Debate and thinking around data, ethics, ICT have been growing and expanding a lot lately, which makes me very happy!
Coming up on May 22 in NYC, the engine room, Hivos, the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, and Kurante (my newish gig) are organizing the latest in a series of events as part of the Responsible Data Forum.
The event will be hosted at ThoughtWorks and it is in-person only. Space is limited, so if you’d like to join us, let us know soon by filling in this form.
What’s it all about?
This particular Responsible Data Forum event is an effort to map the ethical, legal, privacy and security challenges surrounding the increased use and sharing of data in development programming. The Forum will aim to explore the ways in which these challenges are experienced in project design and implementation, as well as when project data is shared or published in an effort to strengthen accountability. The event will be a collaborative effort to begin developing concrete tools and strategies to address these challenges, which can be further tested and refined with end users at events in Amsterdam and Budapest.
We will explore the responsible data challenges faced by development practitioners in program design and implementation.
Some of the use cases we’ll consider include:
- projects collecting data from marginalized populations, aspiring to respect a do no harm principle, but also to identify opportunities for informational empowerment
- project design staff seeking to understand and manage the lifespan of project data from collection, through maintenance, utilization, and sharing or destruction.
- project staff that are considering data sharing or joint data collection with government agencies or corporate actors
- project staff who want to better understand how ICT4D will impact communities
- projects exploring the potential of popular ICT-related mechanisms, such as hackathons, incubation labs or innovation hubs
- projects wishing to use development data for research purposes, and crafting responsible ways to use personally identifiable data for academic purposes
- projects working with children under the age of 18, struggling to balance the need for data to improve programming approaches, and demand higher levels of protection for children
By gathering a significant number of development practitioners grappling with these issues, the Forum aims to pose practical and critical questions to the use of data and ICTs in development programming. Through collaborative sessions and group work, the Forum will identify common pressing issues for which there might be practical and feasible solutions. The Forum will focus on prototyping specific tools and strategies to respond to these challenges.
What will be accomplished?
Some outputs from the event may include:
- Tools and checklists for managing responsible data challenges for specific project modalities, such as sms surveys, constructing national databases, or social media scraping and engagement.
- Best practices and ethical controls for data sharing agreements with governments, corporate actors, academia or civil society
- Strategies for responsible program development
- Guidelines for data-driven projects dealing with communities with limited representation or access to information
- Heuristics and frameworks for understanding anonymity and re-identification of large development data sets
- Potential policy interventions to create greater awareness and possibly consider minimum standards
Hope to see some of you on the 22nd! Sign up here if you’re interested in attending, and read more about the Responsible Data Forum here.
Wait... What? 