event
Stanford University 326 Galvez St, CA
THIS CONFERENCE HAS ALREADY TAKEN PLACE. CLICK HERE TO READ THE CONFERNCE SUMMARY.
Registration is by invitation only
Overview
Civil society is where we act as private citizens on behalf of a greater public. It includes our actions as voters and organizers as well as volunteers, donors, and often providers of social, cultural or environmental programming and services. Digital data and networks are changing civil society as rapidly and profoundly as they are business and government. Since much of civil society depends on a unique set of relationships between private actors and public benefits, it faces its own challenges of articulating core principles for the ethical use of digital data and associated tools (networks, algorithms, storage) in pursuit of its missions.
The Ethics of Data in Civil Society (EoD) conference will provide a place for scholars, activists, policy makers and funders to collectively address shared questions that, until now, have been faced and dealt with in the silos of specific work such as journalism, crisis response, civic technology, health care, criminal justice and other spheres with vibrant civil society participants.
These questions include:
From our planning work, which has included discussions across many domains and with varied stakeholders in civil society, the most frequent ethical challenges regarding digital data are:
Similarly, digital data versions of these ethical challenges are different from their “analog” counterparts in certain ways that require a new ethical calculus of private risk and public benefit. Specifically:
The EoD Conference is designed to inform and complement other forums for research and practical work on digital data and ethics by providing a focus on core principles and by bringing together multiple stakeholders.
The unique contribution of this forum will be to articulate core ethical principles that cut across domains and represent the ideals of civil society action. For example, medical researchers, criminal justice lawyers, environmental activists, journalists and voluntary technology organizations all face credibility challenges when social media are used. Civil society actors need to develop procedures for involving volunteers in this work in ways that respect the rights of the volunteers and the intended beneficiary populations, maintain the integrity of the data, respect the often commercial or government data ownership regimes, and still deliver benefits to a broad public. The EoD conference will provide a place for actors from across these domains to develop shared principles for doing this.
Our goal is to articulate core principles of ethical digital data use in civil society that can stand the test of time and weather the pace of innovation, both in technology and in civil society organizing.
Return to top of page Stanford UniversityMonday, September 15 – Tuesday, September 16, 2014
Frances C. Arrillaga Alumni Center, McCaw Hall (view directions & map)
326 Galvez St.
Stanford, CA