Digital Impact: New Questions

Here are some of the questions we heard in Toronto, Beijing, Brussels, London, Berlin, Brisbane, New York City, Mumbai, Cape Town, Medellin and Stanford.

What makes good quality data?

What does high trust digital content look like?

Should funders provide knowledge and tools to secure grantee data?

How do we manage issues of social license for tech companies, in light of: racism, labor exploitation, privacy breaches, propaganda?

When we transition to digital system – what are we doing this for? Should we do it?

How do lean organizations prioritize technology investments?

How do we protect privacy and uphold ethics when sharing data?

How do we convince owners of data to share it in the public interest?

How can we bring less bias and more pluralism into our data?

How do we keep digital risk aversion from leading to inertia?

Is digital communication the best way to reach older people?

How do we connect with our elders who do not use digital technology?

Do we need more funding for data and technology, or more creativity?

How should we balance the value of data with privacy concerns for data subjects?

How do we use cloud-based data systems responsibly?

How to engage diverse groups in our data and insights?

Should nonprofits or government lead the way in creating digital impact?

How do we link skilled data-savvy volunteers with nonprofits?

Should we assume that “digital” is good?

What is the tradeoff between legal compliance, corporate benefit/risk and ethics?

How can we attract technologists to work in the social sector?

How do we resolve the culture barriers between technologists and the sector?

What toolkits/knowledge sharing already existing in academia & civil society?

How are policymakers experiencing the “data shift”? What support/training do they need?

How can the private sector engage in responsible data and philanthropy?

Will digital civil society ever catch up to the corporate sector? Should it?

Who can organizations turn to for help working with sensitive data?

What does “informed consent” mean in domains like education?

How do we create and enforce data standards across sectors and issues areas?

Whose responsibility is it to clean up open data?