A VISIBLE DIFFERENCE
Ethical Design & Analytics Is Our Purpose
“The first principle for ethical data use is that it should be done with an expectation of tangible benefit. Ideally, it should deliver value to all concerned parties — the individuals who generated the data as well as the organization that collects, analyzes and uses it.”
Before starting a new project or conducting any new analysis, we ask ourselves whether it will bring equal benefit to the public in addition to the company.
If it doesn’t, we won’t do it.
WHAT WE DO
During the past few years, data theft and privacy concerns have emerged as a heavy counterweight to the benefits of big data and data analytics. Ethical Design, along with the right or wrong conduct related to handling data, is in daily public discourse.
One of the foundational steps in truly turning public trust into your competitive edge is establishing a culture of data privacy ethics within your entity or organization. For data privacy to sit at the core of your online activities, your employees and/or volunteers as well as the public must be thoroughly bought into data ethics and data privacy practices.
We advise that an organization first needs to establish a reputation for protecting customer data and privacy.
We recommend communicating, in detail, the steps a company or organization is taking to keep customer information secure. Be transparent and thorough in all communication. As part of this process, educating consumers on how to use a product or service with cybersecurity best-practices builds a foundation of trust.
We build on the ideal that we all should be “privacy optimists” and see privacy as a way to build trust. The way we approach and handle personal data and privacy is a core trust indicator.
We work with those who are not passive in how one communicates data practices by simply relying on a stated online privacy policy to do all the communicating.
Instead, we encourage a proactive approach in how to communicate data policies. Providing customers, employees and volunteers with a complete overview of the data held on them, where it comes from, how it’s collected, and how it’s used in a user-friendly way is an active embracement of transparency as a means to win and retain public loyalty.
We are professionals who work in data-related fields that are actively rethinking long-held beliefs about its management and use. Our activities are founded in core principles centering on the responsibility of companies to ethically protect the rights of data sources – in particular, consumers and the public at large.