A summary report of a workshop held on April 4, 2022.

Te Rourou Tātaritanga with Victoria University of Wellington, the University of Auckland, and the Social Wellbeing Agency organised a workshop on Data Ethics, Privacy, and Governance. The online workshop was held on 4 April with participants from government agencies, industry, and academia. These themes will inform a symposium planned for early 2023.

Key themes that emerged:

• Issues were discussed in relation to the current system including wide variability in how and when data ethics are considered in relation to collection, use, and sharing of population data; across a range of users (e.g. agency officials, community groups, private industry) and activities (e.g. from highly operational to research purposes).
• Discussions then shifted to what an ideal system could look like and the workshop generally acknowledged the value of developing, instituting, and sustaining a coherent and comprehensive framework covering data ethics. There was discussion around a statutory/legislative framework or an ethical framework.
• There were several perspectives on Māori data sovereignty, its oversight, what it means practically, and how it should be handled. There was acknowledgement that this is still a developing area.
• Work to scope, adopt/expand, institute, and sustain a framework should involve organisations and people managing the data, people using the data, and people the data is about.
• It was acknowledged that any future data ethics framework must recognise and sit alongside existing and planned work within government, such as the Government Data Strategy and Roadmap. There was encouragement to elevate or expand an existing framework instead of creating a new one.

Files

Summary report (PDF)

Links

• Workshop