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Privacy, Policy, and Data Governance in the University

Abstract

Data about individuals are valuable institutional assets. Their value increases, both to the University and to external third parties, as they accumulate and can be reused and remixed in new ways. “Big data” and predictive analytics define a new generation of opportunities and risks across the institution, whether in student success, research, precision medicine, or administrative effectiveness. Risks of breach, misuse, or misinterpretation of information about our community also increase. Data that may not appear to be sensitive at the time of collection, such as student traffic to a course website, may become extremely rich when combined with other data such as a student’s grades, medical records, library usage, food purchases, and social media habits. Similarly, information that is nominally public, such as a faculty member’s bibliography of publications, can become extremely sensitive when combined with proprietary analytics used to rank individuals, departments, universities, and countries. As data, metadata, algorithms, and analytics are shared within and between universities, and with third parties, the complexity of data governance increases. UCLA, a long-time leader in privacy policy and in joint faculty-administrative governance of information technology services, will release the findings of the Data Governance Task Force in June, 2016. https://ccle.ucla.edu/course/view/datagov. This talk will frame the implications of those findings for universities and higher education.

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