Encouraging Private Sector to Divulge Transportation Data for Public Welfare in EU
Uber's Global Head of Privacy & Security Public Policy, Uttara Sivaram, will join a panel discussion on the reuse of aggregated, anonymized, private-sector mobility data. The event, hosted by the Center for Data Innovation on April 20, 2022, aims to maximize social good while protecting individual users' privacy.
Hodan Omaar, a Senior Policy Analyst at the Center for Data Innovation, will moderate the discussion. Other panelists include Douglas Leasure from the Leverhulme Center for Demographic Science, University of Oxford, Jos Berens from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN OCHA) Centre for Humanitarian Data, Alex Pompe from Meta's Data for Good, and Antti Piirainen from the Finnish Health and Social Data Permit Authority.
Emergency response agencies and aid groups can use such data to manage the logistics of allocating limited resources to the regions that need them most. For instance, in the context of the ongoing invasion of Ukraine, this data could be crucial in tracking people's movements.
However, access to mobility data is difficult for researchers and policymakers to obtain because it typically rests with private firms. These firms face significant legal, financial, and practical challenges to sharing this data.
To address these challenges, policymakers are encouraged to take several steps to foster the reuse of mobility data while protecting individual users' privacy. These steps include:
- Developing and incentivizing secure data access interfaces such as APIs to facilitate data flow from private and public sources.
- Implementing regulated data intermediaries that ensure secure, trusted, and compliant management of sensitive data.
- Encouraging the creation of sandboxes and testing environments for SMEs and startups to experiment with innovative data sharing solutions.
- Establishing clear, transparent regulatory frameworks and standards covering data quality, anonymization, privacy, access rights, retention, ethical usage, and security protocols.
- Promoting privacy-enhancing technologies and privacy-first attestations that allow consent-based, anonymous proofs of data usage.
These steps collectively seek to balance innovation incentives from opening mobility data for reuse with stringent privacy protections, thereby fostering a trusted European data space for private-sector mobility insights without compromising individual privacy.
The webinar can be registered for, and questions for the panelists can be submitted on Slido. Follow @DataInnovation on Twitter to join the discussion using the hashtag #ourwebsite.
- Uber's Global Head of Privacy & Security Public Policy, Uttara Sivaram, will discuss the reuse of aggregated, anonymized mobility data at an event hosted by the Center for Data Innovation, aiming to enhance social good while preserving individual privacy.
- Hodan Omaar, a Senior Policy Analyst at the Center for Data Innovation, will moderate the panel discussion that includes experts from the Leverhulme Center for Demographic Science, UN OCHA Centre for Humanitarian Data, Meta's Data for Good, and the Finnish Health and Social Data Permit Authority.
- Access to mobility data is most often controlled by private firms, making it hard for researchers and policymakers to obtain, due to legal, financial, and practical challenges in sharing such data.
- To facilitate data sharing while ensuring privacy protection, policymakers are advised to develop secure data access interfaces, implement regulated data intermediaries, encourage sandboxes for SMEs, establish clear regulatory frameworks, and promote privacy-enhancing technologies.
- These steps aim to foster a trusted European data space for private-sector mobility insights while balancing innovation incentives with stringent privacy protections, to avoid compromising individual privacy.
- Interested individuals can register for the webinar, submit questions for panelists on Slido, and join the discussion by following @DataInnovation on Twitter using the hashtag #ourwebsite.
