Author: Violeta Mezeklieva
Publisher: Open Data Institute
Publication Year: 2020
Summary: The following article is from the Open Data Institute and it highlights the experience that the author, Violeta Mezeklieva, has had over the past year on training people on data ethics and the insights that have been gleaned from that experience. She highlights that although it is her training all kinds of folks on the importance and the concepts of data ethics, it was her who really had an educational experience observing how much she has learned from the people who go through this sort of training. She starts out by saying she observed people making the realization that data ethics is part of everyday practice and that people are often surprised to realize that having discussions about ethics of their data projects is not as challenging as they initially perceived it to be. Next, she observed that people realize that data ethics is all about asking the right questions. If you ask purposeful, thoughtful questions related to data ethics, it can spark a healthy discussion on the ethical considerations of the project. She also observed that data ethics gets people thinking about their customers and users where the focus really should be. Finally, she observed that people learn that data is about people and observing the use cases can be helpful to visualize the human impact of whatever analysis they’re performing.