This post is written by Stefaan G. Verhulst, co-founder and chief research and development officer of The Governance Laboratory @NYU (GovLab), and Andrew Young, knowledge director at GovLab.
The problem: The relationship between the datafication of everyday life and child welfare has generally been under-explored.
Why it matters: Understanding data for and about children is more important than ever with the impact of climate change on the young - a lack of understanding about data collected is both a lost opportunity and a risk.
The solution: We need a framework for responsible data collection and use for children.
Climate change’s toll on children is not news. In the past week alone, stories have circulated on the toll of famine on families in Ethiopia, the destruction of schools caused by Storm Ana in Mozambique, and the consequences of drought in northeastern Syria on young children. Each of these stories shows the consequences of our warming world. Each of them underscores the specific threats facing young people and the multitude of ways their development can be interrupted by the crisis.
As governments and aid agencies have highlighted, malnutrition, physical and psychological abuse, increased material and emotional deprivation and neglect, educational deficiency, and various other burdens afflicting children can be borne of climate-related crises. To make matters worse, these ills are being disproportionately endured by already marginalised children — those who live in poor or broken families, and those with disabilities. As UNICEF warned last year, “As climate change disrupts the environment, children are being forced to grow up in an increasingly dangerous world. This is a crisis that threatens their health, nutrition, education, development, survival, and future.”
Such suffering, of course, only highlights and exacerbates already existent problems. As with so much concerning climate change, it has served to bring to the fore long-simmering structural challenges, challenges that call us to use all the tools at our disposal. Data-driven tools, in particular, present new and innovative ways of addressing children’s needs in humanitarian and development settings. Insights derived from open government data have allowed farmers and their families to better navigate shifting weather patterns in Colombia. In Brazil, data derived from cell phones, weather stations, and traffic sensors have informed efforts by governments and NGOs to address air pollution. UNICEF used data systems to map critical infrastructure, identify population flows, and respond to the needs of unaccompanied and separated children in the aftermath of Cyclone Idai in 2019, and has recently launched The Children’s Climate Risk Index. These examples show that data can make a difference in child welfare, provided institutions use the data in a responsible way.
At The GovLab, an action-oriented, do-tank located at New York University, data responsibility and child welfare are of central concern. Since October 2019, we have been working on issues related to child welfare in collaboration with UNICEF as part of our Responsible Data for Children initiative (RD4C). Our focus has been on data — the perils it poses to children, as well as the opportunities it offers. In addition, we have been working with the Data for Children Collaborative, with UNICEF, in establishing new and innovative practices around the use of data to improve the lives of children worldwide.
The relationship between the datafication of everyday life and child welfare has generally been under-explored, both by researchers in data ethics and those who work to advance the rights of children. This neglect is a lost opportunity, and also poses a risk to children, who are in many ways at the forefront of the steady incursions of data into our lives. In what follows, over a series of two articles, we outline eight reasons why child welfare advocates should pay more attention to data, and why we need a framework for responsible data collection and use for children.
"Unlike adults, children typically do not have full agency to make decisions about their participation in programmes or services that may generate and record personal data."
1. Children are at the forefront of datafication
Photo by Ben Wicks on Unsplash
Today’s children are the first generation to grow up amid the rapid datafication of virtually every aspect of social, cultural, political, and economic life. This alone calls for greater scrutiny of the role played by data. An entire generation is being datafied, often starting before birth. Every year the average child will have more data collected about them in their lifetime than would a similar child born any year prior. Ironically, humanitarian and development organisations working with children are themselves among the key actors contributing to the increased collection of data. These organisations rely on a wide range of technologies, including biometrics, digital identity systems, remote-sensing technologies, mobile and social media messaging apps, and administrative data systems. The data generated by these tools and platforms inevitably includes potentially sensitive PII data (personally identifiable information) and DII data (demographically identifiable information). All of this cries out for further study and examination, and for a more systematic framework to guide how child-related data is collected, stored, and used.
2. Children have less agency
Photo by note thanun on Unsplash
Unlike adults, children typically do not have full agency to make decisions about their participation in programmes or services that may generate and record personal data. Moreover, even adults face challenges in exerting agency in other areas of the data ecosystem, including especially the use of datastreams drawn from many people to create profiles or marketing segments. As Martin Tisné puts it, “we are prisoners of other people’s consent.” While adults face significant impediments to exerting individual or collective agency, children are subject to other people’s consent and decision-making. Even when children are offered a choice to opt-out from a service, they may lack the understanding to assess associated risks and benefits. In fact, privacy terms and conditions are often barely understood by educated adults, let alone children. There is a clear need for privacy terms that are more intelligible (for both adults and children), and for a higher bar when it comes to justifying and explaining data collection when it comes to children.
3. Even aggregated data can be dangerous
Aggregated, anonymised data is often held up as a solution to potential privacy violations, a way to balance the possibilities and risks offered by data. In fact, a variety of studies have shown that such data rarely offers a panacea and can often continue to pose risks even for adults, for example by re-identification (aka the ‘mosaic theory’ that refers to aggregating different personal data as to provide a mosaic of one’s identity). When it comes to children, data that is aggregated at the group or demographic level (e.g., to contain anonymised information for all subjects below a certain age) offers unique challenges. This is because children as a group are uniquely vulnerable (and visible). Services or products targeted specifically at children (e.g., those based in a certain location or receiving services for a particular vulnerability) can pose disproportionate risks to the entire targeted population (or particular categorisations of people). Children, as a group, are subject to unique risks, and aggregated ‘group data’ about children warrants additional duties of care. As it stands, these additional, child-specific risks and duties are not well-represented in current data protection policies and guidance.
In the second part to this article, we look at a further five reasons why responsible data for and about children matters. Read part 2 here.
Thanks to Lara Mikocki, Andrew J. Zahuranec and Gabrielle Berman for their input and review and Jaimee Dellipoali and Michelle Winowatan for their assistance.
Stefaan G. Verhulst is co-founder and chief research and development officer of The Governance Laboratory @NYU (GovLab) where he is building an action-research foundation on how to transform governance using advances in science, data and technology. Verhulst’s latest scholarship centres on how technology can improve people’s lives and the creation of more effective and collaborative forms of governance. Specifically, he is interested in the perils and promise of collaborative technologies and how to harness the unprecedented volume of data to advance the public good.
Andrew Young is the knowledge director at The GovLab, where he leads research efforts focusing on the impact of technology on public institutions. Among the grant-funded projects he has directed are a global assessment of the impact of open government data; comparative benchmarking of government innovation efforts against those of other countries; a methodology for leveraging corporate data to benefit the public good; and crafting the experimental design for testing the adoption of technology innovations in federal agencies.
📚 Want to learn more about this topic? Join this free email boot camp 4-week data boot camp for public servants.
👋 You can create a post like this one! Share your thoughts with a community of public servants. Learn more
(Image Credit: Unsplash)
Log in or sign up to continue the conversation