Data is becoming the key to smart governance, supporting the delivery of citizen-centric public services. Data-driven insight will enable efficiency gains in every industry sector. Advances in data science will continue to unlock major breakthroughs in research. We saw all of these possibilities in the papers presented at Kaleidoscope 2017: Challenges for a data-driven society. The Kaleidoscope 2017 Technical Programme Committee selected 23 papers from the 63 submissions received from 22 countries on the basis of double-blind reviews, with the help of almost 80 international experts. The conference encouraged the development of data-driven applications and services of benefit to society. It highlighted the importance of a shared, integrated data ecosystem in maximizing the collective benefits to be drawn from our fast-growing wealth of data.