Ethical Data Management: It’s Now or Never

Data management requires most companies to move extremely quickly. In fact, since the average person?generates?1.7 MB of data every second, just keeping up might require nearly all your focus.

Don’t forget, though, about the people generating that data. When it comes to data management, you’re not just collecting, organizing, and synthesizing random data points. You’re gathering up real information on real people.

Considering data management in this way brings up the question of ethics.

The murky waters of most data lakes

Not so very long ago, the big question about data was how to collect more of it. Companies aggressively built their tech stacks to try to capture any and all data they could. They bought data lists from third-party providers. The amount and type of data organizations collected exploded.

But then concerns about data usage crept in. From database breaches to scandals like Cambridge Analytica’s, the public started to worry about what data was getting collected and how it was getting used.

Enter: safeguards like Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). Exit: third-party cookies. As data collection methods and the regulation around them changed, organizations have been forced to reconsider their data management practices. And this is likely excellent timing. As AI breaks the possibilities of data usage open, ethical data management matters now more than ever.

Instituting internal measures to guide ethical data management

Even as certain data collection opportunities evaporate and data management gets governmentally regulated, most organizations likely have their own internal work to do. You probably have some dark data — data that was collected but never properly structured. Or you might have data that was collected before regulations went into effect that you’re reusing now.

Your company likely isn’t in a place to pause all operations using data and evaluate the current state of things, though. So what do you do?

You could take a page from the book of several large organizations — and decades of academic research — and create a review board. By naming people to this data ethics review board, you give key players the power to shape data governance at your company. And you help to ensure that moving full-speed ahead doesn’t land your company in hot water.

Getting starting with a data ethics review board

Most companies establish these boards with members across the organization’s functions. You might have a few company executives, for example, paired with a dedicated digital ethics professional, a data specialist, and a compliance officer.

Then, your company can institute a process for this review board to follow. That should generally vary depending on the scale of the project. Smaller undertakings might only need approval from one person (e.g., the digital ethics specialist), while large projects go before the entire board.

You should also have your data ethics review board analyze projects that are already in motion. Being diligent about protecting and respectfully using people’s data can help to build trust, driving loyalty and sales.

Specifically, you might have the review board use a checklist of questions to evaluate each data-using project. They might ask:

• How is the data collected?
• How do the people behind the data consent to that collection?
• How will data be stored — and safeguarded?
• How will we verify that the data is correct?
• How will we use the data?
• Will the data be destroyed after this project is completed, or stored? If stored, for how long? What are the guidelines around reuse?

Developing a data ethics review board means investing company time and dollars, but it can save your company from leaving a bad taste in your customer’s mouths with bad data management. Beyond that, it could save you?hundreds of millions of dollars?in fines.

Don’t wait to start building ethical data management into your organization’s processes today.