Data Governance: Law, Ethics and Politics

At the end of the course, students are able to:

Knowledge:

• Account for ethical, legal, and political aspects and consequences of the collection and use of data for a range of administrative, scientific and commercial purposes.
• Explain key legal and social science concepts, ideas, and debates pertaining to the use of different types of data in private and public contexts, including the ethical debates regarding the use of algorithms and machine learning (e.g. FATE: Fair, Accountable, Transparent, Ethical).
• Demonstrate insight into the content and implications of national and EU legal frameworks for data collection, processing and storage (i.e. GDPR).

Skills:

• Evaluate the quality of own as well as other people’s use of methods, datasets and analytical approaches in relation to the ethical, legal and political aspects or data protection.
• Commuinicater central questions around data ethics – academic as well as policy-oriented – peers and non-experts.
• Formulate efficient, ethically and legally sound procedures for managing data, including data stewardship, ownership, compliance, privacy, data risks, data sensitivity and data sharing.

Competences:

• Navigate and understand existing key legislation, rules, and ethical frameworks for personal data management and governance, especially GDPR.
• Critically discuss possibilities and risks associated with the use of data when implementing data governance policies and rules in organizations and institutions based on frameworks from social science and law.
• Assess concrete cases of data governance, including the identification of problems, risks of misuse, as well as the benefits of data analysis.