The Ethical Implications of Data-Sharing

Elizabeth Edenberg (left), and Maggie Little (right) speak to workshop participants.

Our Engagement

Ethics Lab hosted a one-day workshop on September 27th at Georgetown as part of a Georgetown-wide project funded by the Sloan Foundation. The workshop brought together an interdisciplinary group of 15 experts—lawyers, computer scientists, policy researchers and philosophers—to discuss ethical challenges and opportunities in the emerging field of data sharing. 

Administrative data has tremendous potential to inform and improve policy choices, program design, and project evaluation in areas such as healthcare, education, housing, employment, and countless other fields. But data sharing by a host of actors—federal, state, and local governments, universities, non-profit organizations, and for-profit corporations—also raises fundamental ethical challenges.

Ethics Lab’s Senior Ethicist and Assistant Research Professor Elizabeth Edenberg said, “The ethical issues at stake are complex, important, and require stakeholder involvement. The interdisciplinary group of experts we gathered is well-placed to understand the significance and urgency of the ethical issues. They can take the first step towards developing a responsible approach toward building ethical frameworks to guide this emerging area of research.” 

Elizabeth Edenberg talks to workshop participants.

Methodology 

Ethics Lab deployed its unique methodology for facilitating interdisciplinary conversations focused on ethical issues in emerging technology.

The team uses methods from design with carefully crafted philosophical questions and scenarios to illuminate ethical tensions and scaffold productive conversations and—ideally—insights. Some of these methods include making things visual, and thus easier to see, sort, and return to ideas, and to see gaps in your knowledge; and quick, iterative exercises that help establish an environment where it's okay to take risks.

This was an interactive workshop, including a mix of collaborative brainstorming exercises and spaces for discussion to help deepen our collective understanding of the issues in play. These conversations also help experts better share knowledge across different disciplinary divides.