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
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