use permit still to be applied for, which is where a second decision, and a second chance to be heard, would sit. Wyoming has been moving quickly on these. Laramie County approved a zone change for an 1,835 acre Vantage Data Centers campus on 1 September, the day before.
Australian Senate inquiry into artificial intelligence and data centres Open doorQ9Q10
Australia, written submissions
The Senate's Environment and Communications References Committee took 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 inquiry was referred on 13 May and is chaired by Senator Sarah Hanson-Young. The closing date was put back once, from 26 June to 1 September, and the committee reports on 16 November 2026. It was the widest open door this page carried in the country the page is written in: no consultative status to hold, no industry to belong to, a form and a closing date.
What came of it. The window shut on 1 September and how many submissions arrived has not been published. The watch logged the closing on the day and named four organisations whose submissions were already lodged: the Local Government Association of South Australia, the Climate Council, Climateworks Centre, and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society. That list is worth holding onto rather than treating as a detail, because it is what the answer to Q9 looks like in practice when it is only partly published: three research and advocacy bodies and one tier of local government, visible because they announced themselves, with everyone else who wrote still invisible. The committee publishes submissions as it accepts them, so the count and the range become checkable on the inquiry's own page before the report. The thing to hold this against is 16 November, and the specific question is whether the report cites a submission from someone who is not an institution. Two Australian processes carried the same subject on and are still on Ahead: the New South Wales consultation on who pays for the network connections a data centre needs, closing on 14 September, and the exposure draft of the Privacy Amendment Bill, closing on 18 September. A third, the Joint Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence, reports on 30 November and has still published no submission window at all.
UNESCO opened 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 took applications for remote access to their AI and high-performance computing equipment. Master's and doctoral students, postdoctoral researchers and junior academic staff could 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 needed a defined research project and enough English to work in it. This was a different sort of entry from most of the page, and it was marked as a door on a plainer reading of the word: it asked for applications rather than opinions, so it was not a governance process. It was a published window in which a person a long way from any of this equipment could ask for a share of it and be counted, and the reason it belonged beside the data centre hearings is that those hearings are about where the machines get built while this was about who gets to use one.
What came of it. Not known yet. The window shut on 31 August and UNESCO has published nothing on how many applied, from where, or how many places there were to give out, and the call did not name a date for telling applicants. That is ordinary this soon after a closing date and worth saying plainly rather than leaving as a silence. The thing to hold this against is whether any list of successful applicants is ever published, and whether a Small Island Developing State appears on it, because naming that category in a call is cheap and filling a place from it is not. The watch has logged nothing. The same shape of door is open again in a different form: the ITU Academy and the UN Development Programme are taking applications until 19 September for a free course that also names small island developing states, and that entry is on Ahead.
Minnesota took comments on what a Google data centre will pay for its power, at Hermantown Open doorQ10
Minnesota, United States, through the commission's eDockets system
An electric service agreement is the contract between a regulated electric utility and a customer large enough to need its own terms, and in Minnesota it has to be filed with the Public Utilities Commission and opened for written comment before the commission decides. Docket 26-159 carried the agreement between Minnesota Power and Harmony Group LLC, a subsidiary of Alphabet, for a facility at Hermantown. The commission said the public was invited to read the filing and comment on it. This was the quiet version of the fight that fills council chambers elsewhere on this page: the same question of who pays for the power, asked in a regulatory docket where turning up means filing a comment rather than standing at a microphone.
What came of it. Not known yet. The window shut on 28 August and the commission has published nothing about how many comments arrived or from whom, which is ordinary at this stage of a docket and worth saying plainly rather than leaving as a silence. What happens next is set by the process rather than by an announcement: the commission holds a public meeting to deliberate and decide, and the decision is the document to hold this against. The second docket, 26-170, covering an agreement between Xcel Energy and another Google subsidiary for a facility at Pine Island, is still open and still on Ahead, closing on 8 September, so the pair can be read together when both are decided. The watch has logged nothing on either.
Elkhart heard its residents and voted the same night on a pause covering data centres and battery storage Open doorQ10
Elkhart, Indiana, United States
The city council voted unanimously in mid-August to advance a proposed one-year moratorium to a second reading, and set a special meeting for 27 August at 6pm to take public comment and hold the final vote. The proposal would stop the city accepting and processing new applications for large data centres and battery energy storage facilities, while letting completed applications and existing approvals go ahead. What the city said it would examine in that window was set out: electrical capacity, water use, public safety, traffic, noise and environmental effects, along with where such facilities should go, how far from neighbouring property, and what noise protection is needed. The comment and the decision were on the same night, which was worth knowing before writing anything long.
What came of it. The council voted nine to nothing to adopt it, after taking public comment. The pause suspends new applications for data centres and battery energy storage facilities in the City of Elkhart through to 31 December 2027, which is longer than the one year first proposed. Mayor Rod Roberson said he supports the decision and put the limit of it plainly: this is not a complete rejection of data centres, it is a pause to look at what they mean for the community. Two things are worth carrying forward. The pause reaches the city and not the county around it, so the same proposal can move a short distance and be somebody else's decision. And the list of things the city said it would study is the test of the pause: if the fourteen months produce no standards on water, noise, distance and electrical capacity, the pause will have bought time rather than rules. The watch has logged nothing on Elkhart.
Austin's council could start changing the code on Thursday Q10
Austin, Texas, United States
Councillors asked staff in May for a framework for managing large-load data centres. The planning department, Austin Energy and Austin Water returned a memo recommending new land use categories for higher-impact facilities including hyperscale sites, covering siting, water efficiency, noise and lighting, and staff also recommended that data centres get no incentives to come to Austin and no exemption from resource efficiency standards. After the work session on 25 August, five councillors, Vanessa Fuentes, José Velásquez, Ryan Alter, Mike Siegel and Zo Qadri, held a press conference to say they oppose new data centres in Austin outright, which is a different position from the staff recommendation the council was handed. On 27 August the council could act on a resolution directing staff to begin amending Austin's Land Development Code and other city regulations.
What came of it. The council approved the resolution unanimously, directing the city manager to begin drafting amendments to the Land Development Code and other city regulations to create land uses, development standards, approval processes and operating requirements for data centres. It then amended the staff recommendation to require binding regulations by the end of 2026, and that amendment is the part worth keeping: a code that does not at present contain the words data centre now has a deadline against it, and the process is to include opportunities for public comment along the way. What it does not settle is the question the five councillors raised. A resolution to write rules is not a decision on whether large facilities are allowed at all, and the drafting is where that gets answered. The watch has logged nothing on Austin; it noted on 20 August that rules were under consideration there and held it rather than logging it.
Europe took feedback on the law that would build its data centres Open doorQ9Q10
European Union, through the Commission's Have your say portal
The European Commission put forward the Cloud and AI Development Act, a proposed regulation meant to expand the cloud and data centre capacity built inside the Union, and opened the feedback window on that proposal. This is the piece of European law that decides how the buildings get sited, financed and counted, so it sits underneath a good deal of what this page carries as a fight in somebody's council chamber. The proposal covers data centre deployment, sovereignty requirements and public procurement, and the Commission's own list of who it wanted to hear from was wide: data centre operators, cloud providers, AI developers, business users, public administrations, investors, consumer organisations, academia, business associations and citizens. The window ran from 2 July to 27 August, and the earlier round, the call for evidence that shaped the proposal before it was drafted, closed in July 2025, so what was open was comment on a text that already existed rather than a say in what it should contain.
What came of it. Not known yet. The window shut on 27 August and the Commission has published nothing about how many responses arrived or from whom. What follows is legislative rather than announced: the proposal goes to the European Parliament and the Council, and the European Economic and Social Committee has an opinion in preparation on it, so the places to look for the feedback's effect are the committee reports and the amendments, not a summary document. One thing stays checkable in the meantime. Ireland opened its own consultation on the same Act on 14 August, closing on 11 September, which is still on Ahead: a member state gathering its own view a fortnight after the Union's window shut. Whether the two say the same thing is answerable once both are visible. The watch has logged nothing on the Act since the proposal itself.
Salem Township was to widen the zone that lets a four thousand acre campus be built Open doorQ10
Berwick Assembly of God, Salem Township, Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, United States
The township published a public hearing and a board of supervisors meeting for the same day, both at the Berwick Assembly of God rather than a municipal building, which is usually a sign of expected numbers. What the supervisors were to decide is whether to widen the township's data centre overlay zone to fit the footprint of the Salem 3 campus proposed by the 4-3 Glennbrook Group, led by Jack Sordoni. The planning commission had already recommended that they do. The proposal is larger than most this page carries: more than four thousand acres, thirty-nine buildings, a power plant on the site and a closed-loop water system, resting on a land deal reported at 1.2 billion dollars across more than two hundred property owners, and drawing an estimated 3.5 to 4 gigawatts beside the Susquehanna nuclear plant. An overlay zone is the map that decides where a use is allowed at all, so widening it is the decision that comes before any particular building is argued over.
What came of it. Not known, and something that happened the day before belongs beside the gap. On 25 August, Judge Lesa S. Gelb of the Luzerne County Court of Common Pleas ruled that the township planning commission violated Pennsylvania's Sunshine Act when it met on 13 July to discuss the zoning changes behind this proposal. The complaint, brought by eight residents from Butler Township, Shickshinny, Sugarloaf, Orangeville and Berwick, was that people arrived to find the municipal building doors locked and were turned away, with an overflow room the provision made for them. The judge ordered the commission to hold a second meeting to take public input. No date for that second meeting has been published. Nothing has been published either about what the supervisors did on 26 August; the township's own home page carries an agenda for that date alongside a note of a cancelled public hearing, which this scan could not confirm against a second source, and lists a planning commission meeting for 27 August at the same church hall. So the record holds two things at once. A hearing was ordered to be run again because the public was shut out of the first one, and the day the decision was due to be taken has passed without a published outcome. Checked again on 29 August: the second planning commission meeting still has no published date, nothing has been published about a decision on the overlay zone, and the 26 August sitting is reported as a work session at the same church hall. A second civil motion has since been filed by the same eight residents, over the notice for that work session: they say the Facebook posting did not give the physical address of the meeting and that the agenda was neither posted on the door nor handed to those who came. What they are asking the court to stop is a proposed resolution that would restrict public comment to township residents and taxpayers. The watch has logged nothing on Salem Township.
An Indigenous data sovereignty webinar anyone could join, on how the idea is growing in Taiwan Q9
Online, hosted by the Collaboratory for Indigenous Data Governance, University of Arizona, United States
Margaret Yun-Pu Tu, also known as Nikal Kabala'an, spoke on the development of Indigenous data sovereignty in Taiwan. She is from the Pangcah or Amis and Sakizaya peoples and is a doctoral candidate in law at the University of Washington, working on Indigenous cultural rights, intellectual property and emerging technology policy including artificial intelligence and data governance. Registration was stated as open to the public, which is what put it on the page: much of the Indigenous data governance calendar is properly closed to outsiders, and this hour was not. It also did something that page rarely manages, which is to carry the question outside the countries that keep appearing on it.
What came of it. Not known. The hour has passed and the Collaboratory publishes nothing about who came or what was said, which is ordinary for a webinar and worth saying plainly rather than leaving as a silence. What is checkable is that the series continued. Registration is open for a session at the same hour on 2 September, a panel of six introducing new guidelines for the governance of Indigenous peoples' data in scholarly publishing, and it is on Ahead in this entry's place. That answers the open question this entry carried: the Fall 2026 Indigenous Data Exchange the Collaboratory announced as weekly on Wednesdays does appear to be running. The watch has logged nothing on this.
Piedmont voted on rezoning 630 acres for a data campus its own planning commission told it to refuse Q10
Piedmont Area Veterans Association, Piedmont, Canadian County, Oklahoma, United States
The city council was to decide on Monday evening whether to rezone about 630 acres for Project Open Sky, a data campus proposed by Cloverleaf Infrastructure of Houston, and whether to annex the site so it could draw on city water. The planning commission had recommended the application be refused pending further information, at a meeting that drew a large crowd and dozens of residents speaking. It was the third council sitting on the proposal: a June meeting ran out of time before the developer's chief executive got to speak, and a July meeting sent the future land use map back to the planning commission for more study and set 24 August for the rest.
What came of it. Not known. The council sat on the evening of 24 August and nothing has been published about what it decided. That is a plainer gap than the ones above it on this page, and it is worth naming as one: this was a scheduled, advertised vote on one of the largest developments in the town's history, and a day and a half later the reporting a search returns still describes the July meeting. One account of a council night ending at ten o'clock with no decision made could not be dated to 24 August with confidence rather than to an earlier sitting. Three things stay checkable while the answer is missing. Residents were gathering signatures on three citizen initiative petitions aimed at blocking the project or forcing a public vote on it, which is what people reach for when a hearing has not settled the matter, and whether those petitions are still being run tells you what the council did as clearly as a minute would. The developer had taken an option on an alternate site, so a refusal in Piedmont moves the proposal rather than ending it. And Piedmont has two data centre rezoning requests in the same process, of which this is the Cloverleaf one. The watch has logged nothing on Piedmont.
Buenos Aires province asked before it ruled on AI in its own courts Open doorQ9
Province of Buenos Aires, Argentina, online form
The Supreme Court of Justice of the province of Buenos Aires published a draft regulation on the responsible development and use of artificial intelligence in the provincial judiciary, and opened it for observations, contributions and suggestions through an online form. The draft holds that a judicial decision may not be delegated to an AI system. Resolution RP 747/26 opened the window on 24 June and set it to close on 7 August; Resolution RP 894/26 reopened it to 21 August inclusive, because requests to contribute kept arriving after it shut, and the court said it wanted the input of institutions and people interested in responsible use.
What came of it. Not known yet. The window shut on 21 August, the day before this entry moved here, and the court has published nothing about how many contributions arrived or from whom. What happens next is dated, which makes this one of the easier entries on the page to hold to account: the court's commission on the governance and use of artificial intelligence is to analyse what came in and give the Supreme Court a final report in September 2026. Two things are then checkable. Whether that report appears in September at all, and whether the clause that a judicial decision may not be delegated to an AI system survives into the regulation the court adopts. The reopening is worth keeping in view while waiting: a body that had already closed its door chose to open it again because people kept asking to be heard, and the test of that choice is whether what they said shows up. The watch has logged nothing on Buenos Aires.
The Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications convened administrations, regulators, businesses, technical experts, academics and civil society for three days on the theme of moving from fragmentation to interoperability, making data the foundation of Cameroon's public digital infrastructure. Sessions covered who owns data, where it is stored, how it is shared and protected, alongside cybersecurity, artificial intelligence and closing digital divides. One plenary was given over to whether the country should build a national strategic framework for data governance, and the closing round table was to draw up a roadmap and recommendations for public policy. Attendance was free, but registration closed at 11:59pm on 12 August, so what was left to an outsider by the time this page carried it was whatever the forum published.
What came of it. Not known yet. The forum closed on 20 August, the day before this entry moved here, and nothing has been published about what the closing round table produced. What it was asked to produce is on the record and makes a fair test: a roadmap for inclusive and coordinated internet governance in Cameroon, recommendations on interoperability, data governance, cybersecurity and public digital infrastructure, and a mechanism to follow them up. The final day was given to Cameroon's contribution to African and international internet governance processes, which puts a second checkable thing in view: whether anything from Yaoundé turns up at the Africa Internet Governance Forum in Accra in November, or at the global forum in Nairobi in December. The watch has logged nothing on Cameroon.
Texas House State Affairs Committee took public testimony on data centres Open doorQ10
Room JHR 140, Austin, Texas, United States
The committee met under Representative Ken King to hear invited and public testimony on two interim charges: data centre development in Texas, and the regulatory and planning process behind proposed 765-kilovolt transmission lines. The published charges led with global competitiveness and national security, then covered economic growth, training and education pathways for the jobs, whether the regulatory framework can be streamlined while communities still plan and manage growth, the implementation of Senate Bill 6, and how grid-connected facilities might support grid resilience. Anyone could register to testify in person, held to two minutes, or file an electronic comment without travelling to Austin. Water sat inside those charges rather than at the head of them, although the pressure that put the hearing on the calendar came from residents, including at Laredo on the Rio Grande, where the state neither meters data centre water use nor requires a permit to draw groundwater.
What came of it. Not known yet, and the reason belongs in the record. The hearing ended a few hours before this entry was written in Texas time, and nothing had been published about what was said. An interim hearing of this kind decides nothing on the day: it feeds a committee report that arrives later, and that report is the document to hold this against. What was published beforehand is a fair test of it. Representative Paul Dyson said constituents living along the proposed transmission routes felt the process had been rushed, and named as a priority that data centre companies rather than everyday Texans cover the added costs to the grid. Whether the report carries either of those is the checkable question.
A council majority of four to three told staff in early August to prepare a ninety-day pause on data centre approvals and to draft tighter rules in the city development code, after the municipal utility warned that the grid is close to capacity. On 18 August the council voted on setting the hearing dates. Three dates had been proposed rather than fixed, which is what made this the meeting to watch: it was the one that decided whether the later ones existed.
What came of it. The council voted four to three to proceed, and the proposed dates held. The first public hearing is set for 22 September, the second for 27 October, and final adoption for 2 December, and all three are now on Ahead in this entry's place. The watch has logged nothing on Denton, so this outcome comes from the reporting rather than from the record. One thing is worth carrying forward: adopting the pause takes a supermajority of the council, and four votes is not that, so the majority that has carried it this far is not the majority it needs in December.
Spain asked before it drafted: generative AI and performers Open doorQ9
Spain, written contributions
The Ministry of Labour and Social Economy opened a prior consultation on 31 July, before any bill was written, on an organic law governing the use of generative AI on the image and voice of people who work in the performing arts, audiovisual and music, and on the technical and auxiliary workers alongside them. The Council of State had advised that this needs an organic law because generated content can reach rights protected by article 18 of the Spanish constitution, so the question of whether a performer must be asked, contracted and paid was put while the law was still a blank page.
What came of it. The window closed on 14 August. The watch has logged nothing about how many contributions arrived or when a draft appears, and the ministry has not published that yet. One thing did shift while the consultation was open, and it is the kind of narrowing worth watching for: reporting on 11 August described the future rule as aimed at performers who hold intellectual property rights, with technical and auxiliary personnel outside it, although the consultation notice named those workers. Whether the draft carries them is the checkable question when it lands.
From this date a provider must tell people when they are dealing with an AI system, and mark synthetic audio, images, video and text so that a machine can read the marking. Systems already on the market have until 2 December 2026 to carry it.
What came of it. This date held, but most of what used to sit on it did not. The watch logged on 27 July that Regulation (EU) 2026/1744, the Digital Omnibus on AI, entered into force and moved the stand-alone high-risk obligations to 2 December 2027 and embedded high-risk systems to 2 August 2028, while adding two prohibited practices from 2 December 2026 covering AI that generates non-consensual intimate images and child sexual abuse material. This page carried the wrong version of the 2 August date for three days, and the correction is kept in the record.
Internet Governance Forum, the calls to shape the December meeting Open doorQ9
Online, for the December meeting in Nairobi
Anyone from government, civil society, academia, the technical community or business could propose a workshop, a lightning talk, an open forum or a Day 0 event for the Nairobi meeting. Alongside it ran a call for a free stand in the IGF Village and a call for remote hubs, where a group gathers in its own town, joins from there and is counted as taking part.
What came of it. The deadline moved. This page listed 31 July, which was the date announced; it was extended to Sunday 2 August at 23:59 UTC. The watch has logged nothing about which proposals were accepted, and the IGF has not published that yet. Which proposals were taken up, and from where, is the part worth returning to when the programme appears, because it is the checkable version of who gets to shape a meeting about governing the internet.
GAJRA Earth