Graduate Speaker Series: The Art of Data Privacy

At what point does the sacrifice to our personal information outweigh the public good?  

If public policymakers had access to our personal and confidential data, they could make more evidence-based, data-informed decisions that could accelerate economic recovery and improve emergency disaster responses. However, access to personal data comes at a steep privacy cost for contributors, especially underrepresented groups. For example, revealing too much location information places people at risk such as empowering stalkers to track people more easily, but too little personal, location information will severely hinder the effectiveness of issuing fire or flood evacuations.      

Join us in person or virtually for a presentation and sit-down interview with researcher, educator, and data privacy and confidentiality expert Claire McKay Bowen, who will discuss the importance of balancing these competing needs. She'll also walk through the issues the U.S. government and private sector must navigate when collecting and disseminating data. Specifically, the seminar will answer the questions of what data privacy and confidentiality is, why should you care, what is being done now and what are the future challenges using a famous piece of art.