Big data analytics and other innovative uses of personal data can produce tremendous social and economic value. They can also erode privacy, undermine cybersecurity, and deepen inequality. One of the keys to reducing these undesired impacts, and so to unlocking data’s many benefits, is good governance.
An initiative of the Moritz College of Law and the Translational Data Analytics Institute, the Program on Data and Governance seeks to identify the strategies that will best allow society to achieve data’s important benefits while reducing its potential harms. The program focuses on four main areas:
Society can govern through law and policy. But it can also govern through ethics, business management, technology, or social norms. The Program on Data and Governance conducts non-partisan, interdisciplinary research on these governance strategies in order to evaluate which works best in particular contexts. The program also analyzes the increasing role that data plays in national security, immigration, and other areas of public policy and democratic practice.
The program serves as a national center for the academic and policy conversation about data and governance. It hosts conferences, roundtables, speakers, and other events, many of which take place at Moritz and are open to students.
The program participates in national and regional policy forums regarding data innovation, privacy, cybersecurity, and equality. It serves as a resource for the policymakers, businesses, researchers, and public interest groups that seek ways to achieve data’s many benefits while reducing its undesired impacts.
The program trains the next generation of legal, policy, and data science professionals to identify data governance issues and develop solutions to them.
The Program on Data and Governance encourages faculty from other Ohio State colleges and departments (e.g. Computer Science and Engineering, Business, Public Affairs, Philosophy, Medicine, and Public Health) to join as affiliates and collaborate on research. Affiliated faculty provide the Program on Data and Governance with the interdisciplinary lens required to understand big data and to think most effectively about how to govern it. The Program on Data and Governance is part of the Translational Data Analytics Institute at The Ohio State University.
