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“Data is not just numbers. It’s a tool for action.”  Speaking at the Third Abu Dhabi Child Data Symposium, a high-level global forum aimed at harnessing children’s data to drive scalable societal change, Friederike Schüür, UNICEF’s Chief of Data Strategy and Data Governance, stressed how critical data governance is to inform policy that truly benefits children. Drawing on her experience working directly with fieldworkers across the globe, she also discussed how youth engagement can bridge the gaps in traditional policymaking so that policies are not just made for children but also informed by them. The Symposium was organized by the Abu Dhabi Early Childhood Authority, as part of its World Early Childhood Development (WED) Movement. The Unleashed Power of Data  In today's datafied society, almost every child leaves a digital trail behind. From their movements to their health and education, nearly every aspect of their lives is being tracked and recorded. And there's huge potential value in that storehouse. In the right hands, Schüür argued, it could rewrite futures, helping policymakers design targeted interventions that actually work. But data alone doesn’t change anything. Without good governance, she warned, it can be misused, abused, and even cause harm.  Schüür unpacked what experts refer to as the ‘data value chain’: collection, storage, analysis, sharing... Each phase, she stressed, demands scrutiny. Cutting corners in collection? You could end up with unreliable datasets. Rushing through analysis? You might overlook marginalized voices. Any mismanagement risks introducing bias or gaps, leading to policies that fail to serve the very children they meant to protect.  That’s why data governance matters so much. For years, UNICEF has been at the forefront of efforts to ensure ethical and effective data stewardship. Since launch, its Data Governance Fit for Children (DG4C) programme has been focusing on fostering trust among data owners, data users, regulators and other stakeholders. Trust is the foundation that drives meaningful action and builds bridges for collaboration, ultimately enabling the responsible use of data to benefit children. Together with governments and organizations around the world, DG4C has developed some best practices to protect and promote children, rather than exploit and exclude them.   Responsible Data Governance in Action  One of DG4C’s key efforts in this area is the Responsible Data for Children (RD4C) initiative, developed in collaboration with the GovLab at New York University. This initiative sets out clear guidelines and hands-on tools for handling children’s data responsibly.  Schüür outlined the seven RD4C principles, explaining that they aren’t just rigid rules, but can be adapted to different contexts, whether in humanitarian crises or more stable environments. She placed particular emphasis on the participatory approach, underscoring UNICEF’s push to ensure young people can lead discussions about how their data should be governed and their digital future should look like.  She shared real-life stories from UNICEF’s recent work, including inviting young people across the world to write articles about their concerns about the current digital world, as well as bringing young people to the UN World Data Forum and facilitating their dialogues with global senior policymakers. These efforts and active participation from our next generation prove one thing: Young people aren’t just passive data points; They want a say in how their data is handled.  Meanwhile, with AI evolving at an unprecedented rate, Schüür warns that ensuring responsible data governance is more urgent than ever. “Data is the currency of AI. Without good data, AI cannot function effectively.” She explained and then added, “without strong governance, AI can reinforce bias and inequality instead of solving problems.”   A Pioneering Index for Child Well-Being  A major milestone at the symposium was the announcement that Abu Dhabi will begin developing the Thriving Child Index, a groundbreaking initiative by the Abu Dhabi Early Childhood Authority (ECA). This innovative child welfare assessment integrates data from multiple sectors that influence children's development. It seeks to give a holistic picture of children's overall well-being, rather than using a singular lens.  Schüür welcomed this initiative, saying: "investing in early childhood development delivers long-term benefits, not only for the child, but for society as a whole." She also stressed that strong data governance will be essential to ensuring the insights powered by the Index can be translated into concrete, actionable policy changes.  The Abu Dhabi Early Childhood Authority and the RD4C initiative have been longtime partners, working together to promote ethical and effective child data governance. RD4C’s methodologies will play an important role in shaping the Thriving Child Index, ensuring that data is used responsibly and for the benefit of all children. (Lead Image by Aleksei Zhivilov on Unsplash)

Youth Voices

Note: This article is written by an expert from one of our partners in the UNWDF Commitment to Data Governance Fit for Children. As a thoughtful reflection on the themes explored in the campaign, it offers valuable insights from the recent UN World Data Forum and serves as a meaningful conclusion to this “Youth Voices” series. While RD4C provided light editorial support to enhance readability, the content remains entirely the author’s. The views expressed are independent and do not necessarily reflect official positions or endorsements by UNICEF or The GovLab.   In today’s hyper-connected world, youth are more engaged with technology than any previous generation. According to the World Population Prospects, 56% of the world’s population is under 35, and almost 80% of young people aged 15-24 use the internet—14 percentage points more than the rest of the population. Despite their digital engagement, young people are often excluded from the conversations shaping the data economy, policy frameworks, and governance structures. This paradox highlights a critical issue: while youth are the most digitally connected group, they have little influence over how their data is used, governed, and regulated. This article explores how young people can become key stakeholders in data governance and responsible artificial intelligence (AI), offering their unique insights to reshape policies that impact their future. It also offers some reflections regarding youth engagement and involvement in data governance, especially during the recent UN World Data Forum in Colombia and the need to fund and leverage these initiatives. Informed data usage: youth as storytellers of their experience with data One of the most common misconceptions about young people is that they are indifferent to issues like privacy and data usage. This assumption fails to recognize that youth are not only aware of the data economy but are also capable of articulating how they want their data to be managed. They are the best storytellers of their own experiences with technology and data. They understand the nuances of data collection and are increasingly concerned about the ethical dimensions of technology use. Yet, young people remain absent from key decision-making processes. They are seen as passive users of technology rather than active participants who should shape its development. The disconnect between youth and data governance stems from a lack of access to spaces where these critical decisions are being made. The vocabulary around data governance is often complex, inaccessible, and uninviting to young people. They rarely have the opportunity to contribute their insights in meaningful ways. In policy discussions, their participation is frequently limited to token moments—a brief speech, a minute to offer feedback—rather than ongoing consultation and collaboration. A shift in mindset is needed: we must bring young people to the center of these discussions. We need to design inclusive participatory methodologies that enable youth to contribute throughout the policymaking process, not just rubber-stamp decisions made by older generations. Youth-centered approaches, such as youth labs, where young people can experiment, collaborate, and offer feedback on tech design, data use, and policy formulation, could be a game-changer. Youth role in data policies: from marginalized voices to active architects Youth are not only underrepresented in tech design—despite being targeted as main users—but also in the policymaking sphere. Globally, only 13.52% of parliamentarians are under 40 years old, and youth are largely absent from international forums and national debates on digital policy. This lack of representation creates a policy landscape that does not reflect the concerns and aspirations of young people, despite the fact that youth will live with the long-term consequences of these decisions. The impact of this exclusion is multifaceted. For example, youth face unique challenges in the digital age, including issues around mental health, digital literacy, and online safety. Without a voice in policy, these challenges are often overlooked. In many cases, adults assume that young people are digital natives who inherently understand technology, but this assumption neglects the fact that many young people lack the necessary digital literacy skills to navigate the complexities of the data economy. According to recent data, 67% of youth globally do not possess basic digital skills—largely due to the lack of adequate resources and infrastructure, which is a reality particularly prevalent in regions like Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean as well as in some Asian countries. If youth are to play a more significant role in data policies, we must rethink how we engage various youth communities. Moving beyond tokenism, young people should be involved in drafting policies, consulting on frameworks, and contributing to the design of technologies that impact their lives. It is not enough for young people to provide input at the start or end of the policy process; they must be co-creators throughout. Advocacy efforts like those led by Design It For Us provide examples of how young people can leverage social media and other digital tools to share their thoughts, shape public discourse, and push for more inclusive and effective policies. Youth engagement in global policy: fostering intergenerational dialogue In the realm of data governance and AI ethics, young people have a vital role to play in shaping our digital future. The rapid rise of generative AI technologies and AI-driven decision-making tools has generated important ethical questions about transparency, bias, and accountability.  An intergenerational dialogue is crucial to target these and other rising questions. Youth perspectives on AI governance are not only relevant but can enrich the debate, offering fresh ideas that challenge traditional ways of thinking. For example, in the recent debate surrounding TikTok’s use in the United States, young users voiced views that went beyond privacy issues to include questions about mental health, addiction, and social dynamics. These insights provide valuable context that older policymakers might overlook, underscoring the importance of having youth at the table. At the latest UN World Data Forum in Medellín, Colombia, together with partners from the Data Governance Fit For Children commitment, various partners joined forces to bring youth voices to the center of data governance conversations. Throughout a full week, youth from Colombia and the world came together to share their insights, challenges and experiences with data and talked to decision makers about the issues they care most about. From the need to design safer technologies for children and youth of all ages to the impacts of data-driven technologies like AI on the planet, young people voiced their concerns to decision makers and interviewed global leaders to better understand and shape the conversation. It was personally inspiring and exciting to witness how youth from all ages and contexts felt they belonged in this space thanks to the efforts of various partners. Young people came together to craft their own declaration on data governance fit for children and thanks to various workshops and labs, they were given the space to think about creative solutions for the challenges they are facing. Yet, the UN World Data Forum attested to the need to make these youth engagement efforts more sustainable. Youth engagement should not be limited to a participation in a specific conference or 1-hour intergenerational dialogue, but should be a continued and sustained endeavor. This requires dedicated teams, funding, and other resources.  It is clear that young people are not simply passive consumers of technology—they are active users with ideas on how to shape it. Some are already working on startups and projects that harness data to address critical global challenges, from climate change to digital inclusion. By supporting youth-led initiatives in AI and data governance, we can ensure that these technologies are developed and deployed in ways that are ethical, inclusive, and forward-looking. The way forward To involve young people as key stakeholders in the digital economy, we need to foster intergenerational collaborations and create spaces for experimentation and dialogue. Projects that promote youth participation, such as hackathons focused on AI ethics, youth-led policy drafting sessions, or collaborative platforms for young tech entrepreneurs, can help bridge the gap between youth and data economy decision-making. We also need to recognize that young people are not a monolithic group. Their experiences with technology vary significantly depending on their geographic location, economic background, and access to digital infrastructure. For instance, while some young people in urban areas may have access to high-speed internet and tech education, others—particularly in rural or underserved communities—may still lack basic connectivity and digital literacy skills. To address these disparities, we must invest in digital inclusion initiatives that prioritize meaningful internet access, digital literacy, and skills training for all young people. And youth should have a say in how these initiatives are designed and implemented. Conclusion Youth nowadays are the most connected generation, yet they are the least involved in the governance of the technologies that shape their lives. To close this gap, we must bring young people to the center of conversations on data responsibility and governance. By equipping youth with the tools and the avenues to actively participate in policy making and tech design, we can ensure that the digital future is equitable, ethical, and reflective of the diverse experiences of young people. Their perspectives are not only valuable but essential to building a responsible, sustainable digital future for all. (The photos are courtesy of the author and were taken at the fifth UN World Data Forum in Medellín, Colombia.)   About the Author Mariana Rozo-Paz is a lawyer and policy professional passionate about data and AI governance, responsible innovation and digital inclusion. She worked at Data-Pop Alliance on Latin America's data-driven development policies and at Harvard's Berkman Klein Center on digital identity inclusion. Currently, she leads policy engagement and research at the Datasphere Initiative, where she heads the Youth4OurDataFuture project. She also lectures at the School of Government and co-directs the Tech and Policy Lab at Universidad de los Andes. Mariana is the co-founder and CEO of beBold, an initiative inspiring girls and young women to enter into and thrive in tech. She is an advocate for data equity and digital inclusion, especially of youth.    Articles published in this series: Juventudes en gobiernos hiperconectados On the Digital Table, Youth Need a Voice, Not Just a Seat Who’s Really Watching? The Hidden Data Risks of Children’s “Phone Watches” AI时代的孩子：如何用“道德数据”守护他们的未来？ Youth Leading the Way: Innovating Data Governance in Humanitarian Aid 当未成年人在网上“裸奔”：一种数据信托的破局新思路

Youth Voices

Note: The views and ideas shared in this article come directly from the inspiring young leaders who contributed to the campaign as part of the Responsible Data for Children (RD4C) initiative. These voices reflect the unique perspectives of youth from diverse backgrounds and regions. While RD4C provided light editorial support to enhance readability, the content remains entirely theirs—authored by young people for young people. Their insights are independent and do not necessarily represent official positions or endorsements by UNICEF or The GovLab.   “为什么我会接到这么多骚扰电话？”“为什么应用软件可以监听我并做个性化推荐？”“为什么不同应用能够互通我的数据？” 在高度信息化的时代，这些问题几乎困扰着每个人。我们感觉自己好像在网络上“裸奔”：个人隐私不仅可能被泄露，甚至会被反复利用，而我们却对这些数据的去向一无所知。 在日本，一种新的数据流通方式试图颠覆上述场景，让个人数据回归个人掌控。2018年，日本总务省与经济产业省合作，召集专家小组，启动了这项有关数据信托的专题研究。经过多年公开讨论、征求意见和试点实践，一套相对完善的政策设计已经出炉，其创新应用也已初具雏形，尤其在拥有大量有关健康和医疗信息的老年群体中。 在数据信托模式下，老年人和数据控制者之间的传统关系被重新定义，信托公司和独立的第三方处理机构被引入——在日本，这一角色被称作“数据银行”；在中国，也有学者展开了类似探讨——它们接受老年人委托，作为合规主体管理个人数据，在其同意和指示下，将限定范围的数据提供给有需要的第三方使用。这一设计巧妙隔离了服务提供方对老年人数据的绝对掌控，不仅有效保障了老年人的数据安全，还在合规范围内最大化地释放了数据的经济价值，为智慧养老提供了有力支持。 作为互联网的重度使用者，未成年人也拥有大量数据，他们对商业社会的规则和数据流通的风险缺乏认知。这一群体是否同样可以受益于数据信托模式？ 未成年人的数据风险 在中国，未成年人的电子设备普及率已超过90%。数据信息在未成年人日常生活中所占的比重日益增加，与之相关的问题也变得更为尖锐。 首先是隐私安全问题，未成年人数据的泄露、滥用和非法交易是数据保护中的重大风险之一。人民日报旗下人民数据管理有限公司发布的报告显示，2022年，“未成年人信息安全”话题中涉及个人隐私的敏感信息占比达25.6%，同比增长201.7%。近七成家长表示收到过与孩子信息有关的推销电话或垃圾短信。由于技术与监管的滞后，未成年人数据在采集、存储和流通过程中易被滥用，而现有隐私保护措施仍显不足。 其次是数据垄断问题，大型互联网公司掌握着大量儿童和青少年的行为数据，这些数据不仅用于商业化运作，还形成了资源高度集中的局面。数据垄断使得教育、公益等机构难以公平获得所需数据，从而限制了未成年人在教育和社会服务领域的精准发展机会。 未成年人数据在保护与发展的平衡中也存在着矛盾。未成年人数据保护政策旨在全面保护未成年人，但在实际应用中，政策的普遍性与未成年人个体差异一定程度上构成冲突。事实上，即使是相同年龄的未成年人，由于先天和后天环境等因素的影响，各方面能力的往往存在差异，因此，对每个未成年人进行个性化评估可以更好地在保护其权益不受侵犯的前提下，满足未成年人对探索性、创新性内容获取的需求，避免“青少年模式”变“婴儿模式”的问题。 如果引入数据信托模式，这些问题或许能够得到有效缓解。依托制度方面的创新设计，未成年人的数据流通将在保障隐私安全的同时，最大化地实现为公益服务、为未成年人群体本身服务。 什么是数据信托？ 如上图所示，在数据信托模式下，未成年人及其监护人作为委托人，将数据财产权委托给信托公司。信托公司作为受托人，以维护未成年人利益为目标，承担信义义务，对数据的采集、存储、分析和流通进行监督与管理；而第三方机构负责具体的数据分析与合规使用。 对于未成年人来说，这样的设计让他们的数据不再“裸奔”，还能在保障安全的同时被善用，为教育、医疗等公益领域创造更多可能。对家长而言，这像是为孩子的数据建起了一道“防火墙”，在不确定的数字世界中提供了一份安心。 然而，这一看似理想的模式能否真正走向现实？基于贵州省的调研经验与相关文献研究，下文将进一步分析它的优势与潜在的落地挑战。 为什么数据信托适合未成年人？ 当前，未成年人及其监护人在面对数据控制者时往往处于弱势地位，而信托模式的引入将改变这一格局，有效平衡数据主体与数据控制者的权力差距。受托人以法律框架为依托，承担信义义务，强化未成年人及其监护人对数据使用的决策权，从而有效制衡数据控制者的权力。例如，信息银行作为符合国家规定标准的可靠主体，接受个人委托。管理个人数据，并在老年人同意的基础上，根据本人指示或预先设定的条件，将一定范围内的数据提供给第三方使用，以实现老年人数据的高效利用，这一模式同样可以借鉴到未成年人领域。 数据信托模式还可以平衡保护与赋权之间的矛盾。未成年人数据保护需要在“过度保护”与“适度赋权”之间找到平衡。通过秉持在合规前提下受益人权益最大化原则，这一模式可以充分发挥信托公司与第三方数据机构对数据价值挖掘的灵活性，通过负责任的数据处理和多样的制度设计，根据未成年人的具体情况，提供更加有针对性的服务，即按照未成年人年龄、认知水平和数据风险，分层设定权限。在确保数据隐私安全的同时，该模式将为未成年人提供接触新技术和数字资源的机会。 未成年人数据信托通过信托公司与第三方机构的合作，在保障数据安全的同时，还将提升数据流通效率。信托公司作为受托人，负责管理数据的所有权和使用权，明确规定数据的用途和流通范围，从而避免数据滥用或未经授权的使用。第三方机构则在数据处理过程中发挥技术监督作用，通过加密、脱敏和分布式存储等技术手段确保数据的安全性，并对数据流通过程进行实时监控，确保其符合合同规定。这样的结构化管理不仅可以提高数据流通的效率，明确的合规性审查还将降低数据泄露的风险。在这一模式下，数据主体能够确保其个人数据在多个环节都得到严格的保护，同时，数据的使用也能在安全的框架内得到高效处理，这种模式特别适用于未成年人数据的管理，因为这一群体的敏感性和脆弱性要求更高的安全保障。 此外，该模式独特之处还在于其对数据生命周期的全面管理，从采集、存储到使用和销毁，均嵌入法律和技术双重保护。这种设计不仅关注数据保护的安全性，还注重数据在合规条件下的最大化利用，为数据流通与隐私保护之间的平衡提供了解决方案。例如，随着儿童成长，其数据积累可能用于医疗、教育和职业规划等多个领域，而信托模式能够保障这些数据的长期安全与合规使用，从而为未成年人创造更多价值。 贵阳的探索：数据信托的未来 在今年八月随南开大学社会实践团队探访贵阳大数据交易所时，我了解到，中国第一笔具有数据信托色彩的个人数据流通计划已于2023年年初落地。该项目由招聘求职平台好活（贵州）网络科技有限公司（下称“好活”）发起，个人用户授权好活经营其个人简历，在保护隐私的前提下开发出数据产品，数据中介机构贵州吾道律师事务出具法律意见书，最终，好活通过算法和市场分析对简历进行定价，并将其在贵阳大数据交易所上架。据报道，用人企业每点阅一次简历，简历所有者就能获得二至三元不等的收入，求职者得以边找工作边挣钱。这一模式的落地为探索未成年人数据的信托管理带来了更多想象空间。 然而，在与负责人就该模式进一步沟通后，我发现，这种具有信托色彩的个人交易模式在推广和深入挖掘方面存在政策不明的难点，企业只能“摸着石头过河”。在与某数据服务公司访谈时，负责人向我们透露，该公司有意尝试面向个人的数据信托模式，但目前领导层还在观望政策动向。无独有偶，在我们采访的多家组织都表示了这种担忧，由此反映出“顶层设计”与“基层涌现”的差异还需要进一步协调与磨合。 令人意外的是，技术本身并不是数据信托模式的主要障碍。当前，数据流通的技术已较为成熟。在数据资产定价方面，贵阳大数据交易所已于2023年上线全国首个数据产品交易价格计算器，不断完善统一规范的数据流通定价规则和价格形成机制。在数据流通主体方面，企业、政府间的数据流通交易已经有一定规模，得益于官方背书支持，负责处理政府数据的大多是国企；民企则需要获得授权才可以开展相关业务。据了解，当前贵阳数据交易市场十分活跃，其业务场景包罗万象，包括政务民生数据的治理、保险与金融行业风险评估等，未来还将拓展医疗、交运等场景的解决方案。 贵州活跃的数据交易市场为未成年人数据信托提供了良好的实践基础，也带来了新的启发。政策的不明确和企业的观望态度，表明信托模式的推进还有很长的路要走。但从技术的成熟到定价机制的完善，数据信托已经有了一个良好的开端。 或许，正如贵阳的创新实践所展现的那样，未成年人数据的“裸奔”问题并非无解。通过数据信托模式的不断完善，未成年人数据的隐私保护与价值实现，正朝着可触及的未来迈进。 (Photo by Annie Spratt / Unsplash is licensed under CC0)   About the Author 陈美齐是南开大学商学院2022级本科生，关注个人数据权利保护等前沿议题，致力于推动以数据信托为基础的新机制探索与实践。她期待未来能够积极投身国际活动，促进多元文化的交流与合作。   Articles published in this series: Juventudes en gobiernos hiperconectados On the Digital Table, Youth Need a Voice, Not Just a Seat Who’s Really Watching? The Hidden Data Risks of Children’s “Phone Watches” AI时代的孩子：如何用“道德数据”守护他们的未来？ Youth Leading the Way: Innovating Data Governance in Humanitarian Aid Enhancing Youth Voices for a Responsible Digital Future: Bridging the Gap in Data Governance

Youth Voices

Note: The views and ideas shared in this article come directly from the inspiring young leaders who contributed to the campaign as part of the Responsible Data for Children (RD4C) initiative. These voices reflect the unique perspectives of youth from diverse backgrounds and regions. While RD4C provided light editorial support to enhance readability, the content remains entirely theirs—authored by young people for young people. Their insights are independent and do not necessarily represent official positions or endorsements by UNICEF or The GovLab.   As humanity strives to harness the power of data, the world continues to witness innocent lives affected by unprecedented humanitarian crises. While data responsibility and data governance today can improve corporate performance and mitigate risks of data breaches in the business world, they are even more crucial in fostering trust between those in need and humanitarian aid agencies. They enable the humanitarian community to respond more effectively and efficiently in complex contexts.  In this evolving landscape, young people are at the forefront, bringing innovative perspectives to data governance and driving creative solutions that address the unique challenges of humanitarian efforts.    The Double-Edged Sword of Data in Humanitarian Aid Potential risks Data in humanitarian work is usually highly sensitive and can be viewed as strategically important in conflicts and disasters. If leaked, such data could identify the vulnerable communities, potentially leading to risks like human trafficking or political persecution, violating the “Do No Harm” humanitarian principle. Inadequate data governance in humanitarian efforts could result in inconsistent information sharing across a cluster system, limiting organizations’ ability to respond swiftly to disasters. For example, the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) noted in the 170th Session of the Council it needed to integrate and improve the internal coordination of FAO data and statistics to better fulfill its mandate. In China, FAO collaborates closely with national statistical offices to gather data on food, nutrition, and agriculture to optimize its work. Opportunities Emerging AI tools can help reduce data management costs and explore best practices in managing using various algorithms. Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, and other algorithms currently available can scan datasets for errors or inconsistencies and rectify them promptly, reducing human labor in data management. Organizations and individuals can take advantage of data visualization tools to analyze trends and frequencies of natural disasters or movements of internally displaced people. These advanced data analytics methods enable more accurate targeting of humanitarian aid missions and the design of tailored approaches using geospatial data to assist, for example, indigenous groups affected by rising sea-levels in the South Pacific region.   Ensuring Transparency in Data Sharing A universal database, combining elements of blockchain technology and ReliefWeb, the most popular humanitarian information service platform, should be established to better inform and monitor data usage. This system would automatically attach a dedicated tag to the user’s name and the data owner each time data is collected or used. Such a database should operate under the supervision of a multilateral agency like the UN. This approach would enhance transparency about their data usage, encourage more open data sharing, and indirectly deter cybercrime. Operating on a voluntary-sharing basis, the database will aggregate data from UN agencies, NGOs and national statistical offices. However, challenges such as the inherently conflicting interests in international relations could impede the development of such a database. Therefore, leaders must demonstrate political will and take collective actions as an informed data usage is crucial for the 2030 Agenda. On a personal note, while living in England, I received numerous automated phone calls claiming to be from immigration bureau, warning of visa issues and requesting personal information. This experience highlighted the vulnerability of individuals, especially those unfamiliar with their host country, to potential data theft schemes.   Youth as Catalysts for Inclusive Data Governance “The tour guide” Young people can explain data policies to less data-literate individuals at the community level, raising awareness. In China, the “College Graduates Serving as Village Officials ” initiative has been operating for many years. Under this scheme, college graduates are encouraged by governments to work at grassroots levels, contributing to local poverty alleviation efforts. These dedicated young people could organize seminars or workshops with local communities on data policies, ensuring that people are not left behind in the data era. “The third eye” In remote areas with relatively poor IT infrastructure , young people with IT backgrounds can join the national civil service, becoming the “third eye” to help address inconsistent data records caused by ill-informed officials or community mistrust. By engaging with communities, they can uncover previously unrecorded or unnoticed data, improving the efficacy of data policies.    Empowering Ethical AI Through Youth-Led Data Governance As early adopters of new technologies, young people are often among the first to interact with AI algorithms in their earliest forms. This unique position allows them to identify flaws or bugs that could potentially jeopardize data governance processes, stay alert to ethical breaches in AI usage, such as customer profiling on e-commerce platforms, report problems to supervisors or relevant authorities, ensuring AI is used responsibly and hold organizations accountable for ethical AI implementation in both private and public sectors.  By leveraging their technological savvy and ethical awareness, young people can play a crucial role in shaping responsible AI usage and robust data governance practices. They can actively identify biases and discriminations in AI systems to safeguard marginalised and vulnerable groups from further inequalities. As frequent users of social media platforms, young people have access to various channels to expose ethical risks that could threaten human rights, enabling public awareness and necessary adjustments.   Responsible data governance is essential for ethical and effective humanitarian efforts. By balancing the risks and opportunities of data use, embracing transparency, and empowering young people to lead change, we can build trust and ensure data helps protect those who need it most. (Photo by Salah Darwish / Unsplash is licensed under CC0)   About the Author Jin Xiaotong is a young advocate of transformative policies in humanitarian aid. One of her notable contributions is her work on refugee integration and basic education for children and teenagers in countries of destination for the Mediterranean migratory routes. Trained as a conference interpreter at the University of Bath, her communication expertise enabled her to amplify her voice on global platforms with UN Offices in Nairobi, Geneva and Vienna. Currently, she serves in the Communication and Advocacy Office at the East Asia Delegation of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), promoting innovative policies for the humanitarian landscape in the Asia Pacific region.   Articles published in this series: Juventudes en gobiernos hiperconectados On the Digital Table, Youth Need a Voice, Not Just a Seat Who’s Really Watching? The Hidden Data Risks of Children’s “Phone Watches” AI时代的孩子：如何用“道德数据”守护他们的未来？ 当未成年人在网上“裸奔”：一种数据信托的破局新思路 Enhancing Youth Voices for a Responsible Digital Future: Bridging the Gap in Data Governance

Youth Voices

Note: The views and ideas shared in this article come directly from the inspiring young leaders who contributed to the campaign as part of the Responsible Data for Children (RD4C) initiative. These voices reflect the unique perspectives of youth from diverse backgrounds and regions. While RD4C provided light editorial support to enhance readability, the content remains entirely theirs—authored by young people for young people. Their insights are independent and do not necessarily represent official positions or endorsements by UNICEF or The GovLab.   随着我们进入人工智能(AI)时代，数据已成为我们这个时代最有价值的资产之一。越来越多的政府、企业和机构将目光投向了与人工智能相关的数据治理。人工智能系统依赖大量数据来学习、适应和改进，在这种情况下，数据治理是指，确保以负责任、符合道德、符合所有利益相关者权利和利益的方式，管理数据的框架和实践。儿童是我们社会最脆弱的群体之一，他们的独特需求必须成为任何负责任的数据治理策略的核心。 在这篇文章里，笔者将讨论“道德的数据治理”(ethical data governance)这一概念，其旨在寻求数据保护与其有效利用之间的平衡，尤其关注作为数据创造者的儿童本人的权利、脆弱性及其数据被滥用的长期影响。 人工智能技术有潜力从根本上改变教育、医疗保健和其他直接影响儿童生活的领域。然而，推动这些技术的数据具有不少风险和挑战。儿童的数据，包括他们的行为模式、学习习惯和健康记录，通常在人工智能系统的输入端被广泛应用，而这些系统有可能深入影响他们生活和未来的决策。儿童还特别容易受到数据滥用的影响，因为他们缺乏充分了解数据收集、同意流程和潜在后果及其风险的自主权(agency)。虽然成年人可能有能力保护他们的数据隐私，但儿童并不总是能够就他们的数据如何被使用、谁有权限访问数据或他们的数据将被保留多长时间做出充分知情的决定。这意味着我们需要在理解儿童发展阶段、认知局限性和长期利益的基础上，对人工智能和数据的使用进行严格的监管。 2019年，YouTube母公司谷歌因违反《儿童在线隐私权保护法》（COPPA)被美国联邦贸易委员会(FTC)罚款1.7亿美元。YouTube被控长期在未经父母同意的情况下，收集13岁以下儿童的数据。该平台利用这些数据来跟踪儿童的在线行为，并向他们提供有针对性的广告。2014年，苹果公司被控允许儿童未经父母授权在应用内购买虚拟商品。最终，该公司以支付至少3250万美元向消费者全额退款为条件，与FTC达成和解。一名消费者投诉称，她的女儿在一款名为“Tap Pet Hotel”的游戏中花费了近2600 美元。这并不是孤例。由于儿童在认知上不成熟，他们很容易成为商业剥削的目标。 为人工智能设计“道德的数据治理”的挑战在于，找到数据保护和数据应用之间的平衡。一方面，保护隐私，尤其是儿童的隐私，至关重要。另一方面，数据在改善儿童服务、激发儿童潜能等方面的潜在好处也不容忽视。 理想的平衡必须对这种冲突性保持敏感，从而设计出既具有保护性功能又具有生产性功能的政策。针对“道德的数据治理”这一概念，笔者向从业人士提出以下呼吁： 第一，管理数据收集。我们应当对数据做到“Reduce、Reuse、Recycle”。首先尽可能减少数据的收集；收集后尽量重复使用，在有监管的情况下做到数据共享，避免不同的机构重复收集用户的数据；在数据达到储存有效期后告知用户，在征求同意后再次储存数据。 第二，确保知情同意。鉴于儿童理解数据应用的复杂性的能力有限，获得他们的知情同意并不总是实际“道德”的，我们通常需要父母或监护人的同意。数据治理框架还应该致力于建立一个系统，在儿童的成长过程中，为其提供与数据权利相关的知识和训练，逐步培养他们的数字素养。 第三，夯实数据安全。随着人工智能系统的激增，数据泄露、滥用和未经授权访问的风险不断增加。儿童数据尤其需要更加严格的安全措施，其中加密、访问控制和定期审计构成了“道德的数据治理”的支柱。 第四，考虑长期影响。我们必须清楚认识到，今天做出的任何有关如何使用儿童数据的决定可能会产生深远的长期影响。例如，数据滥用可能会导致不必要的数据分析、系统的被信任程度受到侵蚀，以及心理创伤，这将危及儿童的心理健康，并进一步影响他们未来的教育和职业发展机会。因此，“道德的数据治理”不仅要注重即时保护，还要注重最大限度地减少潜在的长期危害。 第五，改进问责制和透明度。处理儿童数据的人工智能系统必须以高度透明的方式运行。开发人员、使用组织等所有相关方必须公开声明正在收集哪些数据、如何处理这些数据，以及用于什么目的。同时，所有利用数据盈利的相关方必须确保每个环节责任到人，并有相应的法律规范他们的行为。这种问责制和透明度确保儿童及其看护者的权利得到尊重，并确保他们有权挑战不当的数据使用。 人工智能时代的数据治理充满挑战，但我们必须迎难而上，尤其是在保护儿童方面。人工智能可以释放新的机会并改善生活，但不应该以牺牲儿童的权利、安全或长期发展为代价。“道德的数据治理”的目标应该是促进创新，同时保护我们最弱势群体的隐私、尊严和未来。 为了实现这一目标，政府、企业和机构必须合作建立强大的、以儿童为中心的数据治理框架。这些框架应优先考虑儿童最大利益，确保人工智能技术以公平、透明和保护儿童独特脆弱性的方式开发和部署。只有在数据保护和数据应用之间取得适当的平衡，我们才能为每个儿童创造一个尊重其隐私、赋予其权利、助力其成长的数字未来。 (Photo by Igor Omilaev / Unsplash is licensed under CC0)   About the Author 姜剑欧，现为牛津大学工程系博士研究生，专注于结合机器学习的计算流体动力学研究，对数据治理和儿童权利等领域也有深入关注和研究。他本科毕业于帝国理工学院地球物理专业，硕士就读于剑桥大学科学计算专业，目前担任牛津大学中国学联副主席。   Articles published in this series: Juventudes en gobiernos hiperconectados On the Digital Table, Youth Need a Voice, Not Just a Seat Who’s Really Watching? The Hidden Data Risks of Children’s “Phone Watches” Youth Leading the Way: Innovating Data Governance in Humanitarian Aid 当未成年人在网上“裸奔”：一种数据信托的破局新思路 Enhancing Youth Voices for a Responsible Digital Future: Bridging the Gap in Data Governance

Youth Voices

Note: The views and ideas shared in this article come directly from the inspiring young leaders who contributed to the campaign as part of the Responsible Data for Children (RD4C) initiative. These voices reflect the unique perspectives of youth from diverse backgrounds and regions. While RD4C provided light editorial support to enhance readability, the content remains entirely theirs—authored by young people for young people. Their insights are independent and do not necessarily represent official positions or endorsements by UNICEF or The GovLab.   With the advancement of technology and the rise in popularity of smart devices, children's phone watches have become a common feature in family life in China. These devices offer parents convenience by enabling real-time tracking of their children’s location, communication, and even payment activities. While these watches provide significant benefits, such as enhanced security and ease of communication, they also raise important concerns regarding the collection, storage, and use of children's data. This piece explores the governance of children's data in relation to these watches, assesses the risks and opportunities involved in data utilization, and examines relevant laws and cases, particularly from the perspective of informed consent and your participation. Status and Challenges in Children's Data Governance Children's phone watches, specialized smartwatches used by parents to monitor and stay in contact with their children, collect a variety of sensitive data, including location, communication history, payment information, and even biometric data like voiceprints. Managing such data, particularly for minors, requires stringent ethical and legal oversight. However, there are notable deficiencies in the current market practices and regulatory framework for protecting children's data: Insufficient Informed Consent: Many parents are unaware of the full scope of data collected by children's phone watches or how this data is used. Despite the provisions of China’s Personal Information Protection Law (PIPL), which mandates informed consent for data collection, parental consent for children’s data is often reduced to a simplified “one-click agreement.” Parents may not receive adequate information about the types of data being collected, its uses, or the potential risks. Risk of Data Misuse: Children’s phone watches not only gather real-time location information but also connect to other smart devices, generating vast amounts of personal data. If this data is not properly managed, it can be misused by third parties. For instance, some applications may collect and analyze children's behavioral data for marketing or even data trading purposes, leading to significant privacy violations. Challenges in Supervision: The regulation of children's smart devices lags their rapid adoption. Although laws like the Cybersecurity Law and the Law on the Protection of Minors exist, there are no specific regulations addressing the governance of data generated by children’s phone watches. In the absence of dedicated regulations, industry self-regulation is also lacking, which allows smaller or less scrupulous manufacturers to cut corners on security, leading to potential data breaches and misuse. Opportunities and Potential Value of Data Utilization Despite the risks, the appropriate use of data generated by children's phone watches presents several opportunities that benefit both families and society at large: Enhancing Child Safety: One of the key features of children's phone watches is the real-time location tracking and communication functions that help parents monitor their children’s movements. In urban areas with busy traffic, this technology can prevent accidents or child disappearances, providing families with a much-needed sense of security. Monitoring Education and Development: Children’s phone watches can provide insights into daily activities and social interactions, allowing parents to better supervise and guide their children’s development. Schools and educational institutions can also use this data to develop personalized teaching plans, thereby improving the allocation of educational resources. Smart Health management: Some high-end children’s watches are equipped with health monitoring features such as heart rate tracking and activity data analysis. These features enable parents to monitor their child’s health, detect potential issues early, and take preventative measures to ensure their well-being. Informed Consent and Data Protection Informed consent is a cornerstone of data governance, especially when it comes to children’s data. Both the Personal Information Protection Law (PIPL) and the Law on the Protection of Minors require explicit consent from guardians for the processing of data for children under the age of 14. However, in practice, informed consent often becomes a formality, with many parents unaware of the scope and risks of the data collected by the device. Improving the Informed Consent Process: Manufacturers of children’s phone watches should ensure that parents are given clear and detailed information about the types of data collected, its intended use, and potential risks. This can be achieved through pop-up notifications, text descriptions, or video tutorials. Additionally, parents should have the flexibility to control and limit the data collected, rather than merely agreeing to all terms upfront through a single consent process. Enhancing Parents' Digital Literacy: To ensure that parents make informed decisions about the data use of their children’s phone watches, efforts should be made to improve their digital literacy. Educational institutions and community organizations can offer training programs or workshops that inform parents about data security, privacy protection, and the long-term implications of data misuse. By equipping parents with the knowledge to navigate the digital world, they will be better prepared to safeguard their children's data. Coordinated Regulation by Government and Industry: The government should continue to refine and enforce laws that address data collection and usage in children's smart devices. At the same time, industry associations should develop self-regulatory frameworks that encourage companies to prioritize security and adhere to privacy protection standards. Recent advancements in China’s data protection laws, such as the Cybersecurity Law (2017) and the Data Security Law (2021), have laid a solid foundation for personal data protection. However, more specific regulations focused on children’s devices are needed to address the unique challenges posed by such products. Youth Participation in Data Policies Recognizing the importance of youth perspectives in shaping data governance, it is crucial to involve young people in the policy-making process:  Youth Advisory Boards: Establish youth advisory boards that can provide input on data policies related to children's smart devices. These boards can offer unique insights into how young people use technology and their concerns about data privacy.  Educational Initiatives: Develop programs that educate young people about data responsibility and governance, empowering them to make informed decisions about their own data and advocate for their rights. Feedback Mechanisms: Create channels for young users to provide feedback on their experiences with smart devices, helping to identify potential issues and improvements in data governance practices. Conclusion and Recommendations Children’s phone watches provide substantial convenience and security for parents, but the data governance issues they raise cannot be ignored. Children’s privacy and data security are vital to their overall well-being and future development. Therefore, data governance must prioritize the best interests of children, balancing the benefits of technology with the need to mitigate risks. To improve data governance in children’s smart devices, the following measures are recommended: Strengthen legal frameworks specific to children’s data collection and usage, setting clear boundaries and obligations for manufacturers. Increase efforts to educate parents about digital literacy and data privacy, ensuring they can make well-informed decisions regarding their children’s data.  Enhance regulatory oversight and encourage industry self-regulation to ensure manufacturers comply with security standards and prevent data breaches.    Actively involve youth in the policy-making process to ensure their perspectives are considered in data governance decisions. By fostering collaboration between government, industry, parents and young people, we can create a safer digital environment where children’s data is protected, and the benefits of smart technology are fully realized. (Photo by Sophia Stark / Unsplash is licensed under CC0)   About the Author Minyue Shi recently earned a master’s degree in International Law from East China University of Political Science and Law. Her research focuses on data governance and the legal protection of personal and children’s data rights. Since her sophomore year, she has published papers on topics such as personal information protection and the evolution of digital trade rules in the data era. Minyue is deeply committed to advancing ethical data practices that prioritize safety and responsible data use for individuals in the digital age.   Articles published in this series: Juventudes en gobiernos hiperconectados On the Digital Table, Youth Need a Voice, Not Just a Seat AI时代的孩子：如何用‘道德数据’守护他们的未来？ Youth Leading the Way: Innovating Data Governance in Humanitarian Aid 当未成年人在网上“裸奔”：一种数据信托的破局新思路 Enhancing Youth Voices for a Responsible Digital Future: Bridging the Gap in Data Governance

Youth Voices

Note: The views and ideas shared in this article come directly from the inspiring young leaders who contributed to the campaign as part of the Responsible Data for Children (RD4C) initiative. These voices reflect the unique perspectives of youth from diverse backgrounds and regions. While RD4C provided light editorial support to enhance readability, the content remains entirely theirs—authored by young people for young people. Their insights are independent and do not necessarily represent official positions or endorsements by UNICEF or The GovLab.   For youth to have agency in building our future, we need to be consulted with in the present. It has been widely established that technology evolves rapidly and data is crucial to our society. Whether you sign up to a social media platform, or are simply browsing online, your data is collected and exploited and very often to your detriment. Adult users may be fine with this automatic data grab, but more attention should be paid to data collection and processing for minors, including our perspectives and views on how our data is handled and on how policies are crafted. Indeed, it is concerning how often the voices of young people—the very demographic most impacted by these changes—are ignored in the conversations that determine our future. Despite the fact that data policies today will determine the future of privacy, safety, and access in the digital age, young people are frequently excluded from the policy-making process.  In my opinion, there are three main barriers that prevent young people from contributing their perspectives and views about the digital world and specifically data policies: (1) the reluctance of tech companies to listen to criticism and make effective change that weakens their bottom lines; (2) the fact that technological advancements are outpacing legislative guidelines; (3) the frantic push by headline-searching politicians for drastic measures such as phone or social media bans, without any youth consultation whatsoever. Children and young people must be earnestly consulted regarding online data policies that affect us in unprecedented ways.   I would like to place emphasis on the phrase ‘earnest consultation’ because many companies promote initiatives like youth boards or advisory panels, however, many of those youth initiatives serve more as PR stunts than platforms for real influence. The recommendations made by young people are rarely integrated and reflected in actual policy or product changes.  This tokenism is not only disheartening but it is also a missed opportunity to harness the insights of those who are most familiar and most affected by the digital world. Young people are not just passive consumers of technology; we are savvy, creative, and deeply aware of the impacts of digital policy on our lives. To truly involve youth, tech companies must move beyond superficial engagements and focus groups, beyond one-page campaigns and photo shoots, beyond lip service and disingenuous surveys, tech companies must provide youth with formal authority and decision-making power within the organizations.  This engagement could take the form of elected youth representatives who are not just consulted but given the ability to shape policy, product design, and ethical guidelines, similarly to Members of Youth Parliament, for instance. And again, these are just my suggestions as a European teen. Teens from North & South America, Africa, Asia, Australia and beyond may have even more impactful suggestions. Teens that are neurodiverse, face physical challenges, or are otherwise ‘different’ may have their own suggestions as well, but we will not know if those diverse youth are not consulted.   Laws that govern digital spaces, such as the Online Safety Act (OSA) or the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), are often outdated almost as soon as they are enacted, and, ironically, then take even longer to update. Such legislation is problematic when it comes to the rights of children and young people online, which, some argue, politicians use as leverage to attempt to censor content they disagree with. While such legislation is indicative of progress, it is insufficient on its own. Technology will continue to evolve, and legislation must always be adaptive and inclusive of youth perspectives.  Young people should be involved in the legislative process not just as consultees in a hastily organized focus group but as co-creators of these laws. We can ensure that laws remain relevant and responsive to the needs and realities of young people. All young people. Young people who have had their information leaked in instances of “doxxing.” Young people who have had their intimate images leaked. Young people who have had their information leaked in a data breach. Young people who are underrepresented and do not have a voice.  The tendency of politicians to push for outright bans on emerging technologies without consulting those who will be most affected is yet another barrier to meaningful youth participation. It is easy for politicians to call for bans—on social media platforms, on certain types of content, on new technologies like AI—without even considering the implications. However, these decisions are rarely informed by the perspectives of young people, and can often make matters worse. We’ve seen cases of children and young people committing suicide after the taking of their phone because of a loss trigger. In one case, a young woman wrote a suicide note that read “You shouldn’t have taken my phone away.” In such instances, bans are not the most proactive solution. Instead of opting for polarizing measures, policymakers should first consult with the youth to understand their experiences and needs.  Let’s take for instance, the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), which requires age verification to ensure that children under 13 are not subjected to data collection or harmful content. This act may be helpful in combating some data collection, and protecting younger users but it doesn’t explicitly attack the root cause of the issue: extensive data collection. Young people lie about their age online to get access to a service, and such legislation may no longer serve them because they are now considered an adult by the service collecting their data. Regardless of whether the user was an adult or a child, extensive data collection is unacceptable, especially when it is used for profit (the only driver of most tech companies), or to produce (or attempt to produce) certain outcomes, such as during the infamous Facebook–Cambridge Analytica Scandal.    Data is our most precious asset when we are online, but often, we are powerless, victims to the companies and advertisers scraping our data and selling it to the highest bidder. Young people need to actively participate in shaping the data policies that will govern our futures. We must recognize young people as equal partners in the policy-making process. Children and young people must not only have a seat at the table but they must also be empowered and earnestly consulted when it comes to policies that shape our digital lives. Calling us to the table, when the meal has been decided, served and sometimes even cleared away, does a disservice to all those at the table. (Photo by Kane Reinholdtsen / Unsplash is licensed under CC0)   About the Author Maximilian Milovidov is a teen online safety advocate. He is an Ambassador to the Children’s Commissioner for England, a former Youth Board Member for Childnet and Youth Ambassador for the Diana Award. Fluent in French, English, Russian, and Spanish, he serves as a Youth Ambassador for the 5Rights Foundation, People vs Big Tech and as a Youth Advisor for Digitalem. Maximilian has been featured on ITV News, Sky News, and the Wall Street Journal. His interests lie in cyberpsychology, human nature, and technology.   Articles published in this series: Juventudes en gobiernos hiperconectados Who’s Really Watching? The Hidden Data Risks of Children’s “Phone Watches” AI时代的孩子：如何用‘道德数据’守护他们的未来？ Youth Leading the Way: Innovating Data Governance in Humanitarian Aid 当未成年人在网上“裸奔”：一种数据信托的破局新思路 Enhancing Youth Voices for a Responsible Digital Future: Bridging the Gap in Data Governance

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Read in English La niñez, adolescencia y juventud de diversas regiones del mundo, presentes en el V Foro Mundial de Datos en Medellín, Colombia, elevamos nuestras voces en un momento histórico. Por primera vez en un foro de datos de Naciones Unidas, nuestras perspectivas son escuchadas, rompiendo la creencia de que estos temas no nos conciernen. En un mundo cada vez más hiperconectado, como le hemos denominado, nuestros datos representan una parte fundamental de nuestra identidad y seguridad, así nosotros demandamos los principios de equidad, transparencia y protección de la privacidad. En ese sentido, como parte del Compromiso con la Gobernanza de Datos Adecuada para la Niñez, declaramos que: 1. Representatividad diversa en espacios de participación del foro, con tomadores de decisiones  La representación de la niñez, adolescencia y juventud en los próximos encuentros debe demostrar la diversidad étnica y social existente en los territorios, se necesita la perspectiva de los más pequeños con su capacidad de soñar, de los y las adolescentes que han crecido con el avance de las redes sociales y las visiones de quienes han presenciado la llegada de las tecnologías. En dicha participación, se hace necesaria la presencia de los sectores relegados de la niñez, adolescencia y juventud, quienes debido a la falta de recursos no han sido tomados en cuenta históricamente. Debido a esto solicitamos la presencia de distintas perspectivas de los territorios que reflejen y comuniquen sus necesidades, así como sus iniciativas, ideas y propuestas. 2. Proponemos la creación de observatorios territoriales de datos que integren una gobernanza protectora con uso responsable de la información para la recolección, uso y acción de datos de manera equitativa  Los niños, niñas, adolescentes y jóvenes tienen derecho a acceder a información de diversas fuentes nacionales e internacionales. Por ello, proponemos la creación de un observatorio territorial de datos en cada país que sirva como un punto de entrada y una plataforma para empoderar las voces de niños, niñas y jóvenes como parte de los ecosistemas de datos nacionales y regionales.. Además, debe asegurar el acceso a datos desagregados que reflejen de manera precisa las realidades y necesidades de cada territorio y de sus niñas y niños, para asegurar que todas las niñas y los niños sean visibles en los datos, que sus derechos puedan ser protegidos y que sus necesidades puedan ser atendidas.. Estos observatorios deben ser  respaldados por una gobernanza de datos sólida, que priorice la protección de los derechos de la niñez, adolescencia y juventud, promoviendo un entorno digital seguro y libre de riesgos, como lo pueden ser los socioemocionales y daños ambientales en la recolección y procesamiento de datos, estableciendo la red de comunicación global con tomadores de decisiones, reconociendo la importancia del multiperspectivismo. 3. Promovemos el acceso y regulaciones para la protección de nuestros derechos. Solicitamos políticas públicas de datos centradas en la niñez, adolescencia y juventud. Que las empresas y plataformas presenten datos de manera clara y accesible para todos/as. Exigimos regulaciones que protejan la privacidad y seguridad en línea  y fomenten tecnologías seguras que prioricen nuestros derechos, minimizando los efectos negativos como la exposición a contenidos inapropiados, la ciberseguridad, y la manipulación de datos personales por sistemas de inteligencia artificial. 4. Solicitamos espacios de concientización sobre las plataformas digitales y redes sociales más allá de los foros de datos. Defendemos y solicitamos la creación de espacios públicos y accesibles para las distintas zonas del país, de aprendizaje, concientización, incidencia y participación sobre los riesgos asociados al uso de plataformas digitales, que vayan más allá de eventos cerrados, para que así la niñez, adolescencia y juventud sepa comprender y enfrentar los desafíos de la era digital a través de los datos. Hoy decimos que ya no somos simplemente una cifra en las estadísticas, sino agentes de cambio que han descifrado cómo trabajar y aportar en estos espacios. Nos tomamos los datos como una herramienta de transformación, abriendo camino para que nuestras voces y acciones tengan un impacto real en la construcción de un presente más justo y equitativo.  Hacemos un llamado a los organizadores del próximo Foro Mundial de Datos para que este compromiso se traduzca en hechos. Exigimos la conformación de una delegación juvenil diversa, inclusiva, con presencia activa con voz y voto en los espacios representativos que permitan la participación de jóvenes de todo el mundo y donde todos cuentan y son contados. Ahora es su turno, tomadores de decisiones, de escucharnos y actuar, ¡hemos llegado al foro mundial de datos para transformar su perspectiva y marcar la diferencia!   Esta discusión es presentada por el Compromiso con la Gobernanza de Datos Adecuada para la Niñez, una iniciativa pionera liderada por UNICEF que une a un grupo diverso de organizaciones y líderes juveniles, comprometidos con garantizar que los derechos de las personas jóvenes sean una prioridad en el mundo de datos y la inteligencia artificial en constante evolución.   Este compromiso reúne a:   Representantes juveniles: del Equipo de Acción Juvenil de Generation Unlimited, los Defensores de los Valores de los Datos de la Alianza Global para los Datos de Desarrollo Sostenible, los Jóvenes Líderes para los ODS de la Oficina del Enviado de Juventud del Secretario General de la ONU, la Red Nacional de Participación Adolescentes en Movimiento por sus Derechos de UNICEF Colombia, y los grupos juveniles apoyados porUNFPA Colombia - para amplificar las perspectivas juveniles y co-crear soluciones para el cambio positivo.   El Programa de Gobernanza de Datos Adecuada para la Niñez de UNICEF: para abogar por programas, políticas y sistemas fundamentados en los derechos de la niñez y la juventud.   DevelopMetrics: para integrar inteligencia artificial ética, aprendizaje automático supervisado y modelos de lenguaje de gran escala afinados en colaboración con jóvenes desde las primeras etapas del desarrollo de la IA.   Highway Child: para garantizar que las voces de los niños sean representadas de manera auténtica y que la información que comparten a través de contenidos creativos esté protegida.   Early Childhood Authority of Abu Dhabi: para promover sistemas de IA gubernamentales responsables que prioricen el bienestar infantil y ofrezcan una perspectiva basada en datos para la toma de decisiones.   The GovLab: para empoderar a los niños y asegurar que los datos y la tecnología se utilicen para tomar decisiones más efectivas, equitativas y legítimas que resuelvan problemas públicos.   The Datasphere Initiative: para empoderar a comunidades juveniles diversas equipándolas con conocimientos y herramientas que amplíen su participación en debates sobre gobernanza de datos y políticas de IA.   The Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data: para amplificar las voces juveniles y empoderar a los jóvenes a participar de manera significativa en la gobernanza de datos, fortaleciendo su capacidad de liderar colaboraciones multisectoriales con impacto.  

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Leer en español We, the children, adolescents, and youth from diverse regions of the world, present at the 5th United Nations World Data Forum in Medellín, Colombia, raise our voices at a historic moment. For the first time at a UN data forum, our perspectives are being heard, breaking the misconception that these issues do not concern us. In an increasingly hyperconnected world, as we call it, our data represents a fundamental part of our identity and security. Thus, we demand principles of equity, transparency, and privacy protection.   In this regard, as part of the Commitment to Data Governance Fit for Children, we declare:  1. Diverse Representation in Forum Participation Spaces with Decision-Makers   Child, adolescent and youth representation at future forums must reflect the ethnic and social diversity of the territories. It is essential to include the perspectives of the youngest, with their capacity to dream; adolescents, who have grown alongside the rise of social media; and those who have witnessed the arrival of new technologies. Such participation requires the inclusion of marginalised groupsof children, adolescents, and youth, who have historically been overlooked due to a lack of resources.. Therefore, we call for perspectives from various territories to be included, ensuring that their specific needs are heard and addressed.   2. Proposal for Territorial Data Observatories with Protective Governance and Responsible Use for Equitable Data Collection, Use, and Action Children, adolescents and youth have the right to access information from diverse national and international sources. Hence, we propose establishing a territorial data observatory in each country  to serve as an entry point and to empower child and youth voices as part of country and regional data ecosystems. These observatories should be designed to collect information, ensure accessibility, and foster inclusive participation spaces for children. They should also provide access to disaggregated data that accurately reflects the realities and needs of each territory and their children to ensure that all children are visible in data, that their rights can be protected and their needs can be served. These observatories must be supported by robust data governance frameworks prioritising children’s rights and promoting a secure digital environment free from risks, including socio-emotional harm and environmental damage associated with data collection and processing. Additionally, these observatories should establish global communication networks with decision-makers, recognising the importance of multiperspectivism.  3. Promoting Access and Regulations to Protect Our Rights in Rural and Decentralised Areas   We demand child-, adolescent-, and youth-centred public data policies that facilitate data access in rural and unconnected areas. Companies and platforms must present data in a clear and accessible manner for all. We call for regulations to protect privacy and online security while fostering safe technologies that prioritise our rights, minimising negative effects such as exposure to inappropriate content, cybersecurity threats, and the misuse of personal data by artificial intelligence systems.  4. Request for Awareness Spaces on Digital Platforms and Social Media Beyond Data Forums We advocate for and request the creation of public, accessible spaces in different regions of each country for learning, awareness, advocacy, and participation regarding the risks associated with using digital platforms. These spaces must extend beyond closed events so that children, adolescents, and youth can understand and tackle the challenges of the digital age through data.   Today, we declare that we are no longer just figures in statistics but agents of change who have figured how to work and contribute within these spaces. We view data as a tool for transformation, paving the way for our voices and actions to have a real impact on building a fairer and more equitable present where all children count and are counted..   We call on the organisers of the next World Data Forum to translate this commitment into action. We demand the establishment of a diverse, inclusive youth delegation with an active voice and voting power in representative spaces, enabling the participation of young people from around the world.   Now it is your turn, decision-makers, to listen and act. We have come to the World Data Forum to transform perspectives and make a difference!   This discussion is brought by the Commitment to Data Governance Fit for Children, a pioneering initiative spearheaded by UNICEF that unites a diverse group of organisations and young leaders, committed to ensuring that young people’s rights are prioritised in the rapidly evolving world of data and AI. This commitment brings together: Youth representatives ‒ from Generation Unlimited's Young People’s Action Team, Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data’s Data Values Advocates, Office of the UN Secretary-General’s Youth Envoy’s Young Leaders for the SDGs, UNICEF Colombia’s Red Nacional de Participación Adolescentes en Movimiento por sus Derechos, youth groups supported by UNFPA Colombia ‒ to amplify youth perspectives and co-create solutions for positive change. UNICEF’s Data Governance Fit for Children Programme to advocate for programmes, policies and systems that are grounded in child and youth rights. DevelopMetrics to integrate ethical AI, supervised machine learning, and fine-tuned large language models in collaboration with youth at the onset of AI development.  Highway Child to ensure that children’s voices are authentically represented and that the information they share through in creative content is safeguarded. Abu Dhabi Early Childhood Authority to promote responsible government AI systems that prioritise child wellbeing needs and provide a data driven perspective to decision making. The GovLab to empower children by ensuring data and technology are used to make more effective, equitable, and legitimate decisions that solve public problems. The Datasphere Initiative to empower diverse youth communities by equipping them with knowledge and tools to amplify their participation in data governance and AI policy discussions. The Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data to amplify youth voices and empower young people to engage meaningfully in data governance, strengthening their ability to lead impactful, multi-stakeholder collaborations.

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The countdown to the UN World Data Forum is on! From 12 to 15 November 2024, we’ll be showcasing our groundbreaking commitment: Data Governance Fit for Children (DG4C). As we approach this pivotal moment, we’re excited to share that our initiative is growing even stronger, with more youth organisations joining the effort. The Commitment to DG4C continues to work for children, with children, driving home the message that child-centred data governance is not just a vision—it’s an urgent necessity we can tackle together. The UNWDF Commitment to DG4C is a pioneering initiative that unites a diverse group of organisations and young leaders, committed to ensuring that children’s rights are prioritised in the rapidly evolving world of data and AI. This commitment brings together: Youth representatives—from Generation Unlimited's Young People’s Action Team, Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data’s Data Values Advocates, Office of the United Nations Secretary-General’s Youth Envoy’s Young Leaders for the SDGs, UNICEF Colombia’s Red Nacional de Participación Adolescentes en Movimiento por sus Derechos—to amplify youth perspectives and co-create solutions for positive change. UNICEF’s Data Governance Fit for Children Programme to advocate for programmes, policies and systems that are grounded in child and youth rights. DevelopMetrics to integrate ethical AI, supervised machine learning, and fine-tuned large language models in collaboration with youth at the onset of AI development. Highway Child to ensure that children’s voices are authentically represented and that the information they share through in creative content is safeguarded. Abu Dhabi Early Childhood Authority to promote responsible government AI systems that prioritise child wellbeing needs and provide a data driven perspective to decision making. The Governance Lab to empower children by ensuring data and technology are used to make more effective, equitable, and legitimate decisions that solve public problems. The Datasphere Initiative to empower diverse youth communities by equipping them with knowledge and tools to amplify their participation in data governance and AI policy discussions. Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data to amplify youth voices and empower young people to engage meaningfully in data governance, strengthening their ability to lead impactful, multi-stakeholder collaborations. Stay tuned as we elevate youth voices and push for responsible data practices that safeguard and uplift children’s rights. For every child, responsible data.

Youth Voices

Note: The views and ideas shared in this article come directly from the inspiring young leaders who contributed to the campaign as part of the Responsible Data for Children (RD4C) initiative. These voices reflect the unique perspectives of youth from diverse backgrounds and regions. While RD4C provided light editorial support to enhance readability, the content remains entirely theirs—authored by young people for young people. Their insights are independent and do not necessarily represent official positions or endorsements by UNICEF or The GovLab.   Recordemos aquellos viejos tiempos donde la juventud empezaba a utilizar la mensajería instantánea para comunicarse y relacionarse. En un pestañear, cambiamos hojas de libros por hojas virtuales y así también cambió la forma de gobernar, la cual sintió imparablemente la llegada de un fenómeno que yo denomino "la hiperconexión de gobernanzas dominantes". Cuando las redes de datos pasaron de un byte a un terabyte en tiempo récord, dicha evolución tecnológica resultó tan intuitiva y fácil para los más jóvenes (quienes lo sentían como jugar con un videojuego) a la vez que resultaba para los mayores tan difícil como reproducir ese viejo tocadiscos. Los gobiernos, los jóvenes y la hiperconexión tenemos una meta en común y es llevar estas herramientas a la gestión inteligente, no solamente como una forma artificial, sino aplicando la ética en tiempos mecánicos. La inversión en ciencia y tecnología en países en vía de desarrollo es aún baja. La meta que propone el informe de la UNESCO sobre la ciencia hacia 2030 con alianzas como UNASUR mejorará totalmente la inversión en ciencia y tecnología. Según el informe, en países de América Latina y el Caribe esta inversión es de alrededor del 1% del PIB. Este es el gran reto para los países: llevar la inteligencia artificial a las zonas descentralizadas de la urbanidad para que através de las nuevas tecnologías se brinde acompañamiento por los gobiernos para que sus buenas prácticas generen la transformación en la ruralidad, fusionando la rica tradición de las comunidades con la asombrosa inteligencia artificial. ¿Cómo la gestión inteligente en torno a la juventud puede funcionar? Bien, utilizaré un ejemplo concreto para argumentar el anterior texto con ejemplos vivenciales desde la infancia misma a la actualidad con la modernidad. Aquellos tiempos en octavo grado de clases, utilizábamos los primeros celulares con cualquier sistema operativo vigente. Con esas aplicaciones iniciales anteriores a la inteligencia artificial, como lo son las calculadoras, que a través de la cámara telefónica se utilizaban para resolver ejercicios matemáticos de forma acertada en su 80%. En el contexto de los modelos de educación con enfoques tradicionales que tenemos en Suramérica, descubrir estas nuevas formas como los estudiantes se vinculaban con los teléfonos móviles me permitió darme cuenta que esta sería una nueva herramienta clave. En efecto, los teléfonos móviles son una parte fundamental y cotidiana para la mayoría de personas hoy en día, constituyendo de alguna manera una herencia material tecnológica de nuestra generación. Hablar de ética en el rumbo tecnológico es importante, ya que si bien las tecnologías tienen un gran potencial para contribuir al desarrollo de la humanidad, también presentan múltiples riesgos que pueden derivarse del mal uso. Con el boom de las inteligencias artificiales, con herramientas como ChatGPT, los estudiantes encontraron formas de evitar algunas responsabilidades educativas, lo que termina afectando su propio proceso educativo. ¿Pero cómo pasamos de que la IA se utilice para hacer copia en exámenes, invadiendo la ética, a que esta sea una herramienta de construcción social?  En mi opinión, la inteligencia artificial nos guía con sus respuestas, pero mecánicamente nosotros somos los que brindamos la mayoría de la información posible para desarrollar. Tan fácil incluso sería preguntarle a la IA qué aportaría a este texto y seguramente nos aportaría los puntos claves del texto escrito y qué estructura puede cambiar. El enfoque de que esta herramienta se transforme en un modelo de construcción social, como ese puente que garantice funciones comunitarias, de desarrollo, de aprendizaje, es crucial. Estamos viendo que este invento puede poner en práctica nuestra destreza en aprendizaje, solicitarle a la inteligencia artificial que nos enseñe sobre qué luna puede beneficiar la siembra, qué tipos de semillas me recomienda para esta temporada, como a nivel social nos enseña algunos párrafos filosóficos en temas comunes. Eso también es algo clave: la transparencia de que las personas reconozcan cuando han utilizado herramientas de inteligencia artificial para llevar a cabo sus tareas o trabajos académicos. Le podemos preguntar cómo hacer un huerto en nuestras casas, que elabore el resumen de un libro, que nos enseñe matemáticas. Al final, éticamente dentro de cada ser humano, estará el buen uso de esta herramienta. Es recomendable que los parámetros educativos no solamente se enfoquen en prohibir estas tecnologías – tendencia que suele verse con nuevas tecnologías o desarrollos innovadores – sino en equipar a estudiantes y profesores con herramientas que les permitan darles un buen uso, aprovechar su potencial y minimizar los riesgos. El uso adecuado de las herramientas de inteligencia artificial como educativas permite que agilicemos las búsquedas y el desarrollo de actividades a corto, mediano y largo plazo. ¿Esto no es lo que actualmente el mundo pide? Todo con agilidad, casi inmediato, respuestas rápidas. La zona rural, desde hace mucho tiempo, siempre tiene ese gran problema de desconexión. Aun así, los teléfonos inteligentes ya se encuentran en el apropiamiento de un gran porcentaje de los habitantes de las zonas rurales, por ejemplo, en el país de Colombia según un informe del Departamento Nacional de Estadística, DANE, en el total nacional el 96,3% de los hogares al menos una persona tenía teléfono celular en el año 2022. En África, según el Fondo Internacional de Desarrollo Agrícola (FIDA), los teléfonos móviles han ayudado a 1,7 millones de agricultores en pequeña escala a aumentar la producción local después de la desaceleración económica provocada por la pandemia. Es en este contexto, la gestión de datos será apropiada para llevar cursos de aprendizaje sobre cómo la inteligencia artificial permitirá que esta herramienta se use en un futuro no muy lejano en el campo, en todos sus ámbitos. Los jóvenes estamos vinculados al presente y al futuro de la inteligencia artificial. De hecho, puedo dar certeza que, como consejero de juventudes, tanto mis compañeros como yo hemos utilizado herramientas de inteligencia artificial, para traducir textos o simplemente, citar con normas APA o incluso articular las grandes ideas que se tienen para generar proyectos en pro de la comunidad. Pero, claramente, habrá personas y gobiernos a los que les dará vergüenza admitir el uso de inteligencias artificiales para un beneficio o desarrollo común. Es necesario aplicar éticamente y con responsabilidad prácticas adecuadas para guiar a una gobernanza más abierta en torno a las tecnologías.Recordemos que los gobiernos, antes de que empiecen a trabajar esa nueva terminología de “gobiernos digitales” en todo el mundo, donde antes hacías mega colas para recibir un documento, ahora con 10 clicks lo obtienes. Pondré el ejemplo de mi país, Colombia, donde el dominio web de su gobierno permite hacer consultas en alcaldías, gobernaciones y el gobierno nacional. La relación ciencia de datos, conectividad digital y gobierno es un hecho en la actualidad, porque sin internet o servicios de sistemas operativos no podemos hacer nada. En realidad, ya estamos en un mundo hiperconectado, pero también la inteligencia artificial hará parte en cada sistema de gobernanza para acelerar procesos estadísticos. En esta cuarta revolución industrial, la inteligencia artificial será clave en el desarrollo presente y futuro de nuevos lineamientos para el trabajo. El mundo analógico está lleno de cambios cada año. La transformación tecnológica es como esa bola de nieve en descenso, pero en este caso es un ascenso sin límites. Aún no sabemos qué límite tecnológico tenemos por desarrollar, y considero que estas serán las nuevas metas a futuro. ¿Hasta dónde llegaremos? Es incierto. Lo que sí es cierto es que las decisiones que tomemos hoy incluso ayudarán mañana a salvar vidas, porque la hiperconexión debe tener un punto de equilibrio que brinde oportunamente buenas prácticas en la gobernanza. (Image by Alina Grubnyak / Unsplash is licensed under CC0)   About the Author Juan Felipe Montenegro ha sido reconocido como un agente de cambio social comprometido con la construcción de paz y justicia ambiental. Su trabajo en bases sociales, abarcando realidades urbanas y rurales, le ha permitido incidir a nivel nacional e internacional. Participa como delegado juvenil global en la 3° cohorte del Young People Action Team (YPAT) de Generation Unlimited y UNICEF. Además, es Gestor en Adolescentes en Movimiento, donde promueve círculos de empoderamiento juvenil y pedagogía virtual sobre construcción de paz y como Consejero de Juventudes fomenta la innovación en prácticas de gobernanza.   Articles published in this series: On the Digital Table, Youth Need a Voice, Not Just a Seat Who’s Really Watching? The Hidden Data Risks of Children’s “Phone Watches” AI时代的孩子：如何用‘道德数据’守护他们的未来？ Youth Leading the Way: Innovating Data Governance in Humanitarian Aid 当未成年人在网上“裸奔”：一种数据信托的破局新思路 Enhancing Youth Voices for a Responsible Digital Future: Bridging the Gap in Data Governance

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Of the world’s population, every 1 in 2 people are under the age of 30. Among youth aged between 10 and 24, 9 out of 10 live in the Global South. Yet, young people's voices are the least represented and heard when their future is decided. Worldwide, only 2.6% of parliamentarians are under 30. Many young people have also noted in workshops conducted by UNICEF that while they are frequently consulted during policy development, they are seldom considered as decision-makers. In one U-Report survey with nearly 80,000 respondents, only 3 out of 10 feel they have much control over their digital future.  This disconnect is exacerbated by the growing importance of data. Data is a power that drives service delivery, policy formulation, and governance improvements worldwide. Yet, it also poses significant risks. Data can be misused—from enabling discrimination and surveillance to facilitating criminal activities.  When it comes to data governance, a youth perspective is urgently needed—not only because they are the most active generation online, but also because they are the most affected: Their physical, emotional, social and psychological developmental needs, adds an extra layer of vulnerability.  On International Youth Day, it is essential to ask: How can data policies better serve and empower young people in shaping their digital futures?   Global Best Practices  A number of countries and institutions have already taken the lead in engaging the youth on the issues and concerns that affect their daily lives.  In Zimbabwe, researchers worked with 475 children between the ages of 12 and 17 to develop the Child Online Protection policy.Their inputs formed the core of the proposal from the initial conception to the final draft. Yet the engagement didn’t stop there. The research team went back to hear their feedback after the draft was validated by the government, making sure the policy reflected their vision for a safe digital future. Similar exercises have  been seen in Zambia and Germany.  In the United Nations, UNICEF has taken a similar approach. It developed a digital community, U-Report, for young people in nearly 100 countries to raise their voices and express their concerns. The UN Youth Office has launched a number of campaigns, including the latest one, World Leaders: It’s Time to Let #YouthLead, to call for more youth engagement across the world. Multiple country teams have been relentlessly working to enhance youth participation through capacity building to policy advising.  Big tech companies are also joining this effort. Microsoft has created the Council for Digital Good in the United States and Europe, bringing teenagers together to listen to their expectations and hopes for responsible online interactions. Meta, Facebook’s parent company, has also launched a youth advisory network to invite young people to share thoughts on their ideal digital future.  However, the current efforts are not enough. Much more can be done.  Driving Engagement Forward  First, the digital divide still poses a significant challenge to young people that needs to be addressed.   Disparities between urban and rural areas, as well as wealthy and poor households, widely persist in all countries.  Several studies have found that data literacy is relatively low in the Global South; the gaps between middle-income and high-income countries are also considerable.  Meanwhile, although gender differences in understanding data have narrowed among younger generations, the lack of comprehensive, disaggregated data specifically on girls obstructs targeted interventions and perpetuates inequalities. For example, without specific data on girls' school attendance and dropout rates, it would be difficult for policymakers to effectively address the barriers they face, such as early marriage, household responsibilities, or a lack of sanitary facilities. As advocated by the people-centric principle of RD4C, it is essential that both public and private sectors bear these divisions in mind and work together to bridge them, prioritising the best interest of the child over their potential efficiency gains or other process-oriented objectives.  Second, when it comes to data governance, youth should be involved in the entire cycle of policymaking.  The development of a policy involves multiple steps. From issue identification and research to consultation and formulation, each process requires the participation of youth. The monitoring and evaluation phase is no exception.  Research has suggested that if young people consider their participation as unsatisfactory, unequal, or superficial, they may feel "used" or regard the involvement as "tokenistic".   Today, the common practice of youth engagement favors consulting with young people rather than involving them in decision-making. There is also a lack of mechanisms for monitoring youth feedback. A comprehensively participatory approach allows the young generation to meaningfully participate in the entire process of making data policies. This ensures their opinions are fully considered and respected throughout the data lifecycle.   Third, understand the youth to leverage their wisdom.  To promote effective youth engagement, it is essential to gain a thorough understanding of their behaviors and preferences. By leveraging these insights, we can craft innovative platforms tailored to their needs and interests.  According to a policy brief published by UN DESA, young people prefer instant feedback and are highly sensitive to reward; they have strong attachments to their identities yet can be influenced by peers easily. Therefore, in addition to traditional engagement methods like discussion roundtables and youth-led research, more creative approaches can be adopted.   Some of the most interesting examples include the UN Big Data Hackathon, which has separate youth tracks. Such events not only help young people to better understand the data around them, but also teach them how to fully use it to make their future brighter.  Another example comes from Manchester, a city in the northwest of England. The city developed the Greater Manchester Youth Combined Authority, an organization consisting entirely of young people. They are responsible for advising on and scrutinising the work of the mayor on key issues of concern to the young generation. Under this mechanism, the youth can see how their fellows’ inputs have a direct impact on policies that affect them. This special arrangement  empowers the youth to inspire the youth.   *** Growing up in a digital age, many young people have never seen a world without the internet. While some might know how to use the internet to entertain themselves and make life easier, they remain vulnerable in an ecosystem flooded with data.  Given that young people initially lack agency in handling data and asserting their rights, it becomes all too easy for adults to step in and make decisions on their behalf. However, a more constructive approach is to nurture their agency, rather than simply taking over the power.  Nearly all countries of the world have ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child, a universal treaty that also applies to data responsibility. According to Article 17, when developing legislation, policies, programmes, services and training on children’s rights in relation to the digital environment, States parties should involve all children, listen to their needs and give due weight to their views. This should not be overlooked, nor forgotten.  To hear the voice of youth, RD4C cooperates with Generation Unlimited to hold a virtual discussion panel in August, featuring young leaders from around the world. Through this event, we aim to provide a platform where they can share their perspectives, experiences, and insights on data responsibility and data governance. By empowering young people and amplifying their voices, we believe they can lead the way as change-makers in our constantly evolving digital world. Youth is the future. Let’s not let the future down.    Image by John Schnobrich / Unsplash is licensed under CC0

New Publication

In our increasingly datafied world, the responsible handling of data for and about children has become a critical issue. UNICEF, governments, and its partners acknowledge the vital importance of acting to advance children’s well-being while preserving their rights and agency. We engage with partners around the world to inform practices around data (re)use for and about children.  In June, the RD4C team travelled to Beijing, where UNICEF China organized a social policy salon. Attendees discussed how to better understand and respond to children's development needs through data in the field of social protection. Representatives from the Ministry of Civil Affairs and six local civil affairs departments attended the meeting and shared their experiences in tracking the wellbeing of low-income populations and the development of a child module.    Reflecting on this recent policy forum in Beijing as well as past experiences in several other contexts, we have come up with three broad clusters of rationales that highlight the significance of data responsibility for children in the context of government owned, administrative data systems.  1. Building Trust to Enable and Improve Service Delivery  Trust is foundational in any relationship, especially when it comes to children and their data. Responsible data management fosters trust among children, parents, and the broader community, enabling more effective service delivery.   Trust in data practices means that individuals and communities believe their data is being handled securely, ethically and efficiently. For children, whose understanding of data and its implications may be limited, trust is even more vital. When parents and guardians believe that their children's data is being managed responsibly, they are more likely to engage with and support services and programs that require them to provide their and their children’s data.  Without trust in how data is handled, children and their caregivers can adopt “privacy-protective behaviour”. This behaviour occurs when individuals or communities take actions to protect their privacy, often by limiting their engagement with services they perceive as untrustworthy.   This can mean that children don’t receive the services they need.  By establishing and maintaining trust through responsible data practices, organisations can prevent privacy protective behaviour and ensure that children and communities overall have access to essential services.  Along the same lines, responsible data practices support an organisation's reputation as a responsible player, which equally contributes to trust in the institution. In an era where data breaches and privacy scandals can significantly damage credibility and trust, demonstrating a commitment to responsible data management is crucial.   This reputation can enhance relationships with stakeholders, including parents and caregivers, communities, and funding bodies. Transparency in data practices and a proactive approach to safeguarding children's data can significantly bolster an organisation's standing in the community, both at national and international level. 2. Enhancing Performance through Better System Design  Another main objective of implementing more responsible data practices is improving performance of data systems and the quality of related services.   Responsible data practices require organisations to think critically about their data management processes and what the data will be used for, to ensure their efforts make a (responsible) difference and drive impact.   For that reason, a clear purpose and information needs should be defined from design stage on, though it is never too late to make improvements in responsible data practices with children’s best interests in mind. Determining an overarching purpose of the insights gained through data can be further used for policy making and improving the quality-of-service delivery.   For example, data collected in the social protection sector can be used to identify children in need of support and also to track progress and determine eligibility to additional services and interventions tailored to their specific needs.   By monitoring progress in purpose-driven systems, social protection programs can track the effectiveness of interventions, adjust strategies as needed, and ensure continuous improvement. Additionally, data allows for efficient resource allocation, ensuring that social assistance, basic health insurance and so forth essential support reach the children who need them most, thereby maximising the overall impact of social protection initiatives. 3. Protecting Children and Safeguarding them from Harm  The protection of children and their rights is a fundamental rationale for responsible data practices. Children are particularly vulnerable to the consequences of data misuse and its potential harms, making it imperative to prioritise their safety, in the digital age that we live in.   Data about children’s personal lives is particularly sensitive. Misuse of this data can lead to significant harm, including identity theft, exploitation, discrimination, psychological impact, population fatigue of providing data and a loss of trust in service providers as previously mentioned. Another potential harm is the missed use of data for social good and inefficiencies in handling data, that can lead to opportunities for intervention for example on a policy level not being identified and critical needs not addressed. Responsible data practices aim to mitigate these risks by implementing robust safeguards and ensuring that children's data is handled with utmost care.  International conventions, such as the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), mandate the protection of children's privacy and data. Adhering to these legal frameworks is not only a compliance issue but also a moral imperative to promote and protect children's well-being.  Implementing Responsible Data Practices in Government-Owned Data Systems: Key Considerations  The rationales mentioned above highlight the importance of implementing responsible data principles, especially when handling data for and about children. It also provided practical insights into how these principles can be translated into practices and policies.   By exploring the three broad rationales—trust and reputation, performance of services and related data systems, and protection from harms—we highlighted the multifaceted benefits of prioritising responsible data for children.   Trust enables effective service delivery by preventing privacy protective behaviour, and supporting an organisation's reputation as a responsible player fosters this trust. A focus on data responsibility by design enhances system performance from the outset on, with a clear purpose and defined impact paths of both the programme and the data management system in question. The insights gained from data, can be used by public services and policy makers to improve the quality of their offering with children and their families’ best interests at heart.   ***  The bottom line here is responsible data management for children goes beyond mere compliance with existing regimes but requires a multifaceted approach intersecting with trust, performance, protection, and reputation, with a positive impact on children’s lives at the centre.   If you’d like to follow the progress on this work, sign up for our newsletter here for further updates. 

Guest Blog

Guest blog by John-Matthew Conely (as part of his internship at the Responsible Data for Children Initiative); RD4C will delve deeper into AI and how it relates to the RD4C Principles. Children are growing up in a world where artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly a part of their daily life: they interact with AI-powered technologies when they use social media, smart toys, smart devices, or watch online videos; their lives are affected by automated decision making for educational assessment; their personal development is likely influenced by the algorithms that permeate our digital environment. AI - defined by the OECD as machine-based systems that transform inputs into outputs, such as content or predictions, that influence the physical or virtual environment - can be highly positive for children, creating opportunities to sustainably flourish and grow while supercharging education and medical care. On the other hand, it also has the potential to cause harm to children. Social media algorithms have increasingly been shown to negatively affect children’s mental health, while AI assistants can impair children’s emotional and cognitive development. AI-powered IoT (Internet of Things) devices, even toys, can violate children’s privacy by harvesting their data without their consent. Generative AI has the potential to flood the internet with harmful content including child-abuse material, further endangering children’s safety.  A growing recognition of AI threats and opportunities has led to greater public sector commitments to governing AI ethically, but such initiatives are still in early stages and place minimal focus on children. For AI to truly be of benefit to children, AI systems must be designed, developed, and deployed with the well-being of children explicitly in mind. That is to say, the output and applications of AI must be aligned with values and norms that recognize children’s and that of their caregivers preferences and their right to privacy, safety, and freedom of thought. This process of determining AI values is also known as AI alignment.   What is AI Alignment? The AI alignment problem is concerned with ensuring that AI delivers output in a manner consistent with human goals, values, and preferences. To better illustrate what is meant here by “alignment”, consider designing a hypothetical AI chatbot. In developing this chatbot, you (the designer) would like to make ethical decisions about the kinds of responses the chatbot can provide to its users. For example, you might wish to restrict the chatbot from giving discriminatory or offensive answers. How would you determine which answers are appropriate or inappropriate for users? Would you decide unilaterally, believing that you already know what is best for them? Would you seek to gather input on user’s preferences, in order to more accurately reflect their needs? If your chatbot serves users in a variety of regional and cultural contexts, will you adapt the chatbot’s responses for particular contexts?  Ultimately, every AI contains design choices that reflect specific decisions made about preferences and values, yet the designers themselves may not be in a position to arbitrarily decide which values are most appropriate. To properly align these systems with human preferences, participation is needed from the people and communities that the AI system affects. For this reason, participatory methods need to form the basis of a human-aligned AI.   How to Facilitate Child-Aligned AI? AI-based systems rely on data to produce their valuable output: more data. As a data-driven technology, its usefulness and power is therefore reliant on the (responsible) data upon which it is trained. The Responsible Data for Children initiative was formed out of a desire to serve the rights of children in such data-oriented contexts. Its principles are flexible by design and applicable in a broad variety of contexts in which data is used. To see how our principles and tools are applicable to AI, consider the sample principle below.  Participatory / People-Centric: For AI systems to be aligned with and prioritize children’s needs and preferences, there is a need to bolster efforts for greater data literacy in children, so that children themselves can better voice their concerns and recommendations, and to foster participation mechanisms that allow children and young people to actively engage. We should promote measures to educate children, parents, and related stakeholders on AI, the nature of consent, children’s rights and protections, and risks to children. These measures ought to be as inclusive as possible, giving voice to children from communities around the world, including from the Global South. Incorporating these participatory, democratic approaches into alignment of even the largest-scale AI is not a pipe-dream. One private company, Anthropic, is currently developing a process to align large language models via the incorporation of public input on high level ethical principles. Incidentally, this process results in a less biased model, with no appreciable degradation in math or language performance or shifts in perceived political stance. If properly leveraged, such approaches could allow all members of society, even the most vulnerable, to have a say in determining how technology will affect their future.  Such approaches should be harnessed specifically to incorporate the values and goals of children into AI. Various vehicles to engage and interface with youth on emerging policy have already been developed, such as the Youth Solutions Lab’s participatory workshops which gather sentiments, insights, and preferences from youth on pressing policy issues. Crowdsourced input gathered from youth on specific moral preferences for artificial agents also show promise (see MIT Media Lab’s Moral Machine project). These participatory approaches could open a path to create direct linkages between the high-level principles informing AI model development and the preferences of children and youth who will eventually interact with those models. In tandem with these methods, boosting data literacy and communicating AI concepts to the public, especially youth, in a relatable, concrete manner will aid in effective discussion and participation.   Join the Responsible Data for Children Efforts As we enter our fifth year, the Responsible Data for Children initiative continues to pioneer ways to address new and emerging data challenges affecting children around the world. We need thought partners to dedicate more substantial research to the field of AI alignment and child rights, empowerment and self-determination. If you would like to collaborate, please reach out to [email protected].     Image by Jamie Street | Unsplash is licensed under CC0.

New Publication

Since the beginning of the year, the Responsible Data for Children (RD4C) initiative has been actively seeking feedback and to refine its focus for 2024. Following the insightful recommendations gathered during our recent RD4C dinner event, we have since diversified our outreach, collecting valuable testimonials from field practitioners we previously collaborated with in different contexts.  In these interviews, Mariana Rozo-Paz (Policy, Research, and Project Management Lead at Datasphere Initiative), Risdianto Irawan (Data Specialist, UNICEF Indonesia), and Lisa Zimmermann (Chief of Child Protection, UNICEF Madagascar) working in Latin America, Asia and Africa respectively, stress the importance of engaging with young people.  They emphasize the value of working particularly in the Global South—where the majority of adolescents and youth are located—to use technology for their well-being, while minimizing harm. Our interviewees recognise a need for increased capacity building of practitioners working with data for and about children, particularly on the foundational principles related to responsible data handling and the risks generated by data and data technologies. This is particularly true when this data is particularly sensitive, such as protection or mental health related data.  These firsthand accounts offer a unique perspective on the real-world challenges practitioners are faced with, guiding us towards areas where our initiatives can make the most meaningful difference. Join us as we explore these testimonials, shedding light on our past work as well as the path forward for RD4C this year. *** As we enter our fifth year, the Responsible Data for Children initiative continues to pioneer ways to address new and emerging data challenges. The themes that emerged from our engagements with practitioners in the field will help guide a yearly Responsible Data for Children strategic dialogue to set priorities and select projects for the year. Our next strategy session is in mid April, please do not hesitate to reach out with suggestions at [email protected]!  If you’d like to stay up to date with us as we continue this journey, we encourage you to sign up for our newsletter. 

New Publication

“Data and AI can help deliver vital services to those most in need. It can increase accessibility to education, healthcare, and other vital services for child and human flourishing.” “Data and AI have the potential to widen existing inequalities within and across countries; there is a risk that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.” On February 26, 2024, the Responsible Data for Children initiative (co-led by UNICEF at Chief Data Office and The GovLab at New York University) convened a “brain trust” dinner to discuss the future of data and AI for children. Hosted by the Doris Duke Foundation and supported by UNICEF USA, we came together united by optimism that a better future is possible and a shared belief in the role that data and data technologies can play in enabling every child to reach their full potential. However, we were also united in concern that the steps that are currently being taken (or not taken) may not put us on the right path – the path to realizing the capacity of data and data technologies for social and public good to the benefit of all.  Together, we identified pressing needs in our efforts to improve child wellbeing, along with possible solutions for the Responsible Data for Children initiative to carry forward through its work in countries across the globe. New Tech, Old Problems When people talk about emerging technology, there is a tendency to focus on new problems to solve with new ‘exciting’ tools. But participants seemed to agree that a better use of new technology is to solve old, protracted, difficult problems we have been struggling to solve for years; inclusion, child well-being, access to quality education, healthcare. Many countries are more concerned with how data systems must be enhanced to improve civil registration, digitized administrative systems, and more. All these seemingly basic changes have a profound impact on the lives of children and young people.  “It’s important to think about the basics,” said one expert. “ And the basics are finding kids at birth and following them as they grow up [...] ensuring they are protected throughout the process. Tech must build upon existing foundations to contribute to success.” “The theme I hear from this conversation is that we should not always ‘shoot for the stars.’ We should use tech to deal with what we are struggling to do currently and should have done before instead of immediately leaping to new problems.” To stop getting distracted by ‘sugar coated shiny objects’, we should be concrete about what new technology can do to old problems. Data as an Enabler “What do you think are the most exciting opportunities opened up by data and technology for children who are being born today?”  An hors d’oeuvre to brain trustees who brought to the table expertise in statistics, technology, product development, international development, and child well-being from National Statistical Offices, Permanent Missions to the UN, philanthropies, and technology companies.     The central concept of “data is an enabler, never a solution itself” was defined early on. “Technology by itself will not do it” neither, specified one participant. While new data and technology provides exciting possibilities—for example, using low-cost audio doppler systems to identify high-risk pregnancies to improve maternal health outcomes—it is not a cure-all.  Both data and technology need to be embedded in a supportive ecosystem—for example, trained staff to use these low-cost doppler systems, as well as structures and processes for referrals and care where needed.  Responsible Governance Data and technology are tools like any other, neither inherently good nor bad. There is a critical need to identify ways to use technology for social and public good and to minimize the ways it might be risky, harmful, destructive, or a driver of widening inequalities.  Securing Transparency and Building Trust For several participants, a major gap around data and technology systems is the scarcity of trustworthy tools stemming from the lack of understanding of what went into them. We cannot derive meaningful answers from new tools without understanding what fed them (both quality and origins of the data) or what assumptions undergird them.  Relying on their experiences working on welfare in the United States, one participant shared that they always asked themselves, “What are the biases within the system [...] that appear objective but in fact embed norms and value judgements?”  Efforts to build trust in new technology systems could therefore create significant harm if there were not significant changes in how they are designed, developed and deployed. This concern is particularly acute with regards to generative AI. Participants argued that “people are being given agency to use machines with blind trust. They are being granted power over something that only ‘sounds’ like it is operating correctly [because] if a machine gives us information that sounds intelligent, it must be true.”  “We cannot let [generative AI] make decisions about children when there’s so little transparency about how results emerge.” This unease about the use of generative AI without knowing how it works and what guardrails are in place led us to a conversation around regulations and accountabilities. Strengthening Regulations “To put it bluntly, a lack of governance kills kids. [...] Technology is sexy, but we need to focus on unsexy stuff”, said one participant. Our laws and regulatory mechanisms have not evolved to guarantee AI tools are designed and used responsibly. To do good, we need principled and flexible rules, checks and balances that reflect our fast-evolving reality. Without them, we risk deepening inequities — as communities who have the resources to use (and produce) new technologies will use them to help themselves, while others languish. To this point, one participant flagged the importance of self-governance and urged everyone, in particular tech companies, to help those underserved so as to reduce systemic gaps, both globally and within communities. Similar to what Statistics Offices do, tech companies could state the origins of the data used by their technologies and include a level of confidence or margin of error in the results their systems produce. This would help companies explain how their systems generate answers or from what datasets those answers emerge.  “The rules themselves should be shaped in such a way as to give people the most choices throughout the process. It’s like voting. You go more than once.” Fostering Participation, Agency and Literacy In this regard, participants emphasized the importance of engaging young people in the conversation, ensuring they have their finger in the pie. “We need to hear their voices and understand their concerns.” “Including young people in the conversation [of how tech is used] has the possibility to democratize technology.” For their participation to be meaningful, some urged the need to make both adults and children more literate about technology. Additionally, while high-tech systems can erode our ability to critically interrogate them (a risk of turning us into passive consumers), reinforcing skills like programming and critical thinking can stymie that loss. One compared skills training to math, noting that “kids need to learn to do math themselves before they are given a calculator, otherwise they’ll only ever rely on the calculator and fail to grasp the foundational concepts.” Meaningful agency will not be possible until these problems are addressed.  “Tech gives tools to young people to expand their capacity. We should think about how we can give them [meaningful] agency in these conversations.” *** As we enter our fifth year, the Responsible Data for Children initiative continues to pioneer ways to address new and emerging data challenges. The themes that emerged during discussion will guide a yearly Responsible Data for Children strategic dialogue to set priorities and select projects for the year. But doing this alone is not a piece of cake… Our next strategy session is in mid April, please do not hesitate to reach out with suggestions at [email protected]!  If you’d like to stay up to date with us as we continue this journey, we encourage you to sign up for our newsletter.      Photo by Brooke Lark on Unsplash 

New Publication

This piece was originally posted on The GovLab website in coordination with UNICEF and UNHCR. To view it in its original format, please click the link here From 29 to 31 January 2024, UNICEF and UNHCR and The Governance Lab at New York University hosted three 90-minute webinars on ways they can support the well-being of children through data, highlighting the ways development and humanitarian practitioners around the world can reinforce data responsibility principles and practices in their daily work with and for children. Led by The GovLab’s Stefaan Verhulst, UNICEF’s Krisana Messerli and Eugenia Olliaro, and UNHCR’s Rachelle Cloutier, participants learned: Why is data important for refugee children? What is data responsibility, and why does it matter? Why does data responsibility matter for refugee children? What are the principles for responsible data management in humanitarian settings? How can data responsibility principles be implemented in practice across the data and information management process? Following the completion of this series, we are happy to publish a final “learning package” that compiles all of the components used for this event. This learning package includes:  A recording of the 30 January 2024 session of the webinar.    The PowerPoint presentation used for the webinar.  A collection of additional resources that can guide participants interested in further advancing their understanding of responsible data for refugee children. The additional resources are available here. *** We hope these resources are of interest and use to you. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at [email protected]. 

Video

Welcome to the fifth episode of RD4C Bites, our ongoing series of short video interviews in which we highlight lessons and experience from data-focused practitioners on the responsible handling of data of and for children. In this episode we interview Elda Denaj, a Child Rights Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist at UNICEF Albania, to hear more about data and data management systems in the context of children’s rights. In the video above, Elda discusses her role at UNICEF Albania, enablers and challenges to responsible data practices in the context of data management systems, and ongoing efforts to continue to promote the responsible use of data of and for children. Key Takeaways: Creating consistent institutional policy and narrative to support data generation and data use can help to enable success. Data management ecosystems designed to prioritize upstream accountability over downstream outcomes can be problematic.  Public awareness of, and education on, data is critical to its responsible use. Follow our blog to stay updated on further upcoming RD4C Bites episodes.  

Video

Welcome to the fourth episode of RD4C Bites, our ongoing series of short video interviews in which we highlight lessons and experience from data-focused practitioners on the responsible handling of data of and for children. In this episode we hear from Dr. Yousef Al Hammadi, Executive Director of Knowledge and Impact at the Abu Dhabi Early Childhood Authority, an entity of the Abu Dhabi government, to learn about multi-sector collaboration to support children’s early development, health, and general wellbeing. In the video above, Dr. Al Hammadi discusses the mission of the ECA, enablers and challenges to responsible data practices (particularly with regard to administrative data), and ongoing efforts to continue to support responsible use of data of and for children. Key Takeaways: To overcome the prevalence of data silos between sectors, encourage the building of data ecosystems to facilitate the sharing of data between sectors. Data analysis should be fundamentally purpose driven and directly informed by the needs of stakeholders.  Strong support for data analytics capabilities on behalf of leadership is crucial to ensuring that data systems, data talent, and overall data technology are effective. Follow our blog to stay updated on further upcoming RD4C Bites episodes.

Event

All humanitarian staff work with data in one way or another. The data of refugees must be treated with special care, due to the vulnerabilities associated with being forcibly displaced. Children are some of the most vulnerable of this group, and their data needs to be managed carefully throughout the data management process. For UNICEF, UNHCR, and all other organizations committed to the welfare of refugee children, data is an invaluable resource for informing programming and advocacy. In this context, it is essential for humanitarian practitioners to avoid causing harm by applying the principles of data responsibility and managing data in a safe, ethical and effective manner.  From 29 to 31 January 2024, UNICEF and UNHCR and The Governance Lab at New York University (The GovLab) will host three 90-minute webinars to inform humanitarian practitioners around the world of ways they can reinforce data responsibility principles and practices in their daily work. Attendees will learn: The unique vulnerabilities facing refugee children in an increasingly data-driven world; The value of principles-led frameworks such as the IASC Operational Guidance on Data Responsibility in Humanitarian Action and Responsible Data for Children Principles in fostering responsible data activities; How data responsibility principles can be implemented through all stages of the data and information management process; and Scenarios, based on real-world examples, that describe some of the actions humanitarian practitioners can take to realize data responsibility principles and thereby  foster the well-being and agency of child refugees. This event will take place at three separate times to accommodate the time zones and schedules of a diverse and international cohort of UNICEF and UNHCR staff, as well as their partners and those interested in responsible data for children more broadly. We encourage you to sign up for one of the following sessions: Session #1: Monday, 29 January 2024, 16:00-17:30, Central European Time (CET) – UTC +01:00 Session #2: Tuesday, 30 January 2024, 14:00-15:30, Central European Time (CET) – UTC +01:00  Session #3: Wednesday, 31 January 2024, 9:30-11:00, Central European Time (CET) – UTC +01:00  Note: The material presented at each session will be the same. Please register for the one session that best meets your time zone or schedule.  Each event will be led by The GovLab’s Stefaan Verhulst, with opening and closing remarks from UNICEF and UNHCR. We encourage you to join us for what promises to be an exciting opportunity to expand learning on data responsibility. If you have any questions or have technical difficulty registering, please email us directly at [email protected].

Video

Welcome to the third episode of RD4C Bites, our ongoing series of short video interviews in which we highlight lessons and experience from data-focused practitioners on the responsible handling of data of and for children. In this episode our team interviews Nayana Das, director of research at IMPACT Initiatives, a Geneva think-and-do tank, to hear more about data-driven decision making and knowledge tools in humanitarian settings. In the video above, Nayana discusses the types of data IMPACT Initiatives handles, the enablers and challenges to responsible data practice, as well as ongoing future efforts to continue to support responsible use of data of and for children. Key Takeaways: Varying levels of data literacy within the sector can present challenges to managing and interpreting data responsibly. Collaborations and partnerships can provide useful and necessary context when designing and implementing data-driven projects. Inclusivity during data-collection can be improved not only by the direct collection of data from populations of concern but also via key partnerships. Follow our blog to stay updated on further upcoming RD4C Bites episodes.

New Publication

This piece was originally published on the  ICRC Blog site by Roxana Radu and Eugenia Olliaro. Learn more here.   In times of crisis and conflict, advanced artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (AI/ML) might become as much part of the problem as the solution. An ever-growing number of children in need risk having their data used as part of AI systems that do not implement safeguards and protections for vulnerable populations. Given the short- and long-term consequences for the first generations to grow up with AI, there is an urgent need to scrutinize AI-powered systems that are not aligned with the rights, needs, and realities of children in humanitarian action. In this post, part of a series on Cybersecurity and data protection in humanitarian action, Roxana Radu, Associate Professor of Digital Technologies and Public Policy at the University of Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government, and Eugenia Olliaro, Programme Specialist at UNICEF’s Chief Data Office and the global UNICEF lead of the Responsible Data for Children (RD4C) initiative, make three recommendations for the humanitarian sector to become children-centred in the age of AI. Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) systems are increasingly being used when providing emergency relief and vital services to children, at a time when more children than ever before are affected by different types of crises around the world. Their data will be consequential in as yet unknown ways, since they are the first generations to be brought up with AI. In a humanitarian context, some of these consequences can be dire, as data can put children and their communities at immediate risk. This holds true not only for “big data”, but also for “small data”. Gender-disaggregated information about children above a certain age could allow those who want to prevent girls from going to secondary school to do so. Data about child-headed households in a refugee setting would indicate to malicious actors where the unsupervised children are and put those children at risk of exploitation and abuse. Equally true, the profiling of beneficiary groups can turn into a life-threatening practice within or outside a humanitarian setting. New ways of recombining data can thus shape children’s short- and long-term opportunities and life chances in unparalleled ways. Developed at unprecedented speed and scale, ML/AI-based systems rely on data to produce their valuable output: more data. In the process, information about children might feed advanced AI/ML tools beyond their originally specified intent. Due to the complexity and opacity of these systems, it is difficult to ensure that deep learning on particular types of data is not integrated in evolving forms of ML or in related products. This is already the case in highly regulated environments, where existing data protection frameworks have proven insufficient to prevent the harms associated with the use of personal data in AI. Regulators in Canada, Australia or EU countries race to identify and enforce new rules to regulate AI companies and protect their citizens from “murky data protection practices“. If business is difficult to govern in highly regulated countries, some wonder how AI would be regulated in places where the rule of law is weak – and it is precisely in those jurisdictions that AI-powered solutions tend to be deployed first. In ecosystems with weaker protections for children, ML systems are able to collect, explore, and integrate more data, when allowed to learn in unsupervised ways. At scale, both anonymized information and non-personal data about children becomes valuable. In times of emergency, there is pressure to make data available as fast as possible, meaning that there are inherent risks of much of the data about children being captured by systems that are not scrutinized for their vulnerable population(s) safeguards. While safety checks and licensing of AI systems for specific sectors are under discussion, we are witnessing the fast roll-out of systems with minimum or no protections in place for those most at risk. For this reason, machine learning models need to be taught to forget information. Paradoxically, to adapt machine learning to humanitarian contexts, ‘machine unlearning’ will be required. Child-centred AI applications By design, AI systems are not developed with conflict in mind. Nor are they highly sensitive to the needs of populations at risk, who are rarely involved in their creation. While there are emerging calls for children to be (meaningfully) consulted as a key stakeholder group in child-centred AI applications (e.g. UNICEF Policy Guidance on AI for children, Scottish Government and Alan Turing Institute, Beijing AI Principles), the reality of humanitarian action often limits such engagement. With pressing needs to ensure affected populations’ survival and wellbeing, organizations providing services in humanitarian crises struggle to find time to talk about data with the communities they serve — let alone engage in explanations about ML and advanced processing of data. Communities in need of aid might provide a wide range of information about them and consent to its use without grasping the potential implications, or without really having the choice — as they would otherwise simply not receive support. If this is the case for adults, it is all the more true for children. Children may not be provided with adequate support to assess associated risks and benefits when they participate in programmes that generate personal or non-personal data related to them; or they may not even be asked, because their participation depends on someone else’s legal consent. Further risks associated with a poor communication and sensitization of children include loss of trust in both emerging technologies and in the frontline relief organizations adopting them. Practitioners themselves might have trouble understanding how the ML models work and how they impact decision-making, in the short- and in the long-run. Despite their unresolved “black box problem”, AI systems already support decisions in humanitarian contexts, including for vulnerable children. Alongside concerns for surveillance humanitarianism and techno-colonialism, new forms of bias need to be explored in relation to children and AI, such as the push to serve those better captured in data, which might leave many others behind. Until now, we know very little about the harms engendered by the use of AI in humanitarian contexts. As such, when AI is used as part of a toolkit to aid decision-making – as it is often the case, alongside human reviews and checks – data fed to the system will shape future programmes and developments, for both the organizations involved and the children targeted. Although some AI-powered services currently in use are developed in-house, limited technical expertise and lack of funding have driven many non-profits in the humanitarian sector towards partnerships with the private sector. Innovation in this space mostly comes from partnerships with technology companies operating globally, which have market incentives to increase the accuracy of their models by integrating as much data as possible. Though some tech giants have adhered to a set of principles for humanitarian action (see, for example, Microsoft’s AI for Humanitarian Action), there are no specific commitments to children’s data and contextual vulnerability safeguards. Moreover, there is no guidance available as to which ML capabilities from humanitarian action work should not be integrated in global AI systems deployed for commercial purposes. Three recommendations for the humanitarian AI ecosystem to become children-centred In the humanitarian sector, the shift from responsive to anticipatory action is powered by AI. Many of the international organizations, governments, non-profits and for-profits involved on the ground have started integrating ML/AI practices into their work, but there is insufficient scrutiny for the protections afforded to children, when data that is required for access to services is fed into AI systems. As we move beyond the ML hype and AI techno-solutionism, urgent changes are needed for the humanitarian AI ecosystem to become children-centred. We make three recommendations for the responsible use of artificial intelligence by humanitarian organizations and their private sector partners: Improve transparency around the children-related data points (personal and non-personal data) that are added to AI/ML models deployed in humanitarian contexts and assessing their long-term consequences; Specify how AI systems are designed and in particular how they are configured to unlearn in situations of high vulnerability; and Develop a public register of tested and vetted AI solutions in use in humanitarian contexts, to set minimum standards of data protection and data use when it comes to data for and about children; strengthen collective learning before humanitarian needs arise; and allow for public scrutiny during and after emergencies. It is key to set adequate safeguards for children in the humanitarian AI ecosystem now. We owe it to them and to the generations to come, whose life opportunities and wellbeing depend on it. See also: Susanna Acland, Barnaby Willitts-King, Mobile phones for participation: building responsible public-private humanitarian partnerships, December 7, 2023 Ed Millet, Deploying OSINT in armed conflict settings: law, ethics, and the need for a new theory of harm, December 5, 2023 Vincent Cassard, Stuart Campo, Jonas Belina, Responsible data sharing between humanitarian organizations and donors: towards a common approach, June 22, 2023

Video

Welcome to the second episode of RD4C Bites, RD4C’s ongoing series of short video interviews in which we highlight lessons and experience from data-focused practitioners on the responsible handling of data of and for children. In this episode our team interviews Rositsa Zaimova, partner at Dalberg Data Insights (a division of Dalberg Global Development Advisors), to learn more about the lessons and experience of working with data ecosystem approaches in the humanitarian and development space. In the video above, Rosita discusses the types of data Dalberg Data Insights handles, facilitators and barriers to responsible data practice, as well as ongoing efforts to continue to support responsible use of data of and for children. Key Takeaways: Building ecosystems of data users, data communities, and data governance frameworks and tools facilitates the sustainable and responsible leveraging of data;  Attracting data science talent to the development space is an ongoing challenge; and Data is ultimately an enabler for solving challenges, not the end goal itself; always seek to first investigate the challenges, then determine how best to use data accordingly. Follow our blog to stay updated on further upcoming RD4C Bites episodes.

Video

Welcome to the first episode of RD4C Bites, RD4C’s ongoing series of short video interviews in which we highlight lessons and experience from data-focused practitioners on the responsible handling of data of and for children.  In this episode our team interviews Alex Hutchison, director of the Data For Children Collaborative at the University of Edinburgh’s Edinburgh Futures Institute, to understand the lessons and experience of working with data-driven approaches for children in the humanitarian and development space. In the video above, Alex discusses the types of data the Data For Children Collaborative handles, the enablers and challenges to responsible data practice, as well as ongoing future efforts to continue to support responsible use of data of and for children. Key Takeaways: Clearly defining a unified purpose and value set from the beginning is crucial for success; Collaborating with team members of varying data proficiency on responsible data can be a challenge, and you must first engage with them at their level of proficiency; and Inspiring and empowering partners to embrace responsible data principles and tools can spread and sustain the community of practice. Follow our blog to stay updated on further upcoming RD4C Bites episodes.

Video

What works when it comes to data responsibility? What examples can practitioners draw upon? The Responsible Data for Children initiative (RD4C) is committed to sharing and expanding the community of best practice when it comes to responsible data handling for and of children. By engaging with the experiences of real-world practitioners of responsible data for children, we hope to raise awareness of these challenges and insights to improve outcomes for children around the world. In keeping with this mission, our team will release "RD4C Bites" — a new series of short, “bite-sized,” and easily digestible videos that talk about responsible data.  This series of three-minute video interviews, conducted with data-focused practitioners from multiple sectors, highlight real-world examples of promising practices, challenges, and lessons learned in effective data-driven approaches for responsible handling of data for and about children. Find the series on our YouTube channel. Follow our blog to stay updated on further RD4C Bites announcements.

New Publication

In 2021, the teams that developed the Responsible Data for Children (RD4C) principles and the IASC Operational Guidance on Data Responsibility in Humanitarian Action (IASC Operational Guidance) conducted a comparative assessment of their respective principles. In April 2023, the Data Responsibility Working Group revised the IASC Operational Guidance, including minor updates to the Principles. To commemorate Universal Children's Day, the teams met again this year to reflect on how these frameworks still complement one another.  In this piece, we provide an overview of both frameworks, the value they provide, and information on how they complement and reinforce one another. The Frameworks Launched in 2019 by The GovLab at New York University and UNICEF’s Chief Data Office, RD4C is a framework for assessing risks and opportunities for advancing children’s rights through data and data technologies (analytics, machine learning, AI, etc.) across the data lifecycle that is grounded in a set of principles for responsible data handling. It recognizes that children face unique vulnerabilities that can be best addressed by spotting the particular risks and opportunities in the contexts that children reside in. The principles are informed by observations about data use for children around the world and across contexts. The principles included in the IASC Operational Guidance on Data Responsibility in Humanitarian Action (the IASC Principles) inform the safe, ethical and effective management of personal and non-personal data for humanitarian response. The IASC Principles are based on a review of 55 documents offering guidance on data management.* The IASC Principles were developed in 2021 by a sub-group of IASC Results Group 1, with minor updates by the Data Responsibility Working Group in 2023. The IASC Principles and RD4C Principles complement and reinforce one another. Whereas the IASC Principles address responsible handling of data about all demographics in humanitarian settings, RD4C focuses specifically on children, regardless of the context in which they live. The RD4C Principles provide practitioners with a roadmap for implementing and embodying the IASC Principles in their work, specifically with children’s data.  Value of the Principles  Principles-based guidance for data management such as RD4C and the IASC Operational Guidance has distinct benefits over more detailed and specific governance instruments such as laws and regulations.  A principles-based guidance provides a common framework that can be adapted to various contexts. From country to country or issue to issue, the RD4C’s and IASC Operational Guidance's  approach provide a useful supplement to policies, providing contextual flexibility to fill in the gaps that might be left by the more “rigid” requirements imposed by laws and regulations. This flexibility can allow organizations to accommodate a variety of circumstances and adapt to the challenges they face in their work.  Core to both sets of principles is the recognition that data moves through distinct steps. Both sets of principles inform responsible data management throughout the data lifecycle, including collection, processing, storage, quality assurance, sharing, analysis, use, and retention and destruction. The examples below illustrate how data responsibility has been implemented at different stages of the data lifecycle within a variety of contexts and sectors. Principles in Practice: Accountability in HOPE There are many contexts in which adopting policies consistent with a principles-led approach has yielded value and allowed organizations to accommodate different challenges. For example, both the RD4C and the IASC Operational Guidance state the importance of accountability mechanisms related to data management by establishing institutional processes, roles, and responsibilities.  As highlighted previously, the Humanitarian cash Operations and Programme Ecosystem (HOPE) serves as a prime example of how professional accountability can be pursued. Designed by UNICEF as a humanitarian cash transfer management information system, HOPE aims to enhance the quality of Humanitarian Cash Transfers (HCT) programs and ensure compliance with UNICEF guidelines and tools, maintaining accountability and traceability of managed information. HOPE supported UNICEF and partners to deliver USD 430 million in the last two years to almost three million individuals. Key to achieving this level of accountability is the establishment of clear roles within the project team. HOPE has been deployed in multiple countries, including Palestine, Kenya, Sri Lanka, Ukraine, Sudan, South Sudan, Slovakia, Somalia, Czech Republic, Philippines, Afghanistan, Niger, Nigeria, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo and Antigua and Barbuda.  Ukraine, for instance, has established functions and responsibilities, for both UNICEF staff and partners, in an iterative way, embedding them both in office standard operating procedures and in HOPE, while updating as programme needs evolve. In the State of Palestine, HOPE rolled out a new accountability feature. In response to the humanitarian needs in Gaza, with many Mobile Money vendors closing and reopening as security allowed, HOPE supported UNICEF staff to use real-time monitoring and convey up-to-date information on where to safely access cash to beneficiaries.  Overall, these efforts speak to HOPE’s desire to pursue professional accountability and empower stakeholders to responsibly handle data for and about children and their communities — to make informed decisions and effectively address challenges in their country. Principles in Practice: Data Responsibility in Afghanistan Following the de facto authorities’ decree in December 2022 banning Afghan women from working for NGOs, the IASC established minimum criteria for programming, including robust commitments around AAP. The AAP Working Group (AAP WG) launched the Afghanistan Community Voices and Accountability Platform to help humanitarians collect, analyze and respond to community feedback across the response in Afghanistan in a timely and secure manner. Given the sensitivity of the data shared through the collective platform, the AAP WG took steps to ensure data responsibility by design. This included conducting a data impact assessment to identify and mitigate data-related risks, and establishing a standard operating procedure (SOP) for data management by all partners involved. The SOP specifies that no personal data should be stored within the platform. It also includes steps to ensure that data management within the platform does no harm, and promotes equality and non-discrimination. This is achieved through collective analysis of complaints and feedback received from affected communities, and the presentation of key insights in a neutral and impartial manner. The SOP is aligned with the system-wide Information Sharing Protocol for Afghanistan, which was endorsed by the Humanitarian Country Team in May 2023. This approach aligns with the IASC’s Data Security and Confidentiality principles and the RD4C principle of preventing harms across the data lifecycle.  Principles in Practice: Being Proportional in the Democratic Republic of Congo Finally, both frameworks encourage organizations to be proportional in their data management and to align all data collection and retention with a clearly defined purpose. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, UNICEF’s Cellule d’Analyse Intégrée (CAI) made proportionality a central, guiding principle. CAI is an operational research and analytics cell created by UNICEF to provide local and national level actors, government leaders, UN staff, and associated partners with integrated and actionable evidence to respond to public health emergencies and contexts. Formed in response to the 10th Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo, CAI put extensive thought into how they could responsibly collect data in communities without overburdening them. Ultimately, the team decided to only collect data when they can be sure it will be relevant and used. CAI also ensures that it uses locally identified and trusted researchers—women working with women and men with men, but also specific members of communities—to ensure they capture all (and only) relevant data. Though it might sound straightforward and sensible, it is not always easy to ensure proportionality.  During its work, the CAI team sometimes faced difficult ethical situations that required referral. Enumerators and community workers sometimes struggled to know how to deal with unexpected and sensitive information shared by children and their communities—such as disclosure of sexual exploitation and abuse. Frequent exchanges were therefore organized by the CAI team to remind practitioners about how to handle these incidents and what to do with the data.  These actions reflect an organization thinking critically about the ways they can meaningfully contribute to improved humanitarian outcomes, be consistent with relevant mandates, respect and promote rights and freedoms, and carefully balance those where needed. CAI aspires for its data collection to be relevant, limited and adequate to what is necessary for achieving intended purposes.  Recommendations Since the release of the IASC Operational Guidance and the RD4C principles, four commonalities emerge across implementation of the principles to support the responsible use of data for children, including in humanitarian settings: Understand Partner Priorities: First, one major challenge that organizations can encounter during their work is difficulty in collaboration with partners. Actors have unique needs and interests that need to be understood in order to identify issues of common concern as well as the appropriate scope for the collaboration. Open conversation with stakeholders including governments, data sources, donors and others at the outset of a data management activity helps identify the needs of each stakeholder and the resources available, which in turn helps identify reasonable expectations for the collaboration.  Provide Tools and Infrastructure to Connect Data: One major challenge in the use of data for children and in humanitarian response is a lack of data access. The supply is not well-connected to the demand either because it is held by other actors or because the data is fractured across systems and formats. To avoid missed uses of data, organizations might look at ways that they can connect disparate sources. Developing a data management registry helps identify what data is available, and to have more systemic conversations about potential data use. Provide Training on Responsible Data Management: Another common challenge that UN staff encounter is insufficient availability of skills required for safe, ethical and effective data management. To address this, organizations might look at ways of articulating legal and institutional requirements. They might train their staff not to simply be reactive in response to challenges as they arise but to identify ways they can be proactive—thinking critically, for example, about the value of avoiding duplicative or excessive data collection, the importance of engaging with and informing community stakeholders, and more. In these ways, individuals can foster a healthy, responsible ecosystem.  Develop Processes and Procedures to Deliberate Ethical Challenges: Another challenge commonly identified for staff is the need for guidance when encountering ambiguous situations for which available guidance does not provide direct instructions. Many humanitarian settings call upon individuals to engage in field work that may present unique problems. Rather than aiming to develop specific guidance for all possible situations, humanitarian organizations should focus on developing processes and tools to support staff in ethical deliberation and decision-making.  In these ways, RD4C and the IASC Operational Guidance enable responsible data governance for children and adults in any corner of the planet and empower organizations to realize the promise of existing policies. In an age of changing technology and data linkage, the world requires flexible and adaptive guidance that can promote responsibility and is well-suited to manage the complexity of data use in different regions of the globe.  Your feedback matters! Both the RD4C initiative and the IASC Operational Guidance aim to be field-oriented, driven by the needs of both the populations they serve and the practitioners across sectors. If you have any comments on the above or suggestions on where to focus our attention in 2023, please contact us at [email protected] (RD4C) or [email protected] (UN OCHA Centre for Humanitarian Data, for feedback related to the IASC Operational Guidance).      * The complete list of documents reviewed is included in Annex D of the IASC Operational Guidance on Data Responsibility in Humanitarian Action, available here: https://interagencystandingcommittee.org/system/files/2023-04/IASC%20Operational%20Guidance%20on%20Data%20Responsibility%20in%20Humanitarian%20Action%2C%202023.pdf Photo by Yannis H | Unsplash is licensed under CC0.

New Publication

Young people have a right to be involved in decisions made about their data, but too often they are not included. They are deprived of agency in how others collect, share, and use their information, but this doesn’t need to be the case. Young people can be co-collaborators in data discussions to ensure the resulting policies and programs reflect their needs. On November 8th, 2023, Stefaan G. Verhulst and Francisco M. Benavides Martinez presented on this topic. Speaking at the Youth Takeover session of the Festival de Datos in Punta del Este, Uruguay, the pair reflected on key findings on data re-use from the Youth Solutions Labs initiative, co-hosted by The GovLab, UNICEF, and The Lancet Commission on Adolescent Health and Wellbeing, convening 123 young people from across the globe to discuss ways to improve youth health and well-being.  Among other topics, the Labs included discussions on how youth feel about the re-use of data for or about them. This work aimed to operationalize the Responsible Data for Children principle of participation.  In addition to presenting the findings on data re-use, Stefaan also led an engagement with in-person conference participants and those attending virtually–including young people. He asked the group: How should young people be involved in decisions about their data?  Several conference attendees spoke to the group and we received over 40 responses to our live poll. The key takeaways from these discussions are outlined below. The full recording of the presentation can be found at the end of this post.  Key Takeaways from the Input Received at the Festival de Datos: The need for disaggregated data about and for youth: Participants expressed a need for not only data about youth as a cohort, but also the disaggregation of that data in terms of gender, geography, age, and other factors. Participants voiced a need for policies that call for the collection of such disaggregated data in a responsible and ethical way. Engaging youth across the data lifecycle: Involving youth in data decisions should not be one singular event or occurrence. There is an opportunity to involve youth in planning and strategy development, data collection, analysis, and communications decisions. For example, they could be involved in collecting data themselves. Data should take into account the lived experiences of young people: Data should be combined with the lived realities of young people to gain a more comprehensive understanding of social problems. Additional training, education and programming is needed to ensure youth are informed and can participate in data decisions meaningfully: Participants expressed the need for young people to be informed about the data ecosystem and how organizations are using their data first in order to make informed contributions to decision making processes. This could include understanding how organizations are re-using data about or for youth, increasing data literacy among young people, or even establishing work placement opportunities with young people in UN agencies and NGOs. Youth engagements should take into account how youth live their lives: There is a need to tailor youth engagement efforts to youth needs and ways of working. Participants suggested engagements to take place in schools, community centers, or online social networks to help meet young people where they are.  Expand existing data initiatives to include young people: Participants expressed a need for not only new engagement opportunities for young people but also the expansion of existing data programs to incorporate the opinions of young people in decision making processes. This could include building youth representation, setting up youth data councils or consulting youth networks in AI, data stewardship, and data sovereignty groups.  You can learn more about this initiative by watching the presentation (starting at 38:17) or by visiting the Youth Solutions Lab website. Please email [email protected] if you have any questions about this work or if you are interested in participating or collaborating on future initiatives. 

New Publication

Around the world, youth face pressing challenges. Conflicts, the climate crisis, education and employment gaps, structural inequities, and the lingering effects of COVID-19 all have an effect on the health and wellbeing of the world’s 1.2 billion adolescents. Already existing, siloed datasets from governments, international organizations, and companies might be reused to mitigate the consequences of these challenges. Yet, young people often do not have a clear way to make their voice heard in decisions that directly affect them, now and in the years to come. This is particularly true when it comes to questions about data use where information for and about children may be used or shared by a variety of organizations without their knowledge or consent. Young people often have little say in what data is shared about them, when it is shared, under what conditions, and with whom. Even when it is done by organizations who have their interests in mind, young people are excluded from conversations, which can lead to a lifelong loss of trust, a failure to consider their innate rights, and reduce their agency. In March 2023, The Lancet Commission on Adolescent Health and Well-Being, UNICEF, and The GovLab at NYU joined together to understand what youth would like to see regarding data (re)use. Through six virtual studio workshops or “Youth Solutions Labs”, we hosted over 123 youth between the ages of 16 and 20 from around the world to hear about what solutions they thought could address issues affecting them and the role of data in addressing those issues.  We learned not only valuable lessons about what might constitute a global agenda for youth health and well-being but also ways to responsibly use data for and about youth in ways aligned with global frameworks such as the Responsible Data for Children principles.   Responsible Data for Children Responsible Data for Children is a framework and initiative for assessing risks and opportunities for advancing children’s rights through data and across the data lifecycle, grounded in a set of principles for responsible data handling. It recognizes that children face unique vulnerabilities that can be best addressed by spotting the particular risks and opportunities in the contexts that children reside in. Core to the effort is a recognition that data moves through distinct stages from collection to use to impact and that a flexible framework that centers youth and children is essential. As such, it identifies several principles to emphasize throughout a data-driven effort—being participatory, professionally accountable, people-centric, preventative of harms across the data lifecycle, proportional, protective of children’s rights, and purpose-driven.   Responsible data practices These principles proved relevant throughout the Labs as participants discussed the ways that they thought data should be used to address the challenges they identified. They spoke on what young people were comfortable with organizations reusing, how they thought that data should be used, who should gain access to it, and when. The resulting discussions revealed an immense amount of information about the ways youth see data about young people and the importance of principle-led frameworks. When it came to the kinds of data used (or reused for purposes other than initially collected), youth suggested that experts rely on many different kinds of data—from search and social media trends to hospital records to location data. They expressed the importance of including surveys, interviews, and other direct methods to learn from a diverse range of lived realities. Most participants were only comfortable so long as the data re-use for or about youth aimed to solve public problems and was de-identified. Consistent with the Responsible Data for Children principle of being proportional and purpose-led, they wanted data collection and retention aligned with an intended purpose with outcomes that could improve their lives. Note: The Youth Solutions Labs included participants from North America and Western Europe (26), Latin America and The Caribbean (20), Asia-Pacific (22), Middle East and North Africa (19), Sub-Saharan Africa (16), and Eastern Europe and Central Asia (20). Similarly, many participant groups suggested providing the public sector and trusted intermediaries access to de-identified data about or for youth. Many young people viewed research centers and policymakers as uniquely accountable. Many youth saw avenues to express concerns and hold people responsible when they served in public-facing bodies. Youth participants also had other views on what ethical and responsible data reuse entails. Some spoke on the need for informed consent while others emphasized the need to account for inequities. Still others spoke about the need to reflect the local context and culture. Groups were divided on whether data re-use should be done only in a crisis or every day to prevent today’s problems from turning into crises. Reflecting on these perspectives and ensuring the needs and expectations of youth are met can be critical when it comes to being people-centric.   Important lessons Overall, the Youth Solutions Labs reveal several key lessons. First, they demonstrate a need for new processes and engagements to increase youth participation in discussions around defining ethical and responsible data re-use.  Second, there is an opportunity to explore new data types and sources that could be re-used to accelerate youth health and wellbeing—beyond data about youth themselves. Finally, there is a need to increase institutional trust to address concerns about the re-use of data by different actors. Principle-led frameworks like Responsible Data for Children can be a valuable resource here in ensuring that practices keep in mind the people at the center of data—children and youth themselves. We’ll reflect on these and other takeaways  in the 2024 Lancet Commission Report on Adolescent Health and Wellbeing, which we’ll publish in the coming weeks. In the meanwhile, if this work interests you, we encourage you to email [email protected] for more information on the Youth Solutions Labs and opportunities to participate in future initiatives. Reach out to [email protected] for information on the Responsible Data for Children initiative.

New Publication

Around the world, children face complex problems related to health, education, poverty, and more. Data can be a useful tool in helping organizations understand and address these challenges—identifying when and where to deploy resources, assessing program effectiveness, predicting future crises.  In a time of limited resources, however, organizations need to be specific and targeted to make the most impact. They need to find ways to focus on the most important problems with their collaborators, break those problems into manageable components, and develop new data-driven solutions. Today, the Responsible Data for Children initiative has developed a tool to help organizations do just that: The Responsible Data for Children (RD4C) Studio Methodology.      Inspired by resources such as the UK Design Council’s Double Diamond Methodology and The GovLab’s 100 Questions Methodology, the studio methodology allows organizations to explore and collaboratively define strategies related to child welfare and data. The methodology (pictured below) is divided into four phases: Planning: Understanding what the project hopes to address and why the use of data is useful;  Convening: Bringing together stakeholders to develop tailored solutions to the previously identified challenge or solution; Synthesis, Prototyping and Iteration: Synthesizing the results of prior discussions into a prototype solution that partners can test on a limited basis;  Release: Assessing the solutions with collaborators and reporting back. The Studio Methodology is a core part of the Responsible Data for Children toolkit. Already deployed through the initiative’s work in Uganda, the methodology proved instrumental in helping UNICEF and UNHCR Uganda and the Government of Uganda identify ways to improve the mental health and psychosocial services available to refugee children.  Recommendations developed through the series have informed ongoing efforts to develop a taxonomy for MHPSS data, improve data governance, and develop a data catalogue for the government and its partners. If you use the methodology to inform your own work, please reach out and let us know by contacting us at [email protected]. To get future updates on our work, subscribe to our newsletter here.   Photo by Charlein Gracia | Unsplash is licensed under CC0.

New Publication

Over the past few weeks, the Responsible Data for Children initiative has provided an overview not only of its principles, but the ways they can be achieved. From Mongolia to Guatemala, from Indonesia to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, there are examples of responsible data use for children everywhere.   If you missed our blog series, we encourage you to go back and look at the compelling examples and lists of available tools and resources available to help you promote responsible data in your own work. This series include blogs on: Proportional: Explains Proportionality through the lens of Cellule d’Analyse Intégrée, an operational research and analytics cell created by UNICEF to support responses to health emergencies in the Democratic Republic of Congo and elsewhere; People-Centric: Explains being People-Centric with the Aurora Project in Romania, a child protection platform that helps social workers and community health care providers to diagnose and monitor vulnerabilities experienced by children and their families; Protective of Children’s Rights: Explains how to Protect Children’s Rights using the example of UNICEF Indonesia’s efforts to launch an Immunization Chatbot; Professionally Accountable: Explains what is involved in being Professionally Accountable through the global Humanitarian cash Operations and Programme Ecosystem (HOPE), and the specificities of their instance in Ukraine; Participatory: Explains approaches to being Participatory with InForm, a platform that supported emergency response efforts in Mozambique and Zimbabwe. Prevention of Harms Across the Data Lifecycle: Explains ways to Prevent Harms using the example of CPIMS+/Primero’s deployment in Guatemala to assist in child protection work; and Purpose-Driven: Explains what it means to be Purpose-Driven through the lens of the Administrative Data Maturity Model, which enhanced efforts to harness administrative data systems for child welfare in Mongolia. We hope this work can highlight innovative practices around the world and inspire practitioners seeking new models to support children. No matter where you are, the Responsible Data for Children principles can be implemented. If you have any projects you’d like to highlight in the form of a guest blog or other collaboration, please reach out to us at [email protected].

New Publication

Today’s blog looks at the importance of being purpose-driven, how this principle was embedded in UNICEF’s work in Mongolia with the Administrative Data Maturity Model (ADaMM), and which resources are available to you to operationalise it.    What Does Purpose-Driven Mean?  A responsible data practice starts by being purpose-driven. When you seek to handle data you should identify why the data is needed to achieve the intended goal and how the benefits relate to improving children’s lives. If there is no clearly articulated benefit for children, either actual or potential, you should not collect data, store, share, or analyze it. You might consider specifying the  purpose and the value of the data to those who have a stake in its collection and use, including children and their caregivers. A privacy notice, for instance, may be useful for this purpose.  Defining a clear purpose has several benefits, including:  Better Decision-Making: When there is a clear understanding of the purpose, it is easier to make decisions based on how they will or could contribute to achieve the goal.  Evaluation: By defining clear goals and objectives, you can measure progress and determine whether the project is on track to achieve its desired outcome.  Communication: A clear purpose makes it easier to communicate the objectives and results of the initiative to all stakeholders involved who, as a consequence, are on the same page and can work towards the same goal.  Sharing the purpose with children and their caregivers can lead to several positive outcomes, including:  Transparency: Informing children and their caregivers about the purpose of data collection promotes transparency, which can help build trust and credibility.  Improved Data Quality: When children and their caregivers understand the purpose of data collection, they are more likely to provide accurate and complete information. This can improve the quality of the data collected, which can help you in return to gain meaningful insights and develop effective strategies.  Improved Engagement: When children and their caregivers understand the purpose of the project and how their data will be used, they are more likely to engage with the project, participate more actively and feel invested in its success.  How Have Others Pursued Being Purpose-Driven?  An example of the purpose-driven principle can be found in the efforts conducted by the Government of Mongolia to develop an integrated data system.   In partnership with the Asia Development Bank (ADB) and UNICEF, the National Statistics Office (NSO) of the Government of Mongolia has been working to enhance the country's capabilities in generating and using high-quality data and evidence. Among other things, the NSO intends to undertake a cross-sectoral assessment of the national data landscape, with the goal being to understand what data is scattered among the numerous administrative data systems and what data is lacking.  This assessment aims to formulate a comprehensive roadmap for the development of an integrated data system to enhance the delivery of public services to children.   To support this effort, UNICEF has recommended using the Administrative Data Maturity Model (ADaMM). This model will provide the NSO with a structured approach to identify strengths and weaknesses in the national administrative data landscape, prioritize areas for improvement, and allocate resources effectively. Because an integrated data system will allow the collection, processing, sharing, analysis, and use of information from multiple entities spanning diverse sectors, they will offer a more holistic understanding of the children whose data has been captured—regardless of the services they received in the first place and the administrative data system that originally captured their information.  By identifying a purpose for separate streams of data collection, and a purpose for their integration, the country will be able to generate actionable insights on children's needs, measure progress and bottlenecks towards national goals and drive targeted public interventions to address them. More information can be found here.   What Resources Can I Use to Be Purpose-Driven?  In the RD4C toolkit, the 22 Questions methodology offers a set of questions for quickly evaluating projects or systems that manage data concerning children and can help you identify whether your work is purpose-driven and address any spotted gaps in this regard. Outside the RD4C Toolkit, practitioners may find useful models in The 100 Questions Methodology and Problem Definition Tool, both of which provide means of defining purpose. *** We hope this blog has been useful to you in helping you understand what it means to prevent harms across the data lifecycle. This marks the end of our Seven Principles series, but you can receive updates on future blogs by signing up to our mailing list here.

New Publication

This blog is part of a running series from the Responsible Data for Children initiative highlighting each of the RD4C principles and real-life efforts to realize them. You can learn more about this series here. Ahead of International Youth Day on 12 August, today’s blog looks at the importance of preventing harms for children and youth across the data lifecycle and which resources are available to you to operationalise it. It also highlights how UNICEF, the Ministry of Social Affairs and other partners in Guatemala embedded this principle into CPIMS+/Primero for uprooted children and youth.    What is Prevention of Harms Across the Data Lifecycle?  Data is a powerful tool. When used well, data has the potential to uphold children’s rights and offer critical insights to ensure informed services. Like any power tool, however, data needs safeguards. If used badly, data can erode children’s rights, including their right to privacy, and expose them to serious dangers and harms. This is especially true for children in  vulnerable contexts such as uprooted children and youth (whether refugee, displaced or migrant children and youth).  As data is not static, but exists as part of a process, the opportunities and risks generated by data handling vary depending on the stages of the data lifecycle (when planning, collecting, processing, sharing, analyzing, using data). Though the data lifecycle can take various shapes, RD4C has consistently referred to the following stages:  Planning: Defining specific objectives of a data activity;  Collection: Gathering data directly from the field or collating it;  Processing: Removing irrelevant or inaccurate information;  Sharing: Exchanging data and other information with relevant collaborators;  Analyzing: Assessing the data to extract insights;  Using: Acting on the insights derived.  As part of a commitment to data responsibility, people handling data for and about children in any way, at any of the stages of the cycle, can assess and take action to prevent risks across the full data lifecycle. This work includes avoiding risks of misuse (i.e. ensuring protection of data and preventing a use of data that would erode children’s rights) and missed use (i.e. ensuring promotion of data and preventing a situation where data could be used to uphold children’s right, but is not). This concept is called end-to-end data responsibility, which is essential for ensuring trust.    How Have Others Pursued Prevention of Harms Across the Data Lifecycle?  The CPIMS+/Primero is an open-source child protection system used in more than 50 countries. It provides clear workflows to assist social services workers with documenting case management processes — from identification and registration, to assessment, case planning, referrals and transfers, and case closure. Designed with and developed by child protection caseworkers and social service providers, it allows users to define who can see specific data and perform determined actions to ensure confidentiality, privacy and security. By allowing many organizations and users to securely manage their caseloads on a single database, CPIMS+/Primero helps ensure that the data is of high quality, without duplication, and therefore reliable for analyses and reporting.    Together with UNICEF in Guatemala, the Ministry of Social Affairs (Secretaría de Bienestar Social, SBS, in Spanish) rolled out a customized version of CPIMS+ in 2021—prioritizing its implementation in shelters and departmental agencies for returnee children from Mexico and the United States of America. With the thorough assessment and analysis of the data collected, the Government is taking a proactive approach to improve the insights generated about and enhance case management of children—including referral to appropriate child protective services for vulnerable, excluded, or at-risk children, family search and reunification and/or alternative family care, as well as follow-up and support for children and families.  Careful attention to harm prevention at each stage of the data life cycle is necessary, but can be quite time-intensive. To overcome these challenges, CPIMS+/Primero provides accountability and supervision features that ensure individual and safe oversight throughout the management of a case. Access is role-based to allow only authorized staff to access sensitive information. Additionally, UNICEF and the SBS, share an agreement that specifies how the safety of data will be handled and what the responsibilities between the institutions and the system are. Two of the most important clauses guarantee the responsibility of the State to protect CPIMS+ data and specify the modalities of data sharing between UNICEF and SBS through information exchange protocols.     What Resources Can I Use For Prevention of Harms Across the Data Lifecycle? The RD4C Studio Methodology provides a tool for organizations striving to address children's needs through data to assess the risks and opportunities related to that data at each stage of the data lifecycle.  The Methodology comprises a sequence of interdisciplinary participatory workshops following a five-step approach, namely (1) Kick-off, (2) Research, (3) Convene & Ideate, (4) Output Draft, and (5) Release. This stepped approach empowers organizations to prioritize pressing issues, gather diverse insights from key stakeholders, including children and youth, and work collectively towards impactful and responsible data use throughout a project for the well-being of children. *** We hope this blog has been useful to you in helping you understand what it means to prevent harms across the datalifecycle. Please return to our blog next week when we’ll discuss our next principle or subscribe for updates to the RD4C initiative by signing up to our mailing list here.

New Publication

This blog is part of a running series from the Responsible Data for Children initiative highlighting each of the RD4C principles and real-life efforts to realize them. You can learn more about this series here. What Does Participatory Mean? The Participatory principle highlights the necessity of actively involving and seeking input from those who are impacted by data use, such as children, their caregivers, and the communities in which they reside. Within the context of a data-based initiative, it is imperative for actors to inform and engage with individuals and groups, paying attention to marginalized and vulnerable populations.  By adopting a participatory approach, actors can gather valuable insights and perspectives from key stakeholders. This approach goes beyond simply informing individuals and groups; it involves engaging them in meaningful dialogue and decision-making processes to ensure their voices are heard, their needs are understood, and their concerns addressed consistently throughout the entire lifecycle of data initiatives, from the planning to implementation, to ensure the activities capture people’s insights and feedback regularly and are relevant to their needs. The participatory principle is related and complementary to the people-centric principle. However, while the people-centric approach means considering the effects of data practices on children and communities, prioritizing their well-being over efficiency gains, being participatory underscores the importance of engaging and informing individuals and groups affected by data use. Both approaches are complementary and essential for ensuring ethical and impactful data use.  When being participatory, it is important for the organization leading the data initiative to give particular attention to marginalized and vulnerable populations, as they may have unique challenges and perspectives that need to be taken into account, so as to avoid perpetuating and generating new discriminations through the use of data. To engage with these groups in a just and ethical way, it is important to approach them being mindful and respectful of the challenges and vulnerabilities these individuals may face. Proper training for enumerators, officers, and all involved in the data initiative is essential to equip them with the necessary skills to approach conversations with empathy, respect, and cultural sensitivity, ensuring the well-being and safety of those involved. In addition, it is important for the organization to ensure the engagement with vulnerable populations is coordinated, so as to prevent the burden of overlapping or duplicative activities. Collaboration among multiple actors and organizations involved in data initiatives is crucial for streamlining efforts and minimizing disruptions within these communities.  Through the ethical involvement of these groups, and by gaining their unique and marginalized perspective, organizations can hope to address potential biases, inequalities, and power imbalances that may exist in the data ecosystem. How Have Others Pursued Being Participatory? An example of the Participatory principle in action can be observed through the deployment of InForm, an Open Data Kit-based data collection and management tool. InForm centralizes dispersed data streams, ensuring the secure storage of collected data on a single platform, and facilitating data analysis and visualization.  An impactful instance of using the InForm platform occurred during emergency response efforts in Mozambique and Zimbabwe. In March 2019, Cyclone Idai struck near Beira City, Sofala Province, causing immense devastation through powerful winds and heavy rainfall. This disaster resulted in the loss of numerous lives, destruction of livelihoods, and damage to property. The region witnessed hundreds of fatalities, with Mozambique alone facing a staggering 2.2 million people requiring urgent assistance. InForm's participatory nature is especially reflected in its reliance on collaborative engagements. Indeed, the initiative actively involves and seeks input from various stakeholders, including the local communities affected by the cyclones, partner organizations such as the World Food Program (WFP) and United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and other key actors. By incorporating their perspectives, needs, and local knowledge, InForm ensures that the data handling processes are shaped by the insights and expertise of those directly impacted by the disaster. What Resources Can I Use to Be Participatory? RD4C has developed two tools in particular that may be useful in an effort to be participatory. First, the 22 Questions methodology offers a set of questions for quickly evaluating projects or systems that manage data concerning children, adopting a participatory approach.  Additionally, the RD4C Studio Methodology provides a participatory tool for organizations striving to address children's needs through data. The Methodology comprises a sequence of interdisciplinary participatory workshops following a five-step approach, namely (1) Kick-off, (2) Research, (3) Convene & Ideate, (4) Output Draft, and (5) Release. This participatory approach empowers organizations to prioritize pressing issues, gather diverse insights from key stakeholders, and work collectively towards impactful and responsible data use for the well-being of children. *** We hope this blog has been useful to you in helping you understand what it means to be participatory. Please return to our blog next week when we’ll discuss our next principle or subscribe for updates to the RD4C initiative by signing up to our mailing list here.

New Publication

This blog is part of a running series from the Responsible Data for Children initiative highlighting each of the RD4C principles and real-life efforts to realize them. You can learn more about this series here. Today’s blog looks at the importance of being professionally accountable, how UNICEF, how this principle was embedded into work in Ukraine by HOPE, and which resources are available to you to operationalise it. What Does It Mean to Be Professionally Accountable? Being professionally accountable is about operationalizing responsible data practices and principles by establishing institutional processes, roles, and responsibilities. Data responsibility is intrinsically linked to professional accountability. Being accountable means possessing clear decision flows and the identifying figures responsible for work at every stage of the data process. It can involve defining and documenting the data lifecycle, in which taking data from collection to use is handled in a transparent and traceable manner and where responsibilities and roles are explicitly assigned to responsible figures. At the same time, professional accountability can be aided by a clear operational workflow illustrating how tasks, processes, and activities are organized and executed within a business or organization. This transparency can allow stakeholders to comprehend the sequence of actions involved in handling data and their own duties. Finally, an important aspect of being professionally accountable involves the potential establishment of data stewards, who play a pivotal role in overseeing the responsible handling of data across various departments and functions. Data stewards represent an emerging role, encompassing individuals or groups entrusted with the task of ensuring responsibility and accountability in data management. Their broad mandate extends across the organization, facilitating the proper collection, processing, and usage of data. Through the identification of the responsibilities of data stewards, organizations can establish a framework for guiding the responsible and transparent use of data throughout their operations.   How Have Others Been Professionally Accountable? The Humanitarian cash Operations and Programme Ecosystem (HOPE) serves as a prime example of how professional accountability can be pursued. Designed by UNICEF as a humanitarian cash transfer management information system, HOPE aims to enhance the quality of Humanitarian Cash Transfers (HCT) programs and ensure compliance with UNICEF guidelines and tools, maintaining accountability and traceability of managed information. Key to achieving this level of accountability is the establishment of clear roles within the project team. Indeed, by thoroughly reviewing system permissions and roles, HOPE has successfully ensured proper segregation of duties across various solutions in the ecosystem, effectively minimizing the risk of wrongdoing and fostering a culture of accountability within the team. HOPE has developed mechanisms to address grievances and feedback, implementing sound solutions for reporting allegations. They also have developed a comprehensive audit module to continuously monitor internal controls and ensure compliance with internal and external audit practices. Through establishing clear roles and implementing robust checks and balances, HOPE demonstrates a strong commitment to maintaining professional accountability throughout the entire project's lifecycle. HOPE has been deployed in multiple countries, including Palestine, Kenya, Sri Lanka, Ukraine, Sudan, South Sudan, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Philippines. Ukraine, for instance, has established functions and responsibilities, for both UNICEF staff and partners, in an iterative way, embedding them both in office standard operating procedures and in HOPE while updating as programme needs evolve. Overall, these efforts speak to HOPE’s desire to pursue professional accountability and empower stakeholders to responsibly handle data to make informed decisions and effectively address challenges in their country. What Resources Can I Use to Be Professionally Accountable? The Decision Provenance Mapping methodology offers a means for actors involved in designing or evaluating data initiatives concerning children to identify critical decision points. It enables actors to identify key decision points and the internal and external parties influencing those decisions, helping to pinpoint gaps in decision-making processes and develop strategies for more accountable data practices.  *** We hope this blog has been useful to you in helping you understand what it means to be professionally accountable. Please return to our blog next week when we’ll discuss our next principle or subscribe for updates to the RD4C initiative by signing up to our mailing list here.

This blog is part of a running series from the Responsible Data for Children initiative highlighting each of the RD4C principles and real-life efforts to realize them. You can learn more about this series here. This week, we ask what it means to be protective of children’s rights through the lens of UNICEF Indonesia’s Immunization Chatbot. What does this principle mean? How can it be pursued? What resources can support it? What Does Being Protective of Children’s Rights Mean? Being protective of children’s rights means recognizing the distinct rights and requirements for helping children reach their full potential. It means “fitting” policies to match children’s interests. Children have unique needs and requirements when it comes to data. Further, as we’ve outlined previously, children are often at the forefront of datafication, possessing less agency on data collected for or about them, and being more vulnerable to privacy violations and other harms. Moreover, their interests and protections can be overlooked in the rush to develop new systems and technologies. And this is a problem. Public institutions around the world have developed laws and treaties to promote better child welfare and protect children when it comes to data and other issues. Documents such as the Convention on the Rights of the Child call governments and other actors to provide children with the resources they need to flourish. An organization that is protective of children’s rights is one that exercises due diligence to ensure that they comply with existing laws and protections of their rights and complement these with other mechanisms to prevent children from having their data exposed or used in ways that are against their interests. Toward that end, a child protective organization might pursue an assessment or audit to evaluate the impact of their current data practices on children’s rights and how they might improve. In these ways, data-based organizations can ensure their work aligns with children’s rights and “fits” children’s needs and allows them to thrive.  How Have Others Pursued Being Protective of Children’s Rights? Earlier this year, the Responsible Data for Children team worked closely with UNICEF Indonesia regarding the launch of an in-development Immunization Chatbot. This tool, hosted on the messaging platform WhatsApp, aims to support caregivers across Indonesia by providing them advice on immunization. Based on how users—mostly caregivers with young children—respond to certain automated questions, the chatbot can share information on routine immunization relevant to their child’s specific needs.  While the major value of this effort is in informing caregivers to seek vaccinations for their children, UNICEF Indonesia wants to use some of the data gathered through the chatbot to assess whether routine immunization has been conducted well and improves over time. After several conversations between the immunization chatbot team and the RD4C team, it became clear that the chatbot had already adopted certain practices to protect children’s rights—including regular quality control risk assessments.  The Chatbot team further noted that the government recently approved a new data privacy law, which holds that “children’s data needs to be managed specially” and that individual data should “only be owned by the government.” It put work into the Chatbot to be compliant with both the local law and the Article 24 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child—which recognizes the right of the child to the “enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health.  It also took the initial step of trying to guarantee each child’s privacy by proactively limiting collection to only include date of birth.  To strengthen and reinforce existing efforts, the RD4C team recommended that its partners develop a robust privacy policy for the Chatbot. With a privacy policy, UNICEF Indonesia can help caregivers to understand their rights and that of their children. They can help users understand the regulatory frameworks in place and the ways they can use these to ensure children have what they need to reach their full potential.  What Resources Can I Use to Be Protective of Children’s Rights? The RD4C team has two key resources that may be useful in promoting more protection of children. The first resource is the Ethical Assessment. Developed by the Data for Children Collaborative with UNICEF, the Assessment offers a way for readers to reflect on their data ecosystem, management, and protection policies. It provides teams with a way of thinking about how their work has a real impact on children’s lives using a series of fillable tools. The assessment is aligned with the RD4C Principles. The second resource, the Opportunity and Risk Diagnostic, provides organizations with a way to take stock of the RD4C principles and how they might be realized as an organization reviews a data project or system. The high-level questions and prompts below are intended to help users identify areas in need of attention and to strategize next steps for ensuring more responsible handling of data for and about children across their organization.  The diagnostic focuses on three key areas: assessing an initiative across the data lifecycle; understanding the principles and policies that guide responsible data handling; and engaging with the processes, organizations, and people that affect how an organization makes decisions. **** We hope this blog has been useful to you in helping you understand what it means to be proportional. Please return to our blog next week when we’ll discuss our next principle or subscribe for updates to the RD4C initiative by signing up to our mailing list here.

New Publication

This blog is part of a running series from the Responsible Data for Children initiative highlighting each of the RD4C principles and real-life efforts to realize them. You can learn more about this series here. Today’s blog looks at the importance of being people-centric, looking at how the Aurora Project in Romania pursued this principle in the design of their work and useful resources that you can use to operationalize this principle in your own work.  What Does People-Centric Mean? People-centric is about ensuring the needs and expectations of children, their caregivers, and their communities are prioritized by actors handling data for and about them. Much of the data used for drawing insights to improve children’s lives involves or is generated by people. The insights from it have the potential to impact the lives of children in many ways, both positive and negative. Actors need to ensure the needs and expectations of people—especially children and their caregivers—receive priority.     This kind of prioritization can happen in a few ways. A people-centric organization might seek support from trusted, local institutions and families themselves to develop an informed programme that answers children’s needs. A people-centric organization is one that aligns its efforts to meet children’s interests and shapes its programs in response to meaningful feedback from children and their caregivers.  In the process of understanding and representing children’s needs, people-centric organizations also think about ways to communicate clearly, succinctly, and through channels that can be broadly reached. In the data collection phase, this can involve organizational staff phrasing questions in a way that is likely to be understood and resonate with the children, caregivers, and community groups  answering them. In this way, being people-centric is meant to remind you and other organizations who it is you are serving and who ultimately the data comes from. Being people-centric is closely linked to the principle of Participatory, which focuses on engaging, informing, and involving individuals affected by the use of data for and about children.   How Have Others Pursued Being People-Centric? One recent effort to be people-centric can be found in the Aurora Project developed by UNICEF Romania in collaboration with NGO and government partners.  Aurora is a child protection platform that helps social workers and community health care providers to diagnose and monitor vulnerabilities experienced by children and their families. It provides users with a questionnaire that they can then use to ask children and their caregivers about their situation. Based on the responses, the system can then help them determine the services needed. Aurora is people-centric in its ability to recognize the needs of both children and those delivering the surveys. Questions are simple and straight-forward and frontline workers using the system are guided through a clear process with regular signposts on how they should engage with children and others in the household. This allows them to gather relevant information in a way that is conducive to local norms and expectations and in a way that is clearly connected to a specific outcome—service delivery.    What Resources Can I Use to Be People-Centric? One useful tool in ensuring your organization can be people-centric is the 22 Questions. This short document provides a series of questions that can be used for rapidly assessing initiatives or systems that handle data for and about children using the RD4C Principles. It provides several recommendations that you can adopt to more clearly articulate your aims and methods or to ensure your work is understood by other parties. *** We hope this blog has been useful to you in helping you understand what it means to be people-centric. Please return to our blog next week when we’ll discuss our next principle or subscribe for updates to the RD4C initiative by signing up to our mailing list here.

New Publication

This blog is part of a running series from the Responsible Data for Children initiative highlighting each of the RD4C principles and real-life efforts to realize them. You can learn more about this series here.   Today’s blog looks at the importance of proportionality, how Cellule d’Analyse Intégrée embedded this principle in its work, and which resources are available to you to operationalise it.  What is Proportionality? What does it entail, to be proportional? The principle of proportionality means that, when developing and implementing an initiative, you can consider what data—and how much—you need to achieve the intended purpose. This work can be considered from the outset of an initiative and throughout the data lifespan. In fact, because data tends to become superfluous over time, it might accumulate risks for minimal value added as the insights it provides might no longer be relevant. While the concept of proportionality is valid for any data, it is even more so when it comes to data for and about children, given the potential and actual vulnerabilities this data generates. Today’s children are the first generation to grow up amid the rapid datafication of virtually every aspect of life. Unlike adults, however, children typically do not have full agency to make decisions about their participation in programmes or services that may generate and record personal data. How Have Others Pursued Proportionality? One interesting UNICEF project that champions proportionality is Cellule d’Analyse Intégrée (CAI). CAI is an operational research and analytics cell created by UNICEF to provide local and national level actors, government leaders, UN staff, and associated partners with integrated and actionable evidence to respond to public health emergencies and contexts. The project came about to support the response to the tenth Ebola outbreak in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. CAI has both local teams who collect data in communities through mixed methods and a team of national and international researchers who support study designs, data collection and analysis and who produce insights used for public health decision-making. The CAI team only collects data when they can be sure it will be relevant and used. The team involves the data users from the outset so that it is not overburdening communities to participate in studies that do not ultimately have operational use. CAI also ensures that it uses locally identified and trusted researchers—women working with women and men with men, but also specific members of communities—to ensure they capture all (and only) relevant data. Though it might sound straightforward and sensible, it is not always easy to ensure proportionality.  During its work, the CAI team sometimes faced difficult ethical situations that required referral. Enumerators and community workers sometimes struggled to know how to deal with unexpected and sensitive information shared by children and their communities—such as disclosure of sexual exploitation and abuse. Frequent exchanges were therefore organized by the CAI team to remind practitioners about how to handle these incidents and what to do with the data.  On the other hand, easy-to-implement tweaks can help operationalise proportionality at any time. Data users should have a clear process for identifying when and why data about children should be retained, when it should be archived, and when it should be destroyed. This effort could start from mapping data, identifying what needs to be disposed of and then proceed to design appropriate procedures to do so. What Resources Can I Use For Proportionality? The RD4C Data Ecosystem Mapping Tool can help you identify the breadth of data generated by the systems handling data about children, their key components, and their alignment with the RD4C principles by capturing: why the system exists (RD4C principles: Purpose-Driven; People-Centric; and Proportional), who is involved RD4C principles: Professionally Accountable and Participatory) and what data is held (Protective of Children’s Rights; and Prevention of Harms Across the Data Lifecycle).  *** We hope this blog has been useful to you in helping you understand what it means to be proportional. Please return to our blog next week when we’ll discuss our next principle or subscribe for updates to the RD4C initiative by signing up to our mailing list here.

New Publication

It has been four years since the 2019 launch of the Responsible Data for Children (RD4C) initiative. In that time, the initiative has taken a survey of its work and assessed what added value. We’ve asked ourselves how RD4C is different from other data governance approaches. What are its benefits?  The Value Proposition RD4C is a framework for assessing risks and opportunities for advancing children’s rights through data and across the data lifecycle that is grounded in a set of principles for responsible data handling. Born out of the RD4C initiative, a collaboration between The Governance Lab at New York University and UNICEF, it recognizes that children face unique vulnerabilities that can be best addressed by spotting the particular risks and opportunities in the contexts that children reside in.  Core to RD4C is the recognition that data moves through distinct stages from collection to use and impact. It recognizes data as a process with often overlapping yet distinct stages. In each of these stages—from collecting, processing, sharing, analyzing, and using—actors can intervene to protect and empower children. This approach allows RD4C to complement other legal and regulatory frameworks around the world while possessing its own unique value proposition. Organizations who have adopted RD4C’s principles-led approach see it as having the following benefits:  Principled, yet Flexible:  One of the great advantages of principles is that they provide a common framework that can be adapted to a large number of contexts. From country to country or issue to issue, RD4C’s principles-led approach provides a useful supplement to policies, providing contextual flexibility to fill in the gaps that might be left by the more “rigid” requirements imposed by laws and regulations. Accountability-Focused: When adopted across an organization, RD4C complements policies in creating a culture of accountability. and prevent policies from becoming a “box-ticking” exercise. With easy-to-use tools and tangible principles, stakeholders can progressively embrace a culture of ethical behavior and decision-making and apply it in their every-day work. This prevents policies from becoming a “box-ticking” exercise and, in turn, leads to increased trust and legitimacy among stakeholders and increased policy compliance. Approachable: A principles-based data governance regime, such as RD4C, helps actors to promote responsible data innovation. It asks organizations to think proactively, encouraging experimentation. In this way, principles promote practices that enable new data uses at scale while ensuring that ethical principles are upheld. By grounding responsible data practices at seed stage, it can also help avoid false starts, such as investment in non-value aligned efforts, and accelerate the transition to (data-led) scale. Educational: RD4C provides a framework for making sense of the complexity inherent in modern data use. Through the data lifecycle, organizations are able to understand the different processes that go into data and the ways they can use new technologies, policies, and practices to improve it. It allows them a way of understanding the world as they make decisions. Aspirational: RD4C provides a goal for different organizations to work toward as they try to help and empower children. As they seek to overcome constraints to their capacity and resources, the RD4C principles serve as a “north star” that organizations can navigate toward while acknowledging different landscapes and limitations that might exist on the ground.  In these ways, RD4C enables responsible data governance and empowers organizations to realize the promise of existing policies. Today’s world requires flexible, context-specific guidance that can promote responsibility and is well-suited to manage the complexity of data use in different regions of the world.  Your feedback matters! Since its inception, the RD4C initiative has aimed to be field-oriented, driven by the needs of both children and practitioners across sectors and contexts. If you have any comments on the above or suggestions on where to focus our attention in 2023, please contact us at [email protected].    Photo by Greg Rosenke/Unsplash is licensed under CC0

New Publication

Since launching in 2019, the Responsible Data for Children (RD4C) initiative has sought to provide guidance, tools, and leadership to support the responsible handling of data for and about children. In this capacity, we have worked with professionals around the world to understand how they operate, identify and support promising practices, and advance the Responsible Data for Children principles—a set of values that practitioners can align with to ensure the best interests of children remain at the center of all data activities.  In advance of the  2023 Annual Meeting for Child Protection in Humanitarian Action where we will be presenting some of our work, the Responsible Data for Children initiative is happy to release an infographic featuring promising practices across countries, contexts and sectors that align with the RD4C principles. They include UNICEF country offices in: Ukraine, where the Humanitarian Cash Operation and Programme Ecosystem (HOPE) created well-established roles, functions, and accountabilities for parties responsible for importing data and approving payments (Professionally Accountable); Mozambique, where organizations sought collaboration across the government and civil society to support the InForm data platform. This platform enabled the quick dissemination of insights to those who could make a difference in disaster response (Participatory); Romania, whose Aurora Project platform reflected the specific needs of children and families (People-Centric); Mongolia, whose Administrative Data Maturity Model enhanced efforts to harness administrative data systems for child welfare in Mongolia (Purpose-Driven); Democratic Republic of Congo whose Cellule d’Analyse Intégrée initiative to address Ebola avoided excessive data collection from individuals, instead seeking only what was necessary to address the disease (Proportional);  Indonesia, where staff are developing a privacy policy for an immunization chatbot. This policy aims to make users are aware of risks and opportunities associated with the tool (Protective of Children’s Rights); and  Guatemala, whose deployment of Primero tries to proactively think about how the insights generated can enhance case management of vulnerable children (Prevention of Harms Across the Data Lifecycle).   As the graphic demonstrates, Responsible Data for Children can be realized around the world in multiple and diverse projects and settings. It is our hope that this resource can elevate promising practices to inspire practitioners. Next week, we will publish a blog building on this resource, describing the Responsible Data for Children initiative’s specific value proposition and how its principles-led approach provides a common framework that can be adapted to a large number of contexts.  For a high-resolution, downloadable version of this graphic, please visit the link here. 

New Publication

This piece was originally posted on the blog site of the United Nations World Data Forum. Read the original piece by Stefaan Verhulst (The GovLab), Eugenia Olliaro (UNICEF), Danzhen You (UNICEF), Estrella Lajom (UNICEF) and Daniel Shephard (NORRAG) here.   Issues surrounding children and data are rarely given the thoughtful and dedicated attention they deserve. An increasingly large amount of data is being collected about children, often without a framework to determine whether those data are used responsibly. At the same time, even as the volume of data increases, there remain substantial areas of missing data when it comes to children. This is especially true for children on the move and those who have been marginalized by conflict, displacement, or environmental disasters. There is also a risk that patterns of data collection mirror existing forms of exclusion, thereby perpetuating inequalities that exist along, for example, dimensions of indigeneity and gender. This year’s World Data Forum, to be held in Hangzhou, China, offers an opportunity to unpack these challenges and consider solutions, such as through new forms of partnerships. The Responsible Data for Children (RD4C) initiative offers one important model for such a partnership. Formed between The GovLab and UNICEF, the initiative seeks to produce guidance, tools, and leadership to support the responsible handling of data for and about children across the globe. It addresses the unique vulnerabilities that face children, identifying shortcomings in the existing data ecology and pointing toward some possible solutions. The issues considered by RD4C are vital for data practitioners, and embody the conference’s theme of supporting innovation and partnership for better and more inclusive data. The initiative’s core principles, developed through field visits and rigorous desk research, emphasize the need for organizations to be participatory, engaging and informing those affected by data use, as well as people-centric, thereby ensuring the needs and rights of children, their caregivers, and their communities are prioritized by those handling data. RD4C also embodies the Summit’s call for building trust and ethics in data, urging organizations to be professionally accountable, prevent harm across the data lifecycle, and work to protect children’s rights. Through these principles, RD4C highlights and supports best practices around the world, develops tools to help practitioners operate ethically, and enables the use of data effectively in a manner that acknowledges the rights and responsibilities of all stakeholders within a data system. The International Data Alliance for Children on the Move (IDAC), launched in 2020, offers another key model for partnership and innovation. It seeks to address the urgent data needs of one of the world’s most vulnerable groups of children – those who have migrated or been displaced. Worldwide, there exist an estimated 35.5 million international migrant children and 36.5 million children who have been displaced by conflict and violence. Many face severe risks and deprivation, yet are commonly missed in data collection efforts, and remain all but absent in social statistics. Reasons for these shortcomings include a lack of political will, a shortage of technical capacity and human and financial resources, and a failure of coordination across the national statistical system. Through its cross-sectoral membership – representing UN agencies and other international organizations, NGOs, think tanks, academic experts, and member states – IDAC acts as a voice for these children. Guided by its joint Secretariat (UNICEF, IOM, UNHCR, OECD and Eurostat), IDAC provides a platform to gather all concerned stakeholders to discuss challenges and to co-create tools and public goods aimed at strengthening foundational data and social statistics on migrant and displaced populations. The initiative is driven by a conviction that the surest way to leave no child behind is through collective innovative data solutions, forged collaboratively among all stakeholders. NORRAG’s Missing Data Project was launched in 2021 to bring academics, policymakers, and practitioners together to discuss the gaps in the global education system that risk hampering progress towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals related to education. The project has identified gaps in terms of uses of data, types of data, and groups of people. Across these missing uses, types, and groups of education data – two gaps were highlighted related to gender and indigeneity. Two partnerships provide examples of how to begin addressing these persistent gaps that continue to affect children globally. Partnerships are key to addressing these two education data gaps that are rooted in historical repression. Such partnerships should be led by affected communities themselves and engage stakeholders at all levels of the education system to address persistent gaps in data collection, use, and governance. For data on gender and education, the Accountability for Gender Equality in Education (AGEE) project is developing an innovative indicator framework for gender equality in education through a series of critical participatory discussions with youth advocacy groups, civil society organizations, academia, and government entities. These discussions have provided insight into what constitutes gender inequality in education in different contexts and what data should be prioritized. The AGEE project is led by a partnership between University College London’s Institute of Education, University of Kwazulu-Natal, University of Malawi, and the University of East Anglia. For data on education and indigenous peoples, Indigenous Peoples from multiple countries collectively developed the Collective Benefit, Authority to Control, Responsibility, and Ethics (CARE) principles for good Indigenous Data Governance in 2019. Indigenous Data Governance and Sovereignty are foundational for addressing persistent gaps in education data for Indigenous Peoples. The enactment of such principles by indigenous leadership provides a path forward to ensure that data for the education of Indigenous children represents their worldviews, priorities, values, and cultures. In conclusion, the importance of utilizing data for and about children responsibly cannot be overstated, and the World Data Forum plays a critical role in promoting this objective. Our session focused on “Data and Children: gaps, opportunities, and responsibilities (TA1.32, Tuesday, 25 April 2023 at 15.00) seeks to review progress made and focus on the crucial role partnerships play in enhancing the quality, availability, and use of data related to children. Such partnerships are essential for ensuring data is leveraged to address the complex challenges that children face, from poverty and malnutrition to lack of access to education and healthcare in a responsible and systematic way. Ultimately, the success of efforts to improve the lives of children worldwide hinges on the continued attention and investment in data-driven solutions, and events like the WDF are instrumental in advancing this crucial work.

Event

This piece was originally publushed on The GovLab's Data Stewards Network.   Data Privacy Day is an international event celebrated every 28 January to “create awareness about the importance of respecting privacy, safeguarding data, and enabling trust.” Through it, we are reminded just how valuable our data is and the obligation that organizations have to handle it responsibly, ethically, and in accordance with individuals’ rights. The GovLab (one of the partners operating RD4C with UNICEF) has published countless pieces on data privacy and how it is an essential component of data responsibility. To support the conversations happening around the world about this issue, we would like to highlight several publications that we consider especially relevant:   Reports: The #Data4COVID19 Review: Assessing the Use of Non-Traditional Data During a Pandemic Crisis: This report, produced with the support of The Knight Foundation, describes the use of non-traditional data from private sources during the COVID-19 pandemic. The piece seeks to unpack some of the challenges around this data, which can include sensitive information, and some of the ways that organizations can mitigate those risks and bolster public trust in their work. New Brief Released: What Is Mobility Data? Where Is It Used?: This brief—which accompanied the release of the report “The Use of Mobility Data for Responding to the COVID-19 Pandemic” by The GovLab, Cuebiq, and the Open Data Institute—briefly explains the different types of mobility data and the data privacy implications of them. The goal is to help policymakers better use mobility data while addressing arguments that they could facilitate surveillance. Blogs: Selected Readings on Data Governance: This second piece from our Selected Readings series builds on the knowledge base on improving data governance. While focused on effectiveness and legitimacy, it includes several pieces that explain how approaches that mitigate privacy risks can improve projects and bolster opinion of them. Selected Readings on Personal Data: Security and Use: This piece of our Selected Readings series provides an annotated and curated collection of pieces on personal data. It provides several articles that explain how organizations can promote privacy by design, describe the factors involved in the governance of online personal data, and offer recommendations for data (re)use. The GovLab Index: Privacy and Security: This blog is a series of statistics on privacy and security. It describes public attitudes toward their privacy rights in the United States and globally as well as the kinds of privacy-related behaviors people engage in. Digital Self-Determination Studio Series: In collaboration with the Big Data for Migration Alliance and the International Digital Self Determination (DSD) Network, The GovLab hosted a studio series aimed to unpack what the concept of DSD could mean for migrants and principles for their implementation–emphasizing privacy and personal data protections. Essays, Papers, and Articles: Reimagining data responsibility: 10 new approaches toward a culture of trust in re-using data to address critical public needs:  This article by Stefaan Verhulst in Data & Policy looks at the risk around data science and explores ways to address problems such as data privacy. It outlines 10 approaches and innovations for data responsibility in the 21st century, including end-to-end data responsibility; decision provenance; professionalized data stewardship; and group privacy. Corporate Social Responsibility for a Data Age: Published in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, this piece by Stefaan Verhulst argues that data can help improve and safe lives but that harnessing it requires a transformation in how companies, governments, and other organizations operate. It emphasizes the importance of robust data protection, citing several prominent cases of data misuse. Operationalizing Digital Self Determination: In this article, Stefaan argues that data, when used responsibly, can offer new opportunities for the public good. However, this potential is limited by data asymmetries, information, and agency asymmetries that limit human potential. As one solution to rebalancing asymmetries that Stefaan provides is to look at alternative consent mechanisms, including those based around “post-consent privacy." How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the GDPR: This guest piece by Ariane Adam in the Data Stewards Network describes the impact of the European Union’s GDPR regulation on open data. Despite concerns that the legislation would prevent the release of data in the name of privacy, the author argues that GDPR “can not only assist in promoting consumer confidence and therefore business growth, but also enable organisations to safely open and share important and valuable datasets. Tools: Data Responsibility Journey: The Data Responsibility Journey for Data Collaboratives is an assessment tool that outlines the opportunities and risks to consider at each stage of the data lifecycle when implementing a data collaborative. It describes several ways that organizations can promote the data rights and data privacy of data subjects. Responsible Data for Children Principles: These principles, produced as part of The GovLab’s collaboration with UNICEF, describe the ways in which  governments, communities, and development actors can put child rights at the center of their data activities. The principles of “Prevention of Harms Across the Data Lifecycle” and Protective of Children’s Rights” remind organizations of the unique vulnerabilities around data about children. “Professionally Accountable” reinforces the need to provide mechanisms for redress should violations occur. More information on privacy challenges can be found in RD4C’s tools and case studies. *** These pieces are only a segment of our work overall on data ethics and data responsibility. As we go about encouraging organizations to prioritize data responsibility and data rights in line with the Third Wave of Open Data, we encourage you to follow us at the Data Stewards Network and Open Data Policy Lab.

New Publication

This September, the Responsible Data for Children (RD4C) initiative traveled to Uganda for its first-ever studio series to promote the responsible handling of data for and about children. Supported by UNHCR and UNICEF’s Blueprint for Joint Action, itself a commitment to accelerate efforts in line with the Global Compact on Refugees, the studios brought together national and community leaders and others to diagnose data challenges affecting the management of mental health and psychosocial services in refugee settlements in Uganda and develop new solutions to more responsibly and effectively manage data. After posting several shorter reflections on this work on its blog site, RD4C is excited today to announce the release of a full report of its activities. “Responsible Data for Refugee Children in Uganda: Improving Data Systems for Mental Health and Psychosocial Services Through A Studio Series” provides an overview of RD4C’s work over the course of a week, major reflections on the state of data responsibility in Uganda, and recommendations co-developed with UNICEF and UNHCR in Uganda, government officials, community representatives, and refugees themselves. Overview of Events The report begins with several sections: an introduction; an overview of the context in Uganda; an explanation of the field research. These parts of the report provide an explanation of the Responsible Data for Children initiative and the reason for the studio series. With over 1.5 million refugees —over half of which are children—Uganda is the third-largest refugee-hosting country in the world and the largest refugee hosting country in Africa. Many of these refugees report experiencing psychological distress and face challenges in accessing Mental Health and Psycho-Social Support (MHPSS), especially as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic which has exacerbated the need for MHPSS amongst refugees and host communities. Responding to these circumstances and a long-standing commitment by the Government of Uganda and UNICEF and UNHCR in Uganda to improve mental health and psychosocial services for refugee children in the country, RD4C hosted a series of workshops and focus groups. RD4C structured these engagements—held with national leaders, service providers, adolescent refugees, and others—as conversations around the Data Lifecycle. An abstraction that explains the opportunities and challenges in how data is translated from insight into action, the lifecycle includes several parts:  Planning: Defining specific objectives of a data activity; Collection: Gathering data directly from the field or collating it; Processing: Removing irrelevant or inaccurate information; Sharing: Exchanging data and other information with relevant collaborators; Analyzing: Assessing the data to extract insights; Using: Acting on the insights derived. Figure: The Stages of the Data Lifecycle The studios also made use of the Responsible Data for Children Principles as a guide for the discussion. Speaking on the value of being Participatory, Professionally Accountable, People-Centric, Preventative of Harms, Proportional, Protective of Children’s Rights, and Purpose-Driven, RD4C encouraged participants to think critically and creatively about the challenges they face and ways to address them. Findings UNICEF and UNHCR staff go through participant's inputs on the data lifecycle Through discussions facilitated in Kampala, Isingiro, and the Nakivale Refugee Settlement, the participants were able to identify major needs at each stage of the data lifecycle. These needs ranged from challenges in planning—including the need for coordination and cohesion at the national and district level—and collection—including a desire to make use of a unique identifier for each child. Participants spoke about the need for a common taxonomy and common tools during discussions on processing and the importance of exploratory and descriptive analysis in the analysis phase. In all, the discussions surface 17 major findings about data’s use to address mental health and psychosocial services in Uganda’s refugee settlements. RD4C and UNICEF and UNHCR Uganda discussed these points and validated the issues raised. Together, the partners sought to identify three of these findings to further pursue over the next 3–6 months.   Solutions and Recommendations On Friday, 23 September, RD4C and its partners, UNICEF and UNHCR, hosted its final workshop focused on ideating solutions to the most pressing challenges identified in the previous studios, interviews, and community focus groups. After some internal deliberation and validating the decision with the studio participants, the partners identified the following three priorities as being the most important and feasible to address: The Need for a Taxonomy for MHPSS Data: How can data be more consistently categorized, collected, analyzed, stored and used, particularly one that distinguishes mental health from psychosocial wellbeing in a useful fashion? The Value of a Data Catalog and Directory: How can MHPSS service providers datasets be accessed, used or reused more responsibly as per the principles of responsible data for children and requirements around personal data protection? Responsible Data Governance: How can data be more responsibly managed to promote the rights and welfare of child refugees?  Through structured brainstorming, studio participants identified several ways to address these needs that made use of existing resources and capacities. For achieving a taxonomy, for example, participants focused on engaging the existing MHPSS working group to coordinate service provider organizations. For creating a data catalog, the discussion focused on using an ongoing process by the Ministry of Gender Labour & Social Development to conduct a comprehensive data needs assessment. For data governance, meanwhile, participants thought an expert group composed of existing practitioners could help identify best practices. *** More information on each of these elements can be found in the report, available here. We will be checking in with our colleagues in Uganda in several months to see how the results of this work have been deployed and what progress has been made. In the meanwhile, we encourage anyone interested in this work to contact us at [email protected]. 

New Publication

The Responsible Data for Children (RD4C) initiative—a collaboration between The GovLab and UNICEF to promote the more responsible handling of data for and about children—has spent much of 2022 developing ways to socialize and operationalize the principles that put the best interests of children and a child rights approach at the center of our data activities.. From publishing new case studies that provide detail on what a responsible data approach looks like in action  to supporting UNICEF and UNHCR country offices in helping them implement a responsible data for children approach to their operations to expanding its offerings in different languages, we’ve sought to help organizations understand what responsible data for children means and how they can realize it in their day-to-day operations.  Today, RD4C is continuing this work with self-guided training. Based on the tutorials offered to UNICEF staff in early 2022, these slides are a resource for organizations seeking to understand ways to operationalize the RD4C principles and implement the RD4C tools. It dives into each principle—Participatory; Professionally Accountable; People-Centric; Preventative of Harms Across the Data Lifecycle; Proportional; Protective of Children’s Rights; and Purpose-Driven. It provides real-life examples from the field about how they can be realized in practice as well as explanations of how different tools can help organizations in this goal. It closes with a handful of discussion questions that can be used by organizations to think about these issues. Organizations interested in sharing their experience with these slides can contact the RD4C at [email protected]. For those of you who would like to view the tutorials, a recording is now available on our YouTube page.

Event

On 15 November, the Responsible Data for Children (RD4C) team participated in the Abu Dhabi Child Data Symposium 2022 organised by Abu Dhabi’s Early Childhood Authority (ECA). ECA has used the RD4C resources to ensure their integrated data system handles early childhood development (ECD) data responsibly.  In many ways, life is a story and early childhood sets its tone. It is an essential first chapter in a powerful book, one critical to providing strong and equal foundations to children's lives.  Ensuring every child has the best possible start in life, however, entails understanding a child as a whole. To do so, ECD actors from sectors such as health, education, nutrition and child protection need to bring together all the pieces of information they have on a specific child's overall growth, development and well-being, regardless of the services they receive. Once these bits of data are integrated responsibly, data has the potential to generate actionable insights on children's needs and drive targeted public interventions.  It is in this spirit that ECA has recently launched the Abu Dhabi Child Insights System Program. With the cross-sectoral data obtained, ECA seeks to generate two types of insights:  macro-level insights to understand state-wide ECD challenges and develop informed policies for the Emirate; and micro-level targeted insights identifying children in need and enhancing the day-to-day support offered by practitioners.   With this two-pronged approach, ECA hopes to maximise the use of data and optimise child development and wellbeing. Because integrated data systems allow the collection, processing, sharing, analysis, and use of information from many ECD programmes, they can generate risks to the children whose data has been captured. Even if aggregated and anonymised, data can pose risks related to the re-identification of children (mosaic theory), or to demographic and group privacy. ECA has used the RD4C resources to design the Child Insights System responsibly, in alignment with the RD4C principles, to ensure the interests of the child are prioritised and the risks of using their data are mitigated.  In particular, the Child Insights System is participatory and professionally accountable:  The Child Insights System aggregates multiple administrative data sets and involves key government agencies. These actors jointly assess the trends and act upon the outcomes with coordinated measures. This participatory approach ensures that all relevant actors receive the same insights and are aligned on how to enhance children's well-being.  Access is limited to accredited users on the basis of criteria such as the user's documented experience of handling sensitive data; or the user's completion of Government credentials on data governance. Access is also reviewed and revoked on a needs basis. By developing clearance mechanisms and hands-on training, ECA relies on responsible and professionally accountable practices. To design its own responsible ecosystem, ECA also aims to learn from international ECD examples. The insightful examples from Children’s Data Network (USA), Centre for Social Data Analytics (New Zealand) and Allegheny County's Department of Human Services (USA), showed how integrated administrative data systems can be built responsibly and how their insights can be leveraged to inform decision-making at programme and policy levels.  In the next months, the RD4C team will conduct an assessment of ECA’s best practices and release a RD4C case study. The emerging collaboration between ECA and RD4C is an opportunity to shed light on government-led RD4C practices in the region and on the importance of responsible data systems from the early stages of life.   [Image credit: Piero Olliaro]

World Mental Health Day

October 10th is World Mental Health Day, an international effort coordinated by the World Health Organization to raise awareness of mental health issues around the world. Essential to this work is reaching out to children and adolescents and other vulnerable groups that may experience mental distress. Indeed, while half of all mental conditions manifest by early adolescence, there remains little data of the issues they face or an understanding of how data can inform efforts to respond to mental health. As the Responsible Data for Children team returns from a week of work on the mental health and psychosocial challenges facing refugee children in Uganda, we feel it essential to step back and think about how we might map the larger field of child and adolescent mental health in a way that helps data-driven professionals prioritize topics. In 2020, The GovLab undertook just this effort. Supported by the UNICEF’s Health and HIV team in the Division of Data, Analysis, Planning & Monitoring and the Data for Children Collaborative, The GovLab hosted two virtual workshops and coordinated with over 70 experts from around the world to understand what might be included in a constitute a consensus-based data and research agenda for adolescent mental health. The agenda focused on: Systems-level aspects of mental health, how adolescent mental health affects and is affected by laws, power structures, and technological innovations; Community-level aspects of mental health, how adolescent mental health affects and is affected by norms, attitudes, behaviors, and practices of society; and Individual and family-level aspects of mental health, referring to the effect adolescent mental health has on individual people. Read the full-size map here. We invite you to look through this topic map, linked above, or through our prior blog post or open-access research article explaining this agenda more in-depth. We believe this topic map provides a model for understanding the variety of challenges that adolescents face and can be used to inform data-driven research on the topic.

RD4C Uganda

On 23 September, 2022, the Responsible Data for Children (RD4C) initiative hosted a third and final studio in Kampala, Uganda. The studio was part of a series of studios and focus group discussions that the initiative hosted in Uganda to identify opportunities and challenges with data systems that could be acted upon to improve child refugee mental health and provide psychosocial services.  After identifying the major themes of the first two studios, the Responsible Data for Children team, supported by UNICEF and UNHCR Uganda, presented its findings in Kampala to a collection of national officials. The presentation focused on three  short-term priorities:, (1) taxonomy for MHPSS data, (2) data catalog and directory, and (3) responsible data governance.  This presentation was meant to be the prompt for an extended discussion on ways that participants could act to improve the data system affecting child refugees in the next three to six months. Subsequently, participants deliberated on the different priorities, discussing ways to address the needs identified. After dividing into three breakout groups, the participants arrived at a few solutions. The Need for a Taxonomy for MHPSS Data  Participants highlighted that a first, fundamental step was to develop a common taxonomy for MHPSS data by bringing together the already existing MHPSS refugee working groups along with practitioners in the field with direct experience with refugee children. By bringing these groups together, leaders could collectively set standards and criteria for mental health and psychosocial needs. After agreeing on standards collectively within the working group, participants emphasized the importance of the participating leaders socializing these standards within their own organizations. Only by implementing these standards and definitions internally could they become common practice. Next, once the standards and criteria for categorization are defined, the working group emphasized how all professionals working with refugee children and MHPSS should receive training to adequately and effectively categorize the data they gather. The group focused particularly on teachers and all other professionals who might make “first contact” with a child suffering from distress. Finally, participants encouraged the working group to develop and disseminate a checklist for everyone working in the field to have one standard basis to refer to. Although many check-lists already exist, these could be gathered and merged into a single standard for every actor to adopt. The Value of a Data Catalog and Directory  Participants argued for mapping the data lifecycle and the different actors involved to understand who does what, both formally and informally. This mapping, participants noted, could support accountability by identifying lines of authority and helping participants design coordination strategies around the handling of MHPSS data for and about refugee children.  Participants noted that the main actors involved in the mapping effort could be the Ministry of Health, the Office of the Prime Minister, the Ministry of Gender and Labour, the Ugandan Bureau of Statistics, as well as UNHCR and UNICEF and Civil Society Organizations (at national and local levels). Participants took an expansive view of stakeholder involvement, seeking to include all those with a relevant role in the current system. As a first step, participants suggested tasking the existing MHPSS working groups to lead this mapping.  The Importance of Responsible Data Governance  Participants reaffirmed the importance for a common data governance framework that can be adopted and implemented across government and service providers. Toward that end the participants focused on what it would take to develop a manual or standard operating procedures around MHPSS governance.  Among the topics such a manual would cover include managing access to data; storage and security of data; quality, reliability and validity of data;  among other areas. To advance the creation of such a manual, the participants suggested the creation of a dedicated expert group that could compare best practices and present a draft to the MHPSS working group in the short term. ***   These are just a few reflections from our final studio. In October we will publish a more comprehensive and in-depth field report, to illustrate everything undercovered during Responsible Data for Children’s visit to Uganda. For more information on the Initiative, visit our website or reach out at [email protected].       PHOTO LEFT: Participants deliberate during Studio 1 in Kampala. PHOTO RIGHT: Participants deliberate during Studio 2 in Isingiro.

RD4C Uganda

On 19 and 21 September, 2022, the Responsible Data for Children team hosted studios in Uganda. These meetings sought input from national officials and local service providers into their attitude toward the data systems in Uganda affecting child refugee mental health and psychosocial services.  Using a data lifecycle approach—a model that tracks the development of a data initiative from planning through collection, processing, sharing, analyzing, and use of data—participants across the two days described what they saw as the major opportunities and challenges affecting Uganda’s data systems. Guided by the RD4C Principles, they described the various ways that data did and did not support the well-being of child refugees. On Thursday, the team reflected on these meetings in coordination with UNICEF and UNHCR Uganda. After reviewing what the different participants focused on, the team identified several takeaways spanning the data lifecycle. However, four short-term priorities stood out among the rest: Streamlined Decision-Making: Participants indicated they would benefit from a map of who takes decisions on what to promote a more unified approach to the mental health and psychosocial needs of children. Without this map, participants found it difficult to work with one another or to even know who to contact. In the words of one participant, “it can take a lot of coordination to get all of us organizations together.” The Need for a Taxonomy for MHPSS Data: Several participants expressed concerns that data is often cataloged differently by different organizations and that it has varying levels of quality, which could make analyses difficult. One participant noted, “When we talk about processes and standards [...] most organizations work in different silos where data is only collected to donor requirements.” The Value of a Data Catalog and Directory: Organizations could benefit from better understanding who is collecting what data, when, and for what purposes (as well as the leaders responsible) to avoid duplication and re-traumatizing children. The current lack of awareness meant that organizations often engaged in duplicative projects that could lead to refugee children having to provide the same data multiple times. Responsible Data Governance: Finally, the team noted one issue that did not come up explicitly in the discussions: data governance. There are ways to manage risks when using MHPSS data for refugee children by developing agreements for data sharing, guaranteeing group consent and participation, expanding protections, and addressing data biases. Trying to identify what is needed to promote the rights and protection of child refugees is essential so that participants don’t, as in the words of one participant, “collect data as much as possible for whatever purpose [I need].” *** These are only a few of the reflections that emerged from the first two studios. Tomorrow, we’ll share reflections on how participants used these takeaways in the final studio to generate ideas that can improve mental health and psychosocial service data systems in Uganda. Stay tuned for these insights and contact us at [email protected] for more information.     PHOTO LEFT: Mr Kato Freeman from the Ministry of Gender, Labour, and Social Development provides opening remarks  during Studio 1 in Kampala. PHOTO RIGHT: Participants deliberate during Studio 2 in Isingiro.

RD4C Uganda

In previous blogs, we’ve spoken about how the Responsible Data for Children initiative has been speaking to officials with UNICEF and UNHCR Uganda, the Government of Uganda, medical professionals, and various national level stakeholders to identify opportunities and challenges with data systems that could be acted upon to improve child refugee mental health and provide psychosocial services. You can find highlights of these conversations on the RD4C site. Today, the RD4C team supported by UNICEF and UNHCR Uganda explored how different data systems are used by organizations throughout the country to respond to refugee needs. In Isingiro, the team hosted a studio workshop with implementing organizations, regional leaders, and representatives of government. The discussion revealed critical issues, which we will highlight in a blog tomorrow, about the ways in which data can support the mental health and psychosocial well-being of refugee children. As one participant noted, “Data is key because you cannot support what you don’t know.” After the studio, the team then traveled to Nakivale, a refugee settlement in the southwest near the Democratic Republic of Congo border. In focus group settings, we then spoke with mental health and psychosocial service village health teams, child protection committee members, and adolescent refugees themselves. These conversations allowed the team to understand how child refugee mental health is understood by those directly responsible for identifying and responding to cases as well as those affected by data systems.  Tomorrow, we will provide reflections on our first two studios in anticipation for our final ideation studio on Friday. We hope you will stay tuned for these insights or contact us at [email protected] for more information.   * Cover image by Roman Nguyen/Unsplash is licensed under CC0.

RD4C Uganda

Yesterday, with the support of UNHCR, the Responsible Data for Children (RD4C) initiative, a collaboration between UNICEF and The GovLab to promote more responsible and effective management of data for and about children, hosted its first studio with national-level decision-makers in Kampala to understand how data can be better used to improve refugee mental health and provide psychosocial services. Highlights of the event will be shared shortly. Today, the RD4C team joined by UNICEF and UNHCR Uganda arrived in the city of Mbarara to expand this solicitation to the field. We hope to solicit the ideas and opinions of stakeholders responsible for implementing data systems as well as designing them—particularly those who work directly with groups most affected by these data systems. Since its arrival in the city, the team has had constructive discussions with the Office of the Prime Minister Regional Office, UNHCR leadership, and officials at Mbarara Regional Referral Hospital about child refugee children’s mental health and the ways that data can support them. Indeed, Dr. Godfrey Zari Rukundo, Head of Department of Psychiatry of the Mbarara Regional Referral Hospital spoke, at length about the challenges he encounters. He noted, “I wish we had more data on the state of mental health among children and adolescents nationwide.” This data could be used to compare progress across regions and identify good practices to complex mental health challenges. We will be excited to receive further insights on the value and challenges facing data systems tomorrow when we travel to the refugee settlement in Isingiro to meet with community stakeholders, volunteers, and adolescents themselves. Stay tuned as we uncover more about the data ecosystem for child refugees in Uganda. You can also contact us at [email protected] for more information.   * Image by bill wegener/Unsplash is licensed under CC0.

RD4C Uganda

With over 1.5 million refugees, Uganda is the third-largest refugee-hosting country in the world and the largest refugee host country in Africa. Over half of these refugees are children while an additional 23 percent are women above 18 years old. Many of these refugees report experiencing psychological distress and face challenges in accessing Mental Health and Psycho-Social Support (MHPSS). Indeed, the UNHCR estimates that 22 percent of refugee households reported at least one member was in psychological distress or scared. Many of these individuals were children. It’s for these reasons that the Responsible Data for Children initiative—a collaboration between UNICEF and The GovLab to promote more responsible and effective management of data for and about children—saw a common lines of interest to support the Government, UNICEF, and UNHCR in Uganda. Supported by UNHCR and UNICEF’s Blueprint for Joint Action, itself a commitment to accelerate efforts in line with the Global Compact on Refugees, RD4C has embarked on an exciting studio series work with local leaders to diagnose data challenges affecting refugee settlements in Uganda and develop new solutions to more responsibly and effectively manage data. From 19 through 22 September our staff are on the ground to meet with government officials, the heads of NGOs, community leaders, and refugee children themselves to find ways to improve MHPSS data systems in line with the RD4C Principles. Studio Goals Over the last few months, the RD4C team participated in interviews and meetings with practitioners involved in supporting refugee mental health and providing psychosocial services. These discussions have revealed much about how the refugee system in Uganda operates and what are the priorities for those organizations involved in managing them.  In its fact-finding work, RD4C has found that local leaders are most concerned with three basic challenges that will form the basis of its studios: Barriers limiting children’s access to data-driven services Barriers to responsible data use and reuse by organizations involved in providing MHPSS for refugee children; and Difficulties in connecting and harmonizing existing data sources—including those generated through cases, surveys, and Inter-Agency Feedback, Referrals, and Resolution Mechanisms and other MHPSS programme interventions.   Over the next few days, we’ll seek to understand what specific challenges are related to these issues and what opportunities might exist to address them in such a way as to improve their access and effectiveness.   Approach and Methodology We’ll do this by hosting three studio workshops to map common challenges and concerns and prototype a pathway forward to address these challenges through the lens of the RD4C principles.  In particular, we will host (a) one workshop with senior Ugandan government officials, (b) a second workshop with field practitioners and adolescents, and (c) a final workshop guided by the outputs of the prior engagements. In parallel to these workshops, we will host focus groups and consultations with local leaders and adolescent refugee children affected by these systems. The participation of all these partners and stakeholders will be critical.  To organize their involvement, RD4C will rely on the Data Lifecycle—an abstraction that explains the opportunities and challenges in how data is translated from insight and into action. This includes: PLANNING: Defining objectives and partnerships and designing an implementation strategy. COLLECTION: Gathering data from surveys, censuses, voting or health records, business operations, web-based collections, and other relevant, accessible sources.  PROCESSING: Removing irrelevant or inaccurate information, reformatting contents to be interpretable by an analytic software, and otherwise validating the data collection.  SHARING: Accessing data with relevant collaborators to derive insights from it.  ANALYZING: Assessing the data collection to extract insights about the issue as well as creating a loop for (re)sharing processed data and data insights among appropriate parties.  USING: Acting on insights derived. Actions can affect data collected for future operations. The conclusion of all these activities will be a summary report of the studios, a set of principles for staff to follow on MHPSS for child refugees, and a plan of action on how to embed responsible data for children concepts into refugee and host community service delivery systems. *** We hope you will stay tuned over the next few days as we publish our thoughts and reflections on all this work. We will be updating our partners throughout the week and posting various blogs that you can find on our RD4C blog site and Data Stewards Network. You can also contact us at [email protected] for more information.     * Cover photo by bill wegener/Unsplash is licensed under CC0.

New Publication

In 2018, UNICEF and The GovLab launched the Responsible Data for Children (RD4C) initiative with the aim of supporting organisations and practitioners in ensuring that the interest of children is put at the centre of any work involving data for and about them. Since its inception, the RD4C initiative has aimed to be field-oriented, driven by the needs of both children and practitioners across sectors and contexts. It has done so by ensuring that actors from the data responsibility sphere are informed and engaged on the RD4C work. We want them to know what responsible data for and about children entails, why it is important, and how they can realize it in their own work. In this spirit, the RD4C initiative has started translating its resources into different languages. We would like anyone willing to enhance their responsible data handling practices for and about children to be equipped with resources they can understand. As a global effort, we want to guarantee anyone willing to share their expertise and contribute be given the opportunity to do it. Importantly, we would like children around the world—including the most marginalised and vulnerable groups—to be aware of what they can expect from organisations handling data for and about them and to have the means to demand and enforce their rights. Last month, we released the RD4C Video, which is now available in Arabic, French and Spanish. Soon, the rest of the RD4C resources, such as our principles, tools and case studies will be translated as well. We are always looking for data savvy people who can review our translations. Please let us know if you have the background and motivation to translate RD4C resources into a new language to expand the initiative’s reach. We welcome your comment at [email protected].

World Refugee Day

Nearly half of the forcibly displaced people are children.[1] From birth, a growing number of uprooted children (whether refugee, displaced and migrant children), like many children around the globe, have their entire lives datafied. They are among a new generation of people whose information is regularly collected.[2] Organisations providing services to refugees, including children, rely on a variety of technologies and digital tools to provide services. These include biometrics that verify identities using unique physiological characteristics (such as fingerprints, iris and facial features) and ensure that refugees’ personal identities cannot be lost or subject to identity theft. Or messaging-based services and chatbots, sometimes including a level of artificial intelligence, to provide advice and psychosocial support. This data can help organisations provide better services. When the right data are in the right hands at the right time, decisions can be better informed, more equitable, and more likely to protect children's rights—especially for those in vulnerable contexts such as uprooted children. While crisis and conflict drive more children to travel alone,[3] little is known about unaccompanied children. Data could help identify and support them so they are not left behind. It has already proven integral for child protection work around the globe—such as helping children in Mozambique displaced by Cyclones Idai and Kenneth.[4] However, the data handled for and about refugee children can generate risks. Uprooted children have lived traumatic events. Driven from their homes by conflict, poverty, or climate change, they can also encounter danger, detention, deprivation, and discrimination on their journeys, at destination or upon return.[5] Organisations asking children to provide data or register for services may revisit such trauma when collecting data, especially if repeatedly conducted in an uncoordinated manner. Data breaches containing information on refugee children’ can cause children to lose trust in institutions that deliver essential services including lifesaving supplies or have severe retribution if they or their families ever return to their country of birth. What is urgently needed, is responsible data. Responsible Data for Children Refugee children should be more actively engaged and informed on what the data collected about them is going to be used for. Their specific and distinctive needs, interests and expectations should be recognised and prioritised in programmes involving and supporting them. Recognising that refugee, migrant and displaced children as children first and foremost—with rights to protection, development and participation[6] , includes recognising that collecting, storing, preparing, sharing, analysing, and using data about children create unique opportunities and risks. All of this is central to Responsible Data for Children, a joint endeavour between UNICEF and The GovLab to highlight and support best practices around the responsible handling of data for and about children. Guiding the effort are the Responsible Data for Children principles. Drawing upon field-based research and established good practice, the Responsible Data for Children principles were conceived to guide responsible data handling toward saving children’s lives, defending their rights, and helping them fulfil their potential from early childhood through adolescence—paying particular attention to marginalised and vulnerable groups such as refugee children. In its forthcoming work, Responsible Data for Children will be looking at ways it can directly support practitioners in the field, including in refugee settings. It will be collaborating with UN staff, civil society partners and government officials to help them build the principles directly into their existing work in ways that can improve the lives of refugee children. These efforts will seek to be collaborative and include the input of children and their caregivers. *** As data practitioners think of ways to best support refugee children on World Refugee Day and every day, we invite them to look at Responsible Data for Children. By operationalizing its principles, we can ensure that data is used for the benefit of refugee children everywhere.   [Image credit: Piero Olliaro]   [1] https://popstats.unhcr.org/refugee-statistics/ [2] https://www.childrenscommissioner.gov.uk/digital/who-knows-what-about-me/ [3] https://data.unicef.org/resources/idac-data-insight-1/ (Fact 9) [4] https://odpl.thegovlab.com/ccm-directus/assets/o6245olwrwg4488k [5] https://www.unicef.org/migrant-refugee-internally-displaced-children [6] https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/nearly-37-million-children-displaced-worldwide-highest-number-ever-recorded 

Case Study

This week, as part of the Responsible Data for Children initiative (RD4C), The GovLab and UNICEF launched its latest case study focused on the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey’s (MICS) deployment in Zimbabwe to combat domestic violence.  The largest source of statistically sound and internationally comparable data on women and children worldwide, UNICEF has carried out more than 330 MICS surveys, including three in Zimbabwe. It relates how Zimbabwe’s National Statistical Agency and the MICS team sought to counteract a lack of data on the incidence of domestic and gender-based violence by deploying a module focused on these issues. The insights generated from the work subsequently informed national legislation and a variety of national initiatives to combat domestic violence.  As with the first series of case studies released last year, the study highlights practices for responsible handling of data for and about children; identifies challenges and suggests ways for  practitioners to evaluate and address them; and encourages a broader discussion on actionable principles, insights, and approaches for responsible data management. The deployment of MICS in the country captured the RD4C principles of being purpose-driven (targeted at filling a specific data gap and informing ongoing policy discussions), participatory (involved a wide variety of stakeholders in managing each phase of the effort), and preventative of harm across the data lifecycle (relied on techniques through collection, processing, and analysis to guarantee the safety and confidentiality of respondents).  It provides a useful example for RD4C because it demonstrates how responsible practices can evolve and be supplemented over time. It also demonstrates how principles can be realized in the field in an open, participatory fashion and the challenges that practitioners can face with field work. Read the full case study here or examine the full collection of case studies here. To learn more about Responsible Data for Children, visit rd4c.org or contact rd4c [at] thegovlab.org. To join the RD4C conversation and be alerted to future releases, subscribe at this link.

New Video

Data about children is everywhere. Every year, the average child will have more data collected about them than a similar child born any year prior. While all these data give opportunities to better understand children's needs and provide well-informed services, they can also generate risks - many of which are not fully understood by the people handling data, and little known by children themselves. The Responsible Data for Children (RD4C) initiative – a collaboration between The GovLab and UNICEF - seeks to build awareness on how data affects and is affected by children. Importantly, it advocates for informing and engaging with children better. A new video features children and adolescents who take the viewer through some of the benefits that data can offer to improve their lives, while highlighting the importance of mitigating the risks posed by an increasingly datafied society. The seven RD4C principles can help mitigate these risks: they offer actionable ways to put the best interests of children at the centre of data use and reuse activities involving data for and about children. They were established as a North Star to guide the RD4C work and promote a culture of responsible data practices.  Aspiring to be field-oriented and answer the specific needs of children worldwide, including the most marginalized and vulnerable, the seven RD4C principles were conceived through field visits and in alignment with other data governance efforts across sectors. Since 2018, they have informed public-access case studies, tools and reports, to support those who work with data for and about children to put in place responsible handling practices that value children's needs, preferences and priorities. The video will soon be subtitled in other languages too, which will be released on the RD4C YouTube channel page. We encourage you to stay tuned and subscribe today!   This video was developed in partnership with Highway Child, to whom we are grateful for the thorough work. [Image credit: Piero Olliaro]

New Video

In April, the RD4C—a collaboration by UNICEF and The GovLab—hosted a series of tutorials to support UNICEF staff in operationalizing RD4C principles and implementing RD4C tools in ways that built on lessons learned from UNICEF and partners.  Led by UNICEF’s Eugenia Olliaro and The Govlab’s Andrew Young, Andrew J. Zahuranec and Marine Ragnet, the two-hour talk brought together UNICEF staff from different parts of the world to learn how they could realize the principles in the areas they work. It then sought to understand possible challenges, gaps, risks, and lingering questions on responsible data for children that UNICEF staff might have encountered in their countries and regions.  The event began with an introduction by Mark Hereward, Chief Data Officer at UNICEF, on the need for strengthened governance of data. Following these overviews, Andrew Young and Eugenia Olliaro explained what each RD4C principle means, demonstrating their application in practice through real-life examples from the field. Andrew J. Zahuranec and Marine Ragnet, meanwhile, presented tools that could be used to enforce the principles. The session dove into each principle in detail:  The participatory principle involves engaging and informing individuals and groups affected by the use of data for and about children. The team discussed how InForm, an Open Data Kit-based data collection and management tool, illustrated the principle in practice. The tool centralizes dispersed data streams, secures collected data in a common platform, and enables data analysis and visualization. InForm illustrates the participatory principle because any deployment requires connecting disparate sources held by various parties. It calls on agencies to work together to ingest and centralize many data sources instead of having them engage only with their own data systems and data collection processes. A professionally accountable initiative would operationalize responsible data practices and principles by establishing institutional processes, roles, and responsibilities. For example, Afghanistan’s Nutrition Online Database was a web-based information system providing access to aggregated nutrition data to inform planning and service delivery at the national, provincial, and zonal level. Afghanistan and partners provided training to data users to more effectively monitor conditions. Administrators also received manuals with guidance on how to avoid unauthorized access. A people-centric approach is also one that incorporates responsibility by ensuring the needs and expectations of children, their caregivers, and their communities are prioritized by actors handling data for and about them. To demonstrate it in practice, the team used the example of the Aurora Project, a child-protection platform developed by UNICEF Romania with partners. The program was people-centric because its components were crafted in recognition of the influence and importance of not just a child’s experience and needs but also that of their caregivers.  Prevention of harms across data lifecycles: Establishing end-to-end data responsibility by assessing risks during the collecting, storing, preparing, sharing, analyzing, and using stages of the data life cycle. UNICEF’s MICS, a series of surveys launched to monitor the status of children around the world, served as a use case for this principle. The MICS team emphasized that ensuring the security of the data was paramount. During survey collecting, they discussed how data collected in the field undergoes rigid checks for quality during the interview process—checking and cross-checking data across the interview.  Proportional: Aligning the breadth of data collection and duration of data retention with the intended purpose. This was illustrated through the Childline Kenya case study, a helpline offering services for children subjected to violence or neglect. The Childline case study was considered because  the start of each call, the counselor informs the caller that while the discussion will be recorded, all information provided will remain confidential, accessible only by case management personnel, unless it needs to be shared with service providers for a specific, authorized referral. Being protective of children’s rights in programming entails recognizing the distinct rights and requirements for helping children develop to their full potential. Childline Kenya was again used as a use-case to illustrate this principle. The Childline Kenya program installed specific requirements such as letting only approved staff members have the necessary digital credentials for accessing, changing, or printing certain case records and  creating an audit trail when a user edits, deletes, or prints a client record—but not when a user only accesses the record. Leading a purpose-driven initiative entails identifying and specifying why the data is needed and how the intended or potential benefits relate to improving children’s lives. InForm provides a good example for it because the program was developed with a “user-centric design approach” to ensure that the tool would be useful for compiling and visualizing data. This fact is evident not only from the platform’s origins, which sought to respond to a clear, pressing need to compile data, but to the way UNICEF sought to respond to that need.  The session then included reflections from the field with Mac Glovinsky at the Learning Passport. Mac discussed his experiences with Responsible Data for Children and how it had helped advance his work. He spoke to how the RD4C principles could be realized in the field, honing in on some of the success and challenges encountered.  The second part of the session was not recorded, to give UNICEF staff the opportunity to add to the conversation by exchanging on their respective experiences with RD4C in the field. During breakout sessions, participants shared present and past work with each other, discussed the challenges they faced, and posed questions to the RD4C team. This input will inform RD4C work and future training programmes as it enters its third year of operation. UNICEF field offices interested in sharing their experience and learning, can contact the RD4C team to be featured in a blog post. Please contact us at [email protected]. For those of you who would like to view the tutorials, a recording is now available on our YouTube page.

Event

On 8 March 2022, the Responsible Data for Children (RD4C) team—a collaboration between The GovLab and UNICEF—hosted a special 75-minute webinar on the RD4C principles and tools meant to enable the responsible handling of data for and about children. Led by The GovLab’s Stefaan Verhulst and Andrew J. Zahuranec and UNICEF’s Eugenia Olliaro and Robert MacTavish, attendees included practitioners from UNICEF, its partners, along with academics working on issues related to children’s data protection.  Over the course of the session, participants learned in-depth information about how the RD4C tools can help them in the areas they work. The webinar began with an explanation the Responsible Data for Children initiative hopes to achieve. Focusing on the eight reasons why responsible data for children matters, Stefaan discussed why child welfare advocates should pay attention to data. He described how children are at the forefront of datafication, the fact that children have less agency, that data violations can result in lifelong loss of trust, and other issues.  Eugenia subsequently explained the role that the RD4C principles—participatory, professionally accountable, people-centric, prevention of harms across the data lifecycle, proportional, protective of children’s rights, and purpose-driven—could play in addressing these challenges. Developed through a review of literature and case studies, the principles steer the user toward best practices on responsible data handling for children.  Following this initial stage-setting, Andrew and Stefaan introduced the different RD4C tools, which seek to operationalize the principles in an user-centric manner, and explained how they could be used. In particular, they discussed:  The RD4C Data Ecosystem Mapping Tool, which intends to help users to identify the systems generating data about children and the key components of those systems.  The RD4C Decision Provenance Mapping, intended to provide a way for actors designing or assessing data investments for children to identify key decision points and determine which internal and external parties influence those decision points.  The Ethical Assessment – Data for Children Collaborative with UNICEF, that “forms part of our safe data ecosystem, alongside data management and data protection policies and practices.” The RD4C Opportunity and Risk Diagnostic; which provides organizations with a way to take stock of the RD4C principles and how they might be realized as an organization reviews a data project or system.  The 22 Questions to Assess Responsible Data for Children, used for rapidly assessing initiatives or systems that handle data for and about children against the RD4C Principles.  In the final 30 minutes, Alessandra Fassio of Data for Children Collaborative with UNICEF shared with participants how her institution has used RD4C tools to support its work, allowing participants to see how the tools are operationalized in a specific context.  The event closed with a question and answer session moderated by Robert, during which the RD4C team emphasized the importance of supporting broader collaboration on data responsibility and child welfare issues. The team invited attendees to share their work and experiences.  If you work in these areas and would like to share your experience and learning, we would be delighted to host a guest blog featuring your best practices. Furthermore, we are hoping to encourage greater awareness of the various resources and research that exist in the field by expanding our Selected Readings page. If either of these items interest you, please contact us at [email protected].  For those of you who would like to view the webinar, a recording is now available on our YouTube page. 

Lessons from the Field

The Responsible Data for Children (RD4C) initiative is committed to highlighting innovative, data-driven approaches to promote the responsible handling of data for and about children. This week, building on its case study published last year, the RD4C team interviewed the Aurora Project’s Voichita Tomus to understand how she and her colleagues are using data to improve children’s lives. The eleven-minute video allows Voichita to talk at length about the Aurora Project, a child-protection platform developed by UNICEF Romania and its partners. The tool enables social workers and community health care providers to diagnose and monitor vulnerabilities experienced by children and their families. Through the administration of a child protection questionnaire, the system supports the determination of a minimum package of services needed by children and their families.  It also enables child protection evaluation and planning work at the national level.    In the video linked above, Voichita talks about this work and answers important questions about the data Aurora uses, the most serious challenges it faces, what enables its success. We encourage those interested in responsible data for children to watch to understand how real-world practitioners are applying the RD4C principles to the areas they work.   Follow our blog to read our next “Lessons from the Field” and join the RD4C conversation to receive regular updates. 

New Publication

This week, the peer-to-peer government learning platform apolitical featured an article by Stefaan Verhulst and Andrew Young of The GovLab highlighting the rationale behind the Responsible Data for Children (RD4C) initiative. The article lists eight reasons why responsible data for children matters.  The article starts from the following observation: “The relationship between the datafication of everyday life and child welfare has generally been under-explored. 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.” As a response, the article outlines 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 including:  Children are at the forefront of datafication: Today’s children are the first generation to grow up amid the rapid datafication of virtually every aspect of life. Children have less agency: 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. Even aggregated data can be dangerous: Aggregated, anonymized data is not a panacea. There continues to be risk of re-identification through the mosaic effect and other challenges. Data violations can result in lifelong loss of trust: When data is mishandled data subjects lose trust in institutions.. This, in turn, can reduce the uptake of essential services, and stunt benefits of technology. Children’s interests can be overlooked: As technologies are implemented and the data volume increases,  existing protections to protect children may be overlooked. AI and algorithmic bias pose particular risks: AI can expedite processes but contain hard-to-detect biases that result in real adverse effects. These risks are only heightened when it comes to children. Risk of revisiting trauma: Children served by organizations may have suffered trauma. Asking children to provide data or register for services may revisit such trauma. The relationship between privacy and children’s self development Having the freedom and autonomy to experiment with different identities, without prying eyes or chilling dataveillance, is important for children’s self-development. Read Part 1 and Part 2 of the article. Those interested in learning more or partnering with us can contact rd4c [at] thegovlab.org. To join the RD4C conversation and be alerted to future releases, subscribe at this link. Cover image by Alex Radelich/Unsplash is licensed under CC0.

Announcement

Since its formal launch in November 2019, the Responsible Data for Children initiative (RD4C) by The GovLab and UNICEF has sought to provide guidance, tools and leadership to support the responsible handling of data for and about children. This work has included case studies on UNICEF projects around the globe, selected readings on important issues facing the field, blogs on new developments, and—prominently—tools that practitioners in the field can use to promote the responsible use of data in the contexts they work.  On Tuesday, 8 March 2022, RD4C will provide additional guidance on how to use these tools with a special 90-minute webinar open to UNICEF, its partners, and all those working on issues related to children’s data protection. Led by The GovLab’s Stefaan Verhulst and Andrew J. Zahuranec and UNICEF’s Eugenia Olliaro, attendees will learn how to use various tools, including: RD4C Data Ecosystem Mapping Tool; RD4C Decision Provenance Mapping; Ethical Assessment – Data for Children Collaborative with UNICEF; RD4C Opportunity and Risk Diagnostic; and 22 Questions to Assess Responsible Data for Children. During the first hour, Stefaan, Eugenia, and Andrew will explain what risks and opportunities these tools address, demonstrating to participants how to use them. In the final 30 minutes, participants will hear from Alessandra Fassio of Data for Children Collaborative with UNICEF on how her institution has used RD4C tools to support its work. The webinar will be recorded and published on the RD4C site and YouTube page. All those interested can learn more register for the event here.   Image by Ben Wicks/Unsplash is licensed under CC0.

Announcement

This week, as part of the Responsible Data for Children initiative (RD4C), The GovLab and UNICEF launched the first of their new slate of case studies on responsible data for children.  The piece focuses on the deployment of InForm—a platform that allows for data centralization and standardization. As with the first series of case studies released last year, the study of InForm aims to highlight and support responsible handling of data for and about children; identify challenges and develop practical tools to assist practitioners in evaluating and addressing them; and encourage a broader discussion on actionable principles, insights, and approaches for responsible data management. It analyzes how data practitioners used InForm in Mozambique to respond to Cyclone Idai, with a focus on the RD4C Principles. The analysis found InForm captures the RD4C Principles of being purpose-driven; participatory; proportional; and preventative of harms across the data life cycle and professionally accountable. To further advance its responsible data approach, the case study suggests that the platform might develop standard operating procedures for handling sensitive data could prove useful. Personnel might also seek to remain cognizant of the time and resource constraints on implementing parties and the need to engage partners early in deployment. Read the full case study here or examine the full collection of case studies here. To learn more about Responsible Data for Children, visit rd4c.org or contact rd4c [at] thegovlab.org. To join the RD4C conversation and be alerted to future releases, subscribe at this link.   Image by Martin Bekerman/Unsplash is licensed under CC0.

Lessons from the Field

Since its launch, the Responsible Data for Children (RD4C) initiative has studied  the use of data for and about children in humanitarian settings to offer insights on promising, responsible data practice.  Childline Kenya, one of the first of these studies to be published, remains today as an important example of responsible data practices. To understand how Childline Kenya has changed since we published our case study, we interviewed Martha Sunda, Executive Director of Childline Kenya. The conversation, summarized below, touched on how Childline operates, the challenges and opportunities it faces, and potential lessons that could help other practitioners in handling children’s data responsibly. What is Childline Kenya and what data is involved in it? Childline Kenya is an NGO that operates a national child helpline service. It works closely with the Government of Kenya as its strategic partner, as well as with other stakeholders, to provide support to children subjected to any kind of violence or neglect. The organization offers counseling, psychotherapy, play and art therapy, family therapy and legal support. It also provides linkage to other child protection service providers for additional support. .  According to Martha, this programming is based on three pillars. The first one is a preventive approach related to creating awareness of child protection and everybody’s role in protecting children. The second one is focused on the importance of accessing child protection services in the fastest way possible. This is done by providing the helpline channels as well as by informing the public about other ways to seek support, such as the Children’s Office or the Police. Finally the third pillar revolves around response to reported concerns.  While people can request support on these three pillars through various platforms including WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and email, a central part of its outreach is a toll-free telephone service. This service is available from anywhere in Kenya twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. This is important to provide people with a variety of platforms they can use, depending on which one they feel most comfortable with or have access to.  More than reporting the issue, Childline Kenya seeks to solve it. “Whenever we have an opportunity we keep creating awareness on the issue.”   “Our goal is to have these cases that are reported responded to efficiently and effectively in the best interest of the child. [...] Therefore, the data that we get to [...] [guide] our work is around the child themselves. What are the safeguarding or protection issues that they have? Who has perpetrated them? Are there any caregivers in the scenario, [...] any other siblings? Do these children go to school now or not? Are there any developmental issues that we need to take note of [...]?” “We are also able to determine what else needs to be done, or whether we need to fast track some things. [...] So that also helps to determine what needs to be done to be able to assist this child in the best way possible.” She added that the organization makes sure that the data processed by them is restricted to the minimum necessary to help the child or for advocacy and programming purposes. What are the most serious challenges you face in promoting responsible use of data related to the calls you receive through your helpline? As the helpline service is co-managed by Childline Kenya and the Government of Kenya, Martha explained that the responsibility over the data processed is also shared. In this sense, Childline Kenya is not able to control how the government uses the data and vice versa.  She argued that can be limiting especially in cases where either partner feels that a certain level of detail should not have been released. Even though this situation is rare, Martha stated that, “it remains a risk [...] that needs to be sorted out. We have tried to mitigate [that], so in the system we know who exactly is [...] in there at what level and we also keep an audit trail in the helpline system. So in case someone has edited something or downloaded something we have the audit trail and we are therefore able to hold them responsible.”  She expanded on this point by explaining several challenges. First, she noted that the linkage to the government information system also creates a problem related to feedback. When the case is referred to this governmental system, the NGO has to request information about the solution of the case manually, as there are only a few cases where this information is given proactively. Another challenge relates to how much information should be released to partners when a child is being referred to them or when the media is covering a case. She argued that there was  difficulty in finding the balance between providing the service in the best way possible without overexposing the child or breaching confidentiality. Children and families could also put themselves at risk as they might reveal more information than they should when they are reached out by the media. Finally, she described the issue of duplicate data, something already described in the “RD4C Case Study: Childline Kenya.” According to Martha, data duplication is something over which Childline Kenya has little control since a child or their family might report the case to various offices when they feel their expectations were not met: “When you start gathering this data and putting it together you find reports of the same child from three different entities.” Though this is not the rule, it is important to consider a margin of error when dealing with the data produced by the service. What are the most important factors that have enabled your success thus far and how will you promote the responsible use of data for children going forward? Martha explained that the service is very successful because they try to create awareness of the importance of data security with all the stakeholders involved. This awareness raising involves children and their families, the media and other stakeholders who are often not included in the child protection community.   “We dont assume that they would know things that are part of child safeguarding so whenever we have an opportunity we keep creating awareness on the issue,” Martha said.  She also emphasized the importance of good practices being applied internally to lead by example. Childline Kenya makes sure that it follows data protection guidelines and standards locally and globally. Other partner organizations have gone to Kenya to learn what the institution is doing to replicate Childline Kenya’s work in their own countries. Martha also attributed Childline’s success to the involvement of partners. When partnering with other institutions, Childline Kenya requires that they sign a safeguarding policy if they do not have their own so as to commit to protecting children under Childline Kenya’s standards.  Martha emphasizes that this policy was not simply checking a box. Rather, partnership is a process in which the institution actually demonstrates an understanding of the importance of these policies, providing instruction for an informed decision. She noted the engagement with the government was formalized by a memorandum of understanding that holds both of them responsible. What are the major changes or new policies and processes that have been implemented since the development of the case study? Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Martha stated that remote access to the helpline service was made available to staff so that they could work from home. This presented new challenges related to data protection as the institution focused on the process of setting up the remote access.  In order to access the platform, a specific device had to be configured and a licence installed. This device could not be shared with other people and other applications could not be accessed while the Childline system was in use. This work was important to protect the data from external parties and from malicious softwares.  *** Childline Kenya still faces some challenges since the case study development, such as finding a balance in sharing data about a case with partners and the media, data duplication, and shared responsibilities with the government. However, it is clear that the initiative's success is intrinsically related to the responsible data handling practices it has been implementing. Especially in situations where Childline Kenya’s service is increasingly needed, such as during the COVID-19 pandemic, these practices allow the most vulnerable children in the country to have their immediate needs met while still having their data handled responsibly. Follow our blog to read our next “Lessons from the Field” and join the RD4C conversation to receive regular updates.    [PHOTO CREDITS: Unsplash/Julian Hochgesang; Unsplash/Belle Maluf; Unsplash/bennett tobias licensed under CC0]

Responsible AI

Protecting children is a global responsibility, one that requires organizations around the world to understand the opportunities and challenges posed by new technologies, including rapid advancements in computation and machine learning. From 30 November to 1 December 2021, UNICEF and the Government of Finland are helping spur action on this topic by hosting the Global Forum on AI for Children. Bringing together the  foremost policymakers, practitioners, and researchers in a virtual setting, the forum will advance emerging conversations on children’s rights, digital technology policies, and AI systems.  One of these conversations will be centered on embedding responsible data for children in the AI ecosystem. In a breakout group on 1 December at 8:45 AM EST // 3:45 GMT+2 titled, “Protecting children’s data, privacy and prioritizing fairness in an AI world,” UNICEF Program Officer and RD4C team member Eugenia Olliaro will participate in a discussion on the RD4C Principles and how they can reduce unwanted and discriminatory bias for children through better policies and practice. She will be joined by Maria Luciana Axente (Responsible AI and AI for Good Lead, PwC), Edson Prestes (Full Professor, Federal University of Rio Grande Sul), and Julia Reuben (Assistant Deputy Director, Allegheny County Children, Youth, and Families). The forum, which is part of UNICEF's AI for Children project, will provide an important space for reflecting on and promoting more responsible handling of data for and about children in the rapidly emerging AI environment. The full forum agenda can be found here and registration is open here.    [PHOTO CREDIT: Unsplash/Andy Kelly is licensed under CC0]

RD4C Toolkit

ACCESS THE TOOL HERE Around the world and across domains, institutions are using data to improve service delivery for children. Data for and about children can, however, pose risks of misuse, such as unauthorized access or data breaches, as well as missed use of data that could have improved children’s lives if harnessed effectively.  The RD4C Principles — Participatory; Professionally Accountable; People-Centric; Prevention of Harms Across the Data Life Cycle; Proportional; Protective of Children’s Rights; and Purpose-Driven — were developed by the GovLab and UNICEF to guide responsible data handling toward saving children’s lives, defending their rights, and helping them fulfill their potential from early childhood through adolescence. These principles were developed to act as a north star, guiding practitioners toward more responsible data practices. Today, The GovLab and UNICEF, as part of the Responsible Data for Children initiative (RD4C), are pleased to launch a new tool that aims to put the principles into practice. 22 Questions to Assess Responsible Data for Children (RD4C) is an audit tool to help stakeholders involved in the administration of data systems that handle data for and about children align their practices with the RD4C Principles.  The tool encourages users to reflect on their data handling practices and strategy by posing questions regarding:  Why: the purpose and rationale for the data system; What: the data handled through the system;  Who: the stakeholders involved in the system’s use, including data subjects; How: the presence of operations, policies, and procedures; and  When and where: temporal and place-based considerations. The 22 Questions provide a framework through which users can assess their current efforts, as well as concrete recommendations for bolstering data responsibility by mitigating risks of both misuse and missed use of data.  Interested in organizing n responsible data for children audit consultation with the RD4C team? Want to receive a tutorial on how to implement the audit tool? Contact us at rd4c [at] thegovlab.org to explore opportunities for collaboration toward making the RD4C Principles more actionable at your institution. 

Code of Ethics

Reposted from Data.org Saving children’s lives, defending children’s rights, and helping children fulfill their full potential. With goals as ambitious and admirable as this, it goes without saying that the best interests of kids are always put first. Right? Maybe, but the Data for Children Collaborative isn’t leaving it to chance. Housed at Edinburgh Futures Institute, the Data for Children Collaborative is a unique partnership between UNICEF, the Scottish government, and the University of Edinburgh that is focused on not just using data to drive outcomes for children, but building safeguards, resources, and protocols to make sure that data is used ethically, responsibly, and transparently. The Challenge The Edinburgh-based Collaborative looks at the big, seemingly intractable problems our global society faces through a lens of impact and intervention for children. From population health and poverty to COVID-19 response and climate change, how these issues affect children is nuanced and requires an equally nuanced approach. As organizations seek to tackle these challenges, the Collaborative serves as a matchmaker, bringing together academic expertise and practical know-how to utilize the power of data to keep children safe, healthy, and thriving. To harness that power effectively and responsibly, though, data security and responsibility are paramount, says Alessandra Fassio, the advocacy and relations manager for the Data for Children Collaborative. Photo by UNICEF “What I was really interested in was that ‘data for good’ ethics piece of the puzzle. Because we’re working for children, obviously they’re a vulnerable group and often don’t have insight about how data about them is being used,” she said. “Ethics is the buzzword, and everyone is talking about it but there is very little practical implementation on how to do it.” That is the question that the Collaborative set out to answer: how do we define and support strong data ethics in a way that ensures it is no longer an afterthought? How do we empower organizations to make it their priority? The Solution How? Make it easier and more intuitive. Fassio, Data for Children Collaborative Director Alex Hutchison, and the rest of their five-person team set out to create a roadmap for data responsibility. They started with their own experiences and followed the lifecycle of a non-profit project from conception to communicating results. The journey begins – for project leaders and for the Collaborative – with an ethical assessment before any research or intervention has been conducted. The assessment calls on project teams to reflect on their motivations and ethical issues at the start, midpoint, and results stages of a project, ensuring that the priority stakeholder remains at the center. Some of the elements are directly tied to data, like data collection, security, and anonymization, but the assessment goes beyond the hard data and into its applications and analysis, including understanding stakeholder landscape and even the appropriate language to use when communicating outputs. For the Collaborative, that priority is children. But they’ve designed the assessment, which maps across to UNICEF’s Responsible Data for Children (RD4C) toolkit, and other responsible innovation resources to be adaptable for other sectors. “We wanted to make it really accessible for people with no background in ethics or data. We wanted anyone to be able to approach it,” Fassio said. “Because it is data-focused, there’s actually a very wide application. A lot of the questions we ask are very transferable to other groups.” The same is true for their youth participation workbook – another resource in the toolkit. The team engaged young people to help co-create the process, staying open to revisions and iterations based on people’s experiences and feedback. Photo by UNICEF Though that process of iteration and reflection is ongoing, Hutchison has been pleasantly surprised by the willingness of people to engage with and deploy the tools in meaningful ways. “I think there’s a broad acceptance across the technology sector that ethics is recognized as something that’s really pivotal,” she said. “We’ve been constantly really impressed with how well people engage with the ethics assessment that we’ve built, rather than seeing it as ‘oh, here’s something else that needs to be done. They’re really welcoming the fact that it can add value to their project.” The Takeaway Like the expression measure twice, cut once, the major argument that the Data for Children Collaborative is making is that ethics isn’t an add-on. Data responsibility and ethics must be built into a project from the get-go. The Collaborative helps connect the right spheres of influence and expertise to ensure that project teams are asking the tough questions and thinking critically about their approach. “Let’s get all the right people around the table, look at the question we’re trying to solve for, and ask ourselves, is data the right way for us to do this?” Fassio asks. “It’s about designing in an ethical way. Building it in from the start is a more proactive way and it then lends itself to being less of a blocker. There’s a misconception about ethics trying to pause innovation or stop innovation from happening and that’s not the case.” That frontloaded work takes time, but the results make it worthwhile in the end. They advise project teams to work at their own pace, never hesitating to ask questions and lean on colleagues with relevant experience. When they reflect on the past year and a half of getting the Collaborative launched and underway, they wouldn’t change much, except maybe scaling up faster, knowing now how sorely needed these resources are across the non-profit landscape. Photo by Ruel Saldico But the early results are in, and the toolkit has helped drive responsible social change across several disciplines. The ethical assessment has helped shape the data confidentiality policies around work on HIV. It has influenced the language used in reporting on access to services by children in poverty. And in the latest example, has shaped the design and release of hugely impactful data in the Climate Risk Index, a UNICEF report that global climate activist Greta Thunberg has described as the first comprehensive view of children’s exposure and vulnerability to the impacts of climate change. Unlike many data projects, where it can take years for change to be felt or heard, Hutchison said, the Climate Risk Index was a powerful moment for the Collaborative to see immediate response and impact. It was a reminder for their team that they’re on the right track, fueling their momentum moving forward as they seek out new partners, aligned funders, and more ways to get their tools into the right hands. Approximately 1 billion children (nearly half of the world’s children) live in extremely high-risk countries. Data from The Children’s Climate Risk Index (CCRI). “There are so many opportunities for people to do good work with data,” she said. “It’s almost infinite, the examples where this can work and make a difference.”

Responsible Data Towards...

From 3 to 6 October 2021, Bern hosted the Third UN World Data Forum (UNWDF), gathering data experts and scholars from organisations across the world. The event, intended to foster “better data towards achieving the SDGs,” used a combination of virtual and in-person sessions to bring together panellists and participants.   The keynote speaker, Microsoft President Brad Smith, confidently asserted that “no matter what the problem may be, data can play an indispensable role in solving it,” while others focused attention on the risks generated by data. Members of the RD4C team attended the conference and share some takeaways relevant to the responsible handling of data for and about children.   Three Key Takeaways  1. Build trust in data   "How we can really ensure trust in data?" asked Ola Awad, President of Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics. Like many panellists, she wondered how we can build and maintain trust in the data ecosystem – not only from the public, but broadly among all stakeholders.   In this age of rapidly evolving technology, widespread misinformation and scepticism towards institutions, data activities must guarantee a holistic protection of people's data; and it is essential to ensure that the needs and expectations of those affected by the use of their data are respected. The mere participation in a system should not be conflated with trust, as James Lowry, Assistant Professor at City University of New York, noted throughout his address on the issue.  2. Expand opportunities to strengthen data capacity   Another series of sessions were dedicated to seeking new approaches to develop capacity for better data. Stakeholders called for building technical know-how and strengthening data literacy at every level. “I believe we should all be data literate,” said Nicolas Kurek, UN Youth Representative.  Boosting data literacy implies increasing the data capacity of people – not only data stewards but also non-specialists – as well as ensuring the information is as intelligible and accessible as possible for anyone to make informed decisions. To accelerate the process, responsible, trustworthy, and open data ecosystem should be put in place.   3. Put the interest of people at the centre of data systems  Last but not least, the UNWDF, moderated by speakers such as independent journalist Arthur Honegger, reiterated the need to “put data into the hands of citizens.” Partnerships should be people-centric and ensure that the needs, interests, and expectations of individuals are prioritized.  Importantly, data should represent everybody and leave no one behind: individuals and groups, including marginalised and vulnerable populations, should always be informed and engaged by those handling data about them.   Activities Relevant to RD4C These are only a few overarching takeaways emerging from the UNWDF. The event also highlighted three data-for-development investment initiatives that could provide lessons for actors seeking to use data responsibly to advance children's interests:  The Clearinghouse for Financing Development Data, launched by The Bern Network as a platform to track and analyse the state of financing for data and to help countries, donors and development partners identify funding opportunities.  The Global Data Facility, World Bank-hosted fund to support fundamentals and frontier data and statistics priorities at the global, regional, national, and community levels.  The Complex Risk Analytics Fund (CRAF’d), multilateral financing instrument supported by the UN and an increasing number of governments to expand shared capabilities for using data to better anticipate, prevent, and respond to complex risks in fragile and crisis-affected settings.  RD4C to accelerate progress on SDGs  While the forum did not focus on children specifically, the discussions highlighted the importance of designing and respecting responsible data practices for vulnerable groups, including children.   The Responsible Data for Children (RD4C) initiative advocates for responsible handling of children's data and follows a set of actionable principles to ensure that the best interest of children is put at the centre of data activities. The takeaways outlined above provide useful insight on how the RD4C community can continue to work toward more responsible handling of data for and about children globally.  Resources  For more information on the RD4C initiative, visit the website.  For more information on the Forum see the Summary Report and The Bern Data Compact for the Decade of Action on the SDGs.    [Image credit: Piero Olliaro]

RD4C Brief

The Importance of Principles Data responsibility is growing ever more complex. There is no standard operating procedure or one-size-fits-all approach that can guarantee responsible and effective data handling. Institutions and researchers have released an array of data responsibility tools and platforms, but the utility of these tools depends on the context in which they are deployed.  Given the contextual nature of data responsibility, many institutions look to principles as a “north star” toward which to organize their efforts. Responsible data principles can provide practitioners with guidance and support without being overly prescriptive. Principles provide a framework of good practices while giving practitioners the space to adapt and refine their activities based on the unique situation in which they operate.   The IASC Principles  On February 3, 2021, the Inter-Agency Standing Committee — the preeminent humanitarian forum in the United Nations system — released its Guidance on Data Responsibility in Humanitarian Action. The Guidance includes the Principles for Data Responsibility in Humanitarian Action as well as recommended practices that can help humanitarian actors meet them. Below, we include the Principles with condensed descriptions from the original IASC guidance. IASC Principles for Data Responsibility in Humanitarian Action Accountability: “...[H]umanitarian organizations have an obligation to account and accept responsibility for their data management activities.” Confidentiality: “Humanitarian organizations should implement appropriate organizational safeguards and procedures to keep sensitive data confidential at all times.”  Coordination and Collaboration: “Coordinated and collaborative data management entails the meaningful inclusion of humanitarian partners, national and local authorities, people affected by crisis, and other stakeholders in data management activities…” Data Security: “Humanitarian organizations should implement appropriate organizational and technical safeguards, procedures and systems to prevent, mitigate, report and respond to security breaches.” Defined Purpose, Necessity and Proportionality: “Humanitarian data management and its related activities should have a clearly defined purpose…[T]he management of data in humanitarian response should be relevant, limited and proportionate – in terms of required investment as well as identified risk – to the specified purpose(s).” Fairness and Legitimacy: “Humanitarian organizations should manage data in a fair and legitimate manner, in accordance with their mandates, the context of the response, governing instruments, and global norms and standards, including the Humanitarian Principles. Legitimate grounds for data management include, for example: the best interests of people affected by crisis, consistent with the organization’s mandate; public interest in furtherance of the organization’s mandate; the vital interests of communities and individuals not able to make a determination about data management themselves…” Human Rights-Based Approach: “Data management should be designed and implemented in ways that respect, protect and promote the fulfilment of human rights, including the fundamental freedoms and principles of equality and non-discrimination as defined in human rights frameworks, as well as the more specific right to privacy and other data-related rights, and data-specific rights promulgated in applicable data protection legislation and other applicable regulation.” People-Centered and Inclusive: “Affected populations should be afforded an opportunity to be included, represented, and empowered to exercise agency throughout data management whenever the operational context permits.” Personal Data Protection: “Humanitarian organizations have an obligation to adhere to (i) applicable national and regional data protection laws, or (ii) if they enjoy privileges and immunities such that national and regional laws do not apply to them, to their own data protection policies.” Quality: “Data quality should be maintained such that users and key stakeholders are able to trust operational data management and its resulting products. Data quality entails that data is relevant, accurate, timely, complete, up-to-date and interpretable…” Retention and Destruction: “Sensitive data should only be retained for as long as it is necessary to the specified purpose for which it is being managed or as required by applicable law or donor audit regulations. When its retention is required, safe and secure storage should be ensured to safeguard sensitive data from being misused or irresponsibly exposed.” Transparency: “Data management in humanitarian response should be carried out in ways that offer meaningful transparency toward stakeholders, notably affected populations.” The RD4C Principles  In 2019, The GovLab and UNICEF established the Responsible Data for Children Initiative (RD4C). RD4C seeks to highlight and support best practice in the handling of data for and about children work; develop practical tools to assist practitioners in evaluating and addressing risks and challenge; and encourage a broader discussion on actionable principles, insights, and approaches for responsible data management to improve children’s lives  The GovLab and UNICEF developed the RD4C Principles to support organizations in stewarding data collected, stored and prepared, shared, analyzed, and used to save children’s lives, defend their rights, and help them fulfill their potential from early childhood through adolescence. Rather than duplicate or contradict, the IASC Data Responsibility Principles and RD4C Principles fulfill different functions. Whereas the IASC Data Responsibility Principles address responsible handling of data about all demographies in humanitarian settings, RD4C focuses specifically on how organizations can address children's data. Indeed, the RD4C Principles provide practitioners with a roadmap for implementing and embodying the IASC Data Responsibility Principles in their work with children’s data.  Below, we outline the RD4C Principles (or the 7 Ps) and reflect on how the implementation of each RD4C Principle can help practitioners adhere to the IASC Data Responsibility Principles in their engagements with children and their data. Comparative Assessment RD4C Principles Related IASC Principle(s) Implementation  Purpose-Driven: Identifying and specifying why the data is needed and how the intended or potential benefits relate to improving children’s lives. Defined Purpose, Necessity and Proportionality  Both the RD4C and IASC Principles emphasize that responsible data practices begin by being purpose-driven. A clearly defined purpose can help practitioners avoid misuses of data and organize their efforts around achieving a well-established goal or objective.  Practitioners will also be better positioned to align their downstream data practices with responsible data principles — such as Proportionality — if they are working toward a well-established purpose that can benefit children’s lives.  Participatory: Engaging and informing individuals and groups affected by the use of data for and about children. Coordination and Collaboration Transparency A Participatory approach involves collaboration and transparency, both of which are represented in the IASC Principles.  First, practitioners should seek input from and collaboration with relevant stakeholders in the design and implementation of a data initiative. These stakeholders can include children, their caregivers, and the communities in which they live as well as partners, donors and other key actors.  Second, a Participatory approach necessitates a level of transparency and effective communication to ensure that the intended beneficiaries of a data initiative and other relevant parties are kept abreast of new developments.  Professionally Accountable: Operationalizing responsible data practices and principles by establishing institutional processes, roles, and responsibilities. Accountability Confidentiality Fairness and Legitimacy Data responsibility rests upon individual and organizational accountability. Professional Accountability entails establishing and adhering to policies and procedures that place personnel in the best position to handle data fairly and legitimately, guard against inappropriate or harmful activities, and ensure that children’s data under their charge remains secure.  People-Centric: Ensuring the needs and expectations of children, their caregivers, and their communities are prioritized by actors handling data for and about them. People-Centered and Inclusive  Data can play an important role in driving effective decision-making, improving service delivery, and increasing efficiency, among other benefits. Given these facts, practitioners handling data for and about children should ensure that the needs, interests, and expectations of people—including children and their caregivers in particular—are prioritized. When making decisions regarding data handling activities, practitioners should center practices that demonstrably serve children’s interests — in an inclusive manner that takes into account vulnerable or marginalized communities — over more process-oriented benefits that could be created through data, such as efficiency gains. Prevention of Harms Across the Data Life Cycle: Establishing end-to-end data responsibility by assessing risks during the collecting, storing, preparing, sharing, analyzing, and using stages of the data life cycle. Data Security Personal Data Protection Quality Risks of both misuse and missed use of data for and about children can emerge at different stages of the data life cycle. Issues related to data security, such as breaches, unauthorized access, and other intentional or incidental misuses of data can occur at each stage of the data life cycle and require targeted strategies for mitigation. At each stage, practitioners also face challenges in preventing harms that could arise from both personal data about children as well as group, aggregated, or statistical data about children. Practitioners should also recognize data quality as a key element impacting end-to-end data responsibility. An adequate level of data quality can help practitioners to prevent harms and capitalize on opportunities to improve children’s lives with data. Poor data quality can create significant, compounding risks and negatively impact decision-making across the data lifecycle.  Proportional: Aligning the breadth of data collection and duration of data retention with the intended purpose. Retention and Destruction The collection and retention of children’s data should be relevant, limited, and adequate to what is necessary for achieving intended purposes. As indicated by the IASC Principle of Defined Purpose, Necessity and Proportionality, the issue of proportionality is closely related to and defined by the core purpose of data activities involving children. While important for all data subjects, proportional data handling and appropriate decision-making regarding the retention and destruction of data is paramount for children. Disproportionate initial data collection or longer-term retention can exacerbate children’s actual or potential vulnerabilities and pose risks to their future prospects.  Protective of Children’s Rights: Recognizing the distinct rights and requirements for helping children develop to their full potential. Human Rights-Based Approach The Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that children are “entitled to special care and assistance,” and the Convention on the Rights of the Child outlines additional rights and entitlements that are unique to childhood. Data practices involving children must take into account these additional rights, as well the unique risks that irresponsible data practices can pose to children.  The RD4C Principles and the IASC Principles on Data Responsibility in Humanitarian Action provide development and humanitarian practitioners with a set of complementary, mutually reinforcing frameworks to guide safe and effective data handling. Watch this space for additional reflections and guidance on applying these and other responsible data principles and practices that can minimize instances of both misuse and missed use of data for and about children.     [Photo Credit: UNICEF/UN0277463/Bindra]

Related Initiatives

Child protection, as defined by UNICEF, is the prevention of, and response to, exploitation, abuse, neglect, harmful practices and violence against children. To support their mission for a world free of harm against children, UNICEF recently published the second edition of its Child Protection Strategy 2021 – 2030 (CPS), setting the agency’s approach to child protection for  the new decade.  In this edition of the CPS, UNICEF continues  tackling global issues ranging from conflict and migration to poverty and inequality. It pays special attention to emerging challenges such as climate change, political polarization, and the COVID-19 pandemic. The CPS also discusses the Fourth Industrial Revolution, associated data-related challenges, and approaches that can improve child protection and advance responsible data for children. By including these measures in their long term strategy, UNICEF reinforces its commitment to responsible data practices. The CPS begins this discussion by reviewing new challenges to children’s welfare posed by recent technological developments like biometric technology, artificial intelligence and digital connectivity. These challenges include increased surveillance, data misuse, online abuse and bullying. The CPS suggests some ways to mitigate these problems through innovative information management systems, inter-agency tools and rights- and results-based accountability systems.  Beyond deploying technological resources to improve the quality of data, the CPS programme also aims to strengthen community engagement with caregivers, children and adolescents, reflecting the Participatory RD4C Principle to strengthen data collection efforts. Engaging with such important groups can empower those using the CPS to identify metrics of concern and effectively acquire and process data to make stronger inferences, especially as they pertain to the conditions of disadvantaged groups in society.  In addition to providing innovative technologies and community engagement strategies, the CPS programme also seeks to strengthen the RD4C Principles of Professionally Accountable and the Prevention of Harms across the Data Life Cycle through the use of audits and progress reviews. This move helps improve data governance and build more robust accountability systems. The CPS’s work is governed by a set of technical guidelines, which outline how to evaluate and effectively use different types of data in the context of children’s issues, as well as how to responsibly finance data and research work.   By including measures to counteract the negative impacts on children of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the increased handling of potentially sensitive data for and about children, UNICEF’s Child Protection Strategy institutionalizes responsible data practices when it comes to the welfare and safety of children. Given the CPS often informs different countries’ child protection laws, the hope is that the addition of responsible data practices to the CPS will motivate countries around the world to follow in suit and adopt similar policies and practices in the future to advance responsible data for children around the world.   Read the UNICEF Child Protection Strategy here.

UNICEF Innocenti Film Festival

From October 21–24, 2021, UNICEF Innocenti will host the second UNICEF Innocenti Film Festival (UIFF) to showcase “narratives of childhood from around the world.” UIFF will feature films that “promote deep reflection on the experiences that shape childhood —  within the individual, in the family, the community, in institutions and societies, of both the Global South and North.” The final program will be released soon.  The hybrid film festival will feature live socially distanced screenings in Florence, Italy at the Cinema La Compagnia, as well as on-demand virtual screenings. The films will be complemented by public dialogues with filmmakers, UNICEF personnel, and others. UIFF 2021 follows the inaugural 2019 edition, which featured over 30 films presented by filmmakers across the world. The 2019 selections included short and feature length documentaries and dramas, as well as animated films.  One of the 2019 selections, Mohamed Kenawi’s MINOR’S HOPE, puts a human face on many of the issues explored in the RD4C initiative. Kenawi’s documentary short follows three teenage asylum seekers after their arrival in Rome. The boys seek out work and a sense of belonging in their new home and rely on the support of a supervisor at their reception center. The film clearly demonstrates how the boys’ integration into their new home relies on the safe and effective collection, handling, and use of potentially sensitive information. The boys would struggle to forge a new life in Italy absent this information; faulty handling of this information could create risks to the boys’ safety or status in the country.  A recent UNICEF Child Protection Learning Brief also explores important lessons learned for supporting children on the move.  You can watch MINOR’S HOPE below.

Introduction Cash Transfers have increasingly become part of the policy toolkit for social protection, poverty alleviation and the achievement of child outcomes around the world. The goals driving cash transfer programs for children include facilitating children’s increased access to basic goods and services as well as schooling and health care, reducing poverty-driven family practices that endanger children such as child marriage, and ultimately breaking intergenerational cycles of poverty and inequity in the long run.  Throughout the development and deployment of these programs, and especially given the increased adoption of digital tools for their implementation, key stakeholders such as humanitarian organizations and financial service providers collect, store, use, and share vast amounts of sensitive personal data on children and their families. Data and data analyses can help stakeholders better understand beneficiaries’ needs, enhance program efficiency, and evaluate success. However, the collection of large and sensitive datasets also poses important risks regarding the beneficiaries’ privacy and the potential misuse of data by third parties, which can be all the more sensitive in the context of minors. Irresponsible handling of data can not only erode the trust between program recipients and program leaders and jeopardize the program’s success--it can also threaten children’s safety, well-being, and development. These selected readings on Data Responsibility and Cash Transfers for Children comprise two main sections: 1) Data responsibility considerations and best practices in cash transfer programs for children, and 2) Leveraging data and data analyses to assess the impact of cash transfers for children. Annotated Selected Reading List Data responsibility considerations and best practices in cash transfer programs for children “Data responsibility in cash and voucher assistance”, Guidance Note Series, Data Responsibility in Humanitarian Action, United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, December 2020.  This report outlines the benefits and risks associated with the collection, storage and use of large volumes of data in the context of cash and voucher assistance (CVA) programs, and recommends best practices in data responsibility for humanitarian organizations, financial service providers, and other stakeholders  Data-related benefits in CVA include: (i) improved understanding of beneficiary priorities, needs and preferences; (ii) improved targeting of assistance, including deduplication of beneficiary lists; (iii) increased efficiency and effectiveness of different delivery mechanisms; and (iv) enhanced transparency and accountability. Data-related risks in CVA include: (i) exposure of sensitive data that could lead to various forms of harm for affected people and/or humanitarian staff; (ii) breaches in data protection, data privacy and data security; (iii) potential misuse of data for non-humanitarian purposes by third parties; and (iv) loss of trust between affected people and humanitarian organizations.  Some recommendations to improve data responsibility in CVA include: (i) mapping the CVA data ecosystem; (ii) establishing an information sharing protocol specific to CVA programmes; (iii) establishing data sharing agreements for the exchange of personal data; (iv) conducting data impact assessments for all CVA interventions; (v) introducing data incident management procedures; and (vi) tracking issues and progress on data responsibility in CVA through coordination structures. “Practical Guidance for Data Protection in Cash and Voucher Assistance. A supplement to the Cash in Emergencies Toolkit”, International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, January 2021.  This document translates general data protection principles into practical, actionable guidance, specific to decision making and implementation of cash and voucher assistance (CVA) programs.  The document offers key data protection considerations for five main processes where beneficiary personal data is collected and processed in CVA programs: Targeting, Beneficiary Registration, Use of Financial Service Providers, Data Sharing with Governments, other Humanitarian Organizations, and Donors, and Post-Distribution Monitoring.  “Protecting Beneficiary Privacy: Principles and operational standards for the secure use of personal data in cash and e-transfer programmes”, The Cash and Learning Partnership, 2013.  This document identifies eight principles for the secure use of personal data in cash transfer programs: 1) Respect, 2) Protect by Design, 3) Understand Data Flows and Risks, 4) Quality and Accuracy, 5) Obtain Consent or Inform Beneficiaries as to the Use of their Data (and adapt methodology appropriately when working with children), 6) Security, 7) Disposal, and 8) Accountability.  Each of these principles is presented alongside concrete operational standards for implementation  In 2016, and building upon the principles outlined in this document, the Electronic Cash Transfer Learning and Action Network (ELAN) launched a Data Starter Kit that provides concrete tips to help humanitarians assess data risks, minimize data collected, and protect and securely share data.  “Humanitarian Cash Transfers Monitoring and Evaluation Guidance”, and complementary “Programmatic Guidance”, UNICEF Office of Emergency Programmes and Programme Division, 2018.  These documents provide general guidance for the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of a Humanitarian Cash Transfer program during a humanitarian response. UNICEF’s policies are discussed to support quick and impactful child-sensitive operational decisions The Monitoring and Evaluation Guidance includes data collection recommendations for process, output, and outcome monitoring and assessment of cash transfers to ensure efficient implementation and avoiding bottlenecks and/or negative impacts along the way. Recommendations include collecting both quantitative and qualitative data, avoiding changes to indicators once collection has started for comparable analysis over time, and adhering to the ethical standards set by UNICEF for research, evaluation, and data collection, especially when using digital technology tools. This includes privacy protections for the beneficiaries’ personal data across the data lifecycle, from informed consent before data is collected, to limiting its access, using secure storage mechanisms, using anonymization techniques before sharing, and deleting the data securely once the program has been finalized. The Programmatic Guidance document includes practical recommendations for data protection in cash transfer programs, such as incorporating a beneficiary data protection clause in every partner agreement; setting up and using a Management Information System Guidance; and setting up training on data protection for staff who work with beneficiary data. Leveraging data and data analysis to assess the impact of cash transfers for children “Making cash transfers work for children and families”, UNICEF, November 2019.  Cash transfers are one of the most common social protection interventions supported by UNICEF, reaching over 70 countries in 2015. The report provides a brief background of UNICEF’s engagement with cash transfers globally, and associated opportunities and challenges.  Positive outcomes associated with cash transfers include: directly addressing monetary child poverty and vulnerability, serving as a safety net to protect families from shocks, addressing financial barriers to basic social services like education and health, addressing financial drivers of child protection outcomes such as reduction in early marriage, and addressing the intergenerational cycle of poverty and inequity through accumulation of human capital. However, the authors point out that evidence on the long-term impact of cash transfers is still emerging and the results are mixed. Further, they stress that cash alone is not a silver bullet and that a comprehensive policy approach –improving both the quality and provision of sectoral services and removing the barriers to access – is critical to achieve significant and sustainable results. The report also provides a list 19 activities under four categories (Analysis of the Status Quo, Examining Program Design Options, Policy Engagement and Advocacy, Implementation with Monitoring and Evaluation) that could contribute to the introduction, expansion and improvement of cash transfers undertaken by UNICEF country offices. Examples of activities include: econometric analysis to simulate a policy’s potential macro (economy as a whole) as well as micro impact (at household level); costing different design options; supporting horizontal exchange of knowledge and experience; and modelling implementation through a pilot project. For each activity, the document describes potential approaches and considerations, along with country examples and further resources that provide more detailed guidance and information about each aspect of the work. “The Role of Cash Transfer in Improving Child Health: A Review of the Evidence”, Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab South Asia, August 2018.  This report reviews the effects of cash transfers on child health in developing countries, as well as existing evaluations of cash transfer programs in India to understand how design and implementation features promote or hinder the success of cash transfer programs. The authors argue that “overall, the evidence suggests CTs can effectively improve a range of child health outcomes, including some, such as birth weight, height, and early cognitive development, which have been shown to have longer run implications for health and economic wellbeing.” They note that such effects are often larger among disadvantaged groups and younger children. Moreover, in reviewing cash transfer programs in India, the authors note several issues in their design and administration that affect implementation quality and overall effectiveness. These issues include inappropriate eligibility criteria leading to exclusion of deserving groups, delays or changes in the delivery of services promised to beneficiaries, lack of access to financial institutions needed to receive the benefits, burdensome bureaucracy, and insufficient grievance redress mechanisms. “Cash Transfers: A Lifeline for Children and Economies in Sub-Saharan Africa in 2021”, UNICEF Eastern and Southern Africa Regional Office Social Policy Working Paper, January 2021.  “This working paper makes the case for quickly expanding cash transfer programs across Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) to protect children and support economic recovery in 2021. It does so by: (i) describing the economic, poverty and child well-being situation across the region at the end of 2020; (ii) summarizing the evidence of the benefits of cash transfers; (iii) reviewing the state of cash-based programs in SSA before the pandemic and in the immediate response period; (iv) simulating the costs and economic returns of providing cash transfers to all households with children under  five; and (v) discussing domestic and external opportunities to fund the expansion. The  analyses and recommendations draw on more than 25 global databases, projection and monitoring exercises.” The pandemic caused exceptional challenges for the economies and children across SSA, leading to the biggest rise in extreme poverty ever recorded. The authors estimate that the portion of children living in monetary poor households increased by 10% on average, pushing the regional total to more than 280 million. The consequences on nutrition and schooling have also been abysmal. Cash transfers targeted to children might be a cost-effective palliative measure: In addition to boosting economic growth, cash transfers can prevent or minimize many risks to childrens’ well being, including malnutrition, unsafe living conditions, illness, lack of schooling, child labor and abuse, child pregnancy and marriage etc. While cash transfer programs have become more popular in the region in recent years, they have remained limited (reaching about 10% of population) due to funding constraints. To expand coverage strategically, the authors recommend governments to provide monthly cash transfers to all children under five for 6-12 months, which in their analyses would generate compelling investment returns. Such a policy would be feasible via a combination of domestic budget reprioritization and the harnessing of approved but not yet disbursed emergency funding from international financial  institutions. “Effects of unconditional cash transfers on the outcome of treatment for severe acute malnutrition (SAM): A cluster-randomised trial in the Democratic Republic of the Congo”, BMC Medicine, April 2017 This study used a randomized trial with Congolese children with SAM who received treatment with or without an unconditional cash supplement of US$40 monthly for six months. The likelihood to reach full recovery from SAM was substantially higher in the intervention group than in the control group. All the nutritional outcomes in the intervention group were significantly better than those in the control group. The researchers concluded that cash transfer programs can increase recovery from SAM and decrease relapse rates during and following treatment. They highlight household financial support as a critical piece to optimize malnourishment treatment efficiency. “Humanitarian Cash Transfers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo: Evidence from UNICEF’s ARCC II Programme”, American Institutes for Research: International Research & Evaluation, April 2017.  From 2013-2015, UNICEF and partners conducted the Alternative Responses for Communities in Crisis (ARCC), a large-scale unconditional cash transfer programme for humanitarian response that reached over 20,000 conflict-affected families in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The researchers find evidence that families used the cash to access basic goods, services, and livelihood opportunities. The programme improved children’s access to health care by 21%, and increased primary school enrollment by 13% for boys; there was no difference in school enrollment for girls between control and treatment groups. Qualitative analysis also found that beneficiaries frequently spent part of the transfers on health and education costs for children. The authors conclude that their cash transfer program ultimately enhances beneficiaries’ well-being and resilience. “Conditional cash transfers and poverty eradication in Latin America”,  Instituto Interdisciplinario de Economía Política and CONICET, Argentina, 2016.  This paper discusses advances and shortcomings in conditional cash transfers programs to households with children in Latin America. The author points to evidence that cash transfers to households with children have positive impacts in combating extreme poverty, providing income stability, smoothing consumption over macroeconomic fluctuations, favoring trade and development given the increase in liquidity, and lowering barriers to enter into certain productive activities. With respect to children, these programs have been associated with increases in primary school enrollment rates and a reduction in malnutrition, although effects on secondary school attendance seem less significant.  However, the author also notes that whether these programs discourage or reinforce the labour behaviour of adult household members might depend on a number of factors, from the magnitude of the cash transfer to the characteristics of the occupation (job conditions, commuting distance or number of hours worked), the demands of care and household chores, behavior of other household members. Hence, a second channel may be introduced through which transfers might lead to changes in the labour supply behaviour of adults, and the cash transfer program’s stipulated conditionalities (e.g. mandatory school attendance potentially reducing time spent on childcare and freeing up more time for work).  “A review of evidence of humanitarian cash transfer programming in urban areas”, International Institute for Environment and Development, December 2015 Humanitarian organizations are increasingly deploying cash transfer programs (CTP) in urban areas, using a range of cash modalities and delivery mechanisms in diverse emergency contexts. CTPs can help mitigate some urban protection concerns (for children and other vulnerable populations), and play a role in first phase urban humanitarian response objectives, potentially contributing to longer term development goals. Urban areas pose unique protection concerns for vulnerable populations, including children. For example, there is a higher proportion of children out of school and working on the streets than in rural areas, given barriers to school access (fees and transport) and greater opportunities to engage in paid work. Although the review found mixed results for the impact of CTP on child protection risks, the authors found evidence that they can reduce the likelihood of recourse to negative coping mechanisms such as dropping out of school and child labour Urban areas offer potential for innovative CTP mechanisms, e.g., streamlined single transfers to meet multi sectoral needs (via multipurpose grants); linking cash to existing services and training to support livelihoods recovery; and targeting higher-wealth categories with livelihoods support to re-establish credit lines and support wider economic recovery The authors highlight the need for humanitarian organizations to coordinate broadly with government and private-sector actors and any other stakeholders involved in CTP implementation, as this can enhance legitimacy and enable greater synergy around national development programs “Cash and Voucher Assistance for Education in Emergencies: Synthesis Report and Guidelines”,The Cash and Learning Partnership, 2019 Cash and voucher assistance (CVA) for education in emergencies (EiE) removes economic barriers preventing crisis affected children from accessing education, thereby leading to prevention of drop-outs, increased enrolment and attendance.  CVA for EiE should be delivered in coordination with interventions addressing protection, cultural and education service-related barriers.  The authors highlight a series of recommendations for improvement, including:  More robust needs assessment tools to inform integrated programming, as well as better response options analysis, both at the strategic and operational levels More sophisticated beneficiary targeting criteria, e.g., via in-depth analysis of the social roots of education deprivation (although this is less feasible in acute emergency situations) Paying greater attention to contextual factors (e.g. fluidity of the situation, absorptive capacity of school system) when deciding whether to use conditional or unconditional CVA Aligning the timing of the EiE-specific CVA to moments when education-related expenses are incurred  Linking humanitarian CVA with government social safety nets for increased outcome sustainability 

  What is RD4C? The Responsible Data for Children (RD4C) initiative is a project seeking to build awareness for how data affects and is affected by children in an age of increasingly ubiquitous technology and data (re)use. Through case studies, reports, and tools, it seeks to provide a way for those who work with data about and for children to put the best interests of children at the center of their data use and reuse activities. Why create RD4C?  Humanitarian and development actors working with children rely increasingly on a wide range of technologies. These tools—which include biometrics, digital identity systems, remote-sensing technologies, mobile and social media messaging apps, and administrative data systems—and the data they create can provide opportunities to better serve children in certain contexts. However, they also generate risks. Data can be mishandled. It can be used in a way that ignores the needs and desires of their communities. It can lead to policies that exacerbate existing inequities and vulnerabilities. We created this initiative to encourage responsible approaches to data management and spark a larger conversation about appropriate data use and reuse.  The work is intended to address practical considerations across the data lifecycle, including routine data collection and one-off data collections; and compliments work on related topics being addressed by the development community such as guidance on specific data systems and technologies, technical standardization, and digital engagement strategies. What does RD4C provide? RD4C highlights and supports best practices by producing a variety of deliverables and products meant for both professionals in the field and senior decision-makers. These documents include: Principles: a set of actionable concepts, derived from desk and field research, that we recommend rights-based organizations working with children’s data adopt; Tools: a light and user-friendly way for organizations and practitioners to operationalize the RD4C Principles in the spaces they work; Blogs: short pieces from the RD4C team and practitioners in the field explaining some issue or project Case Studies: short analysis of real-world projects that provide some insight into the opportunities and challenges in realizing responsible data for children. These case studies analyze data streams deployed in countries around the world; Reports: long-form analyses that synthesize key findings and recommendations from desk and field research. These documents aim to provide actionable insights from research conducted to support UNICEF and all rights-based organizations working with children’s data; Selected Readings: collections of relevant publications and peer-reviewed research that describe how organizations can realize data’s potential to innovate and improve service delivery for children without compromising their needs or trust. How does RD4C work? RD4C seeks to engage with actors in the field as well as those that have experience and expertise in data governance to capture and provide lessons learned on how data about and for children can be leveraged responsibly. What is the geographic focus? RD4C has a global focus and can be used anywhere where an organization is using data about and for children. Case studies and other products focus heavily on those areas where UNICEF and its direct counterparts work. Who can benefit from this work? While the research that it summarizes focused heavily on UNICEF and its direct counterparts, all RD4C products are shared widely to support all those seeking to promote responsible data practices for and about children and initiate a broader conversation around these issues. Our deliverables can be used by governments, communities,  academics, and development practitioners. They contain insights useful both to senior decision-makers and professionals in the field. Who is involved? RD4C is a joint endeavor between UNICEF and The GovLab at New York University. UNICEF is a UN agency that works in the world’s toughest places to reach the most disadvantaged children and adolescents – and to protect the rights of every child, everywhere. Across more than 190 countries and territories, we do whatever it takes to help children survive, thrive and fulfill their potential, from early childhood through adolescence.  The Governance Lab (The GovLab) is an action research center at New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering. Our goal is to strengthen the ability of institutions — including but not limited to governments — and people to work more openly, collaboratively, effectively, and legitimately to make better decisions and solve public problems. We believe that increased availability and use of data, new ways to leverage the capacity, intelligence, and expertise of people in the problem-solving process, combined with new advances in technology and science, can transform governance. We approach each challenge and opportunity in an interdisciplinary, collaborative way, irrespective of the problem, sector, geography, and level of government.  How do I stay up-to-date on the RD4C initiative? We will share a variety of new resources related to this project throughout the year. You can receive regular updates on our work by signing up for our mailing list here.   Photo by Yusril Permana ali on Unsplash

Announcement

Data has the potential to support service delivery that can improve the lives of children. Misuse of data — as well as missed use of potentially valuable information — can also pose serious threats to children’s safety, well-being, and development. Actors working to advance children’s rights around the world need guidance, tools, and support to navigate the constantly evolving data ecosystem, capitalize on opportunities to use data responsibly to benefit children, and avoid harms resulting from irresponsible or ineffective data handling.  The GovLab and UNICEF have sought to support organizations dealing with these issues through its Responsible Data for Children Initiative (RD4C). RD4C supports best practice in data responsibility; identifies challenges and develops practical tools to assist practitioners in evaluating and addressing them; and encourages a broader discussion on actionable principles, insights, and approaches for responsible data management.  Today, we are delighted to announce the launch of the second phase of this project.  The new effort builds on a first phase of work in which The GovLab conducted three intensive field observations with UNICEF country offices in diverse environments and created an in-depth report on the current state of responsible handling of data for and about children. Products from this phase also suggested specific pathways for improving data practices; offered customized recommendations for UNICEF country offices and implementing partners; provided case studies on notable data systems; and included lightweight tools that could be used across the children’s data ecosystem.  This work further informed the development of a set of principles that are now helping to guide responsible data handling at UNICEF and beyond. These RD4C Principles are:  Participatory: Engaging and informing individuals and groups affected by the use of data for and about children; Professionally Accountable: Operationalizing responsible data practices and principles by establishing institutional processes, roles, and responsibilities; People-Centric: Ensuring the needs and expectations of children, their caregivers, and their communities are prioritized by actors handling data for and about them; Prevention of Harms Across the Data Lifecycle: Establishing end-to-end data responsibility by assessing risks during the collecting, storing, preparing, sharing, analyzing, and using stages of the data life cycle; Proportional: Aligning the breadth of data collection and duration of data retention with the intended purpose; Protective of Children’s Rights: Recognizing the distinct rights and requirements for helping children develop to their full potential; and Purpose-Driven: Identifying and specifying why the data is needed and how the intended or potential benefits relate to improving children’s lives. The second phase of RD4C will expand on these initial outputs. Some of the work that The GovLab and UNICEF are undertaking over the next year includes: Continuing to promote and enable the use of the RD4C Principles, especially in development and humanitarian contexts, in harmony with other important guidelines and best practices, such as the IASC Operational Guidance on Data Responsibility in Humanitarian Action and UNICEF’s Children’s Data Governance Manifesto; Developing and testing a new methodology and platform for auditing data systems to better understand their alignment with the RD4C Principles and identify areas for improvement; Developing detailed case studies on diverse, instructive uses of data from across the UNICEF ecosystem to identify key lessons and provide the field with good practices that can be replicated in other contexts; Creating new training programs and curricula in responsible data handling to support UNICEF field staff and other actors working to advance children’s rights; and  Producing and disseminating regular insights, updates, news, and developments on responsible data to advance children’s rights. The new RD4C.org website will act as the hub for all of this work. Please check back regularly to stay up-to-speed on new happenings from the initiative, and sign up here to join the RD4C community to be alerted to new developments and opportunities for collaboration. 

Reposted from Ethical Research Involving Children In this series of Q&A, we speak with Stefaan G. Verhulst and Andrew Young from GovLab, (an action-oriented do-tank located at NYU) who are working in collaboration with UNICEF on an initiative called Responsible Data for Children initiative (RD4C) . Its focus is on data – the risks it poses to children, as well as the opportunities it offers. You have been working with UNICEF on the Responsible Data for Children initiative (RD4C). What is this and why do we need to be talking more about ‘responsible data’? To date, the relationship between the datafication of everyday life and child welfare has 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. 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 organizations working with children are themselves among the key actors contributing to the increased collection of data. These organizations 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 begs much closer scrutiny, and a more systematic framework to guide how child-related data is collected, stored, and used. Towards this aim, we have also been working with the Data for Children Collaborative, based in Edinburgh in establishing innovative and ethicalpractices around the use of data to improve the lives of children worldwide. What are the ethical considerations around the collection of children’s data? Do children have any say at all in this ‘datafication’ of their lives? Among the key ethical issues concern consent, agency and privacy. Even adults face challenges in exerting individual or collective agency in some areas of the data ecosystem, especially the use of datastreams drawn from many people to create profiles or marketing segments, for example. As Martin Tisné puts it, “we are prisoners of other people’s consent.” This is even more so for children, who are often subject to other people’s consent and decision-making. For example, unlike adults, children often do not have full agency to make decisions about their participation in programs or services that may generate and record personal data. Even when children are offered a choice to opt-in or out of a service, they may not be provided with adequate support 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 in relation to children. Does anonymous data address some of these issues? Aggregated, anonymized data is often held up as a solution to potential privacy violations and a way to balance the possibilities and risks offered by data. However, a variety of studies have shown that anonymized 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 anonymized information for all children below a certain age) offers unique challenges. This is because children as a group are often uniquely vulnerable (and visible) due in part to the lack of attention to their rights to privacy and freedom of expression. Services or products targeted specifically at children (e.g., those based in a certain location or receiving services for a particular issue) can pose disproportionate risks to the entire targeted population. Aggregated “group data” about children warrants additional ethical consideration. As it stands, current data protection policies and guidance are primarily geared toward individual-level privacy risks, and often fail to address considerations related to group data — particularly group data about children. We are seeing more and more examples of misuse of data for political and other purposes? What are some of the implications of this, especially for children’s lives? First and foremost, privacy and data responsibility are essential to children’s psychosocial growth. Having the freedom and autonomy to experiment with different identities, without prying eyes or chilling dataveillance, is important for children’s identity formation. Children’s capacities are evolving and lack of protection from persistent, invasive data generation and use could impact the way they see themselves and their futures. A sense of privacy can empower children, especially older children, to engage and build relationships with their peers more comfortably and confidently by giving them the option to decide which personal details to disclose and under what conditions. The misuse of data may thus also impact civic and political engagement among young people. Further, when data is mishandled or when data violations occur, people typically lose trust in organizations or institutions (or in the broader information ecology). This, in turn, can lead to “privacy protective behavior” where individuals are not seeking essential services out of fear of unauthorized data uses, and generally limit the potential benefits of technology. For children, as for many adults, loss of trust may be a formative experience and can have considerable impact. Distrust and privacy protective behaviors related to data misuse can have far-reaching consequences, such as refusal of health care, education, child protection and other public services. As new technologies are implemented and the volumes of data increase exponentially, there is a very real risk that the rights of children, and associated adult obligations in respect to these, may be overlooked. Sometimes, this can happen because requirements in place to protect them are difficult to monitor and maintain in a new technology ecology (though of course, this is no justification). Often, too, it is simply because the rights and interests of children are not prioritized or adequately considered when organizations implement data processes or systems. For example, data analysis may be undertaken by people who do not have expertise in research involving children. Similarly, service providers collecting children’s data are not always trained in how to ethically approach and manage this work. How are algorithmic decision-making efforts and the rise of AI processes like machine learning impacting the children’s data responsibility space? And potential issues continue when we look at the impact of AI and Algorithmic bias that hasn’t been developed specifically with children in mind. Much attention has been drawn in recent years to the promise and pitfalls of algorithmic decision-making. While the use of AI in decisions can in some cases expedite processes, it can also contain hard-to-detect but nonetheless tangible biases that result in real adverse effects (e.g. on those seeking medical care, business loans, parole, or jobs). These risks are only heightened when it comes to children. Once again, children may have less agency or understanding when it comes to how AI and algorithms work; they may not even know that certain processes are the result of algorithmic assessment, modelling, or prediction. As described in UNICEF’s draft Policy Guidance on AI for Children, decision-making in international development, social service provision, and education systems are especially likely to be impacted by AI-driven mediation and filtering, often without the direct engagement or knowledge of children or their caregivers. In addition, if children are impacted by algorithmic bias, they may lack the resources or knowledge to respond or seek recourse. Finally, any decision making that targets children and is based on AI that leverages population training data, may fail to take into account children’s physiological and psychological differences (from adults) resulting in potential negative implications for their physical and mental health outcomes. It is therefore imperative that any Responsible Data Use for Children framework include a component dedicated to the role of AI and algorithms. So, how do we each play a part in ensuring responsible and ethical collection and use of data in this era of escalating datafication? More critical engagement around the lifecycle of child-related data is of paramount importance. Attention needs to be given to the collection, preparation, analysis, usage, sharing and storing of children’s data. To begin with, the public sector, businesses, and civil society organizations delivering data-related services for children need to better understand the associated risks–as well as opportunities–in an environment characterized by growing quantification and datafication. We should also be asking ourselves whether and how children and young people themselves – the sometimes so-called ‘digital natives’ – are being involved in helping to address these issues. The ethical challenges surrounding the datafication of children’s lives are ongoing and continually evolving. We welcome you to join a discussion about Responsible Data for Children by visiting RD4C.org.

The GovLab and UNICEF, as part of the Responsible Data for Children initiative (RD4C), are pleased to share a set of lightweight and user-friendly tools to support organizations and practitioners seeking to operationalize the RD4C Principles. These principles — Purpose-Driven, People-Centric, Participatory, Protective of Children’s Rights, Proportional, Professionally Accountable, and Prevention of Harms Across the Data Lifecycle — are especially important in the current moment, as actors around the world are taking a data-driven approach to the fight against COVID-19. The initial components of the RD4C Toolkit are: The RD4C Data Ecosystem Mapping Tool intends to help users to identify the systems generating data about children and the key components of those systems. After using this tool, users will be positioned to understand the breadth of data they generate and hold about children; assess data systems’ redundancies or gaps; identify opportunities for responsible data use; and achieve other insights. The RD4C Decision Provenance Mapping methodology provides a way for actors designing or assessing data investments for children to identify key decision points and determine which internal and external parties influence those decision points. This distillation can help users to pinpoint any gaps and develop strategies for improving decision-making processes and advancing more professionally accountable data practices. The RD4C Opportunity and Risk Diagnostic provides organizations with a way to take stock of the RD4C principles and how they might be realized as an organization reviews a data project or system. The high-level questions and prompts below are intended to help users identify areas in need of attention and to strategize next steps for ensuring more responsible handling of data for and about children across their organization. Finally, the Data for Children Collaborative with UNICEF developed an Ethical Assessment that “forms part of [their] safe data ecosystem, alongside data management and data protection policies and practices.” The tool reflects the RD4C Principles and aims to “provide an opportunity for project teams to reflect on the material consequences of their actions, and how their work will have real impacts on children’s lives. RD4C launched in October 2019 with the release of the RD4C Synthesis Report, Selected Readings, and the RD4C Principles. Last month we published the The RD4C Case Studies, which analyze data systems deployed in diverse country environments, with a focus on their alignment with the RD4C Principles. The case studies are: Romania’s The Aurora Project, Childline Kenya, and Afghanistan’s Nutrition Online Database. To learn more about Responsible Data for Children, visit rd4c.org or contact rd4c [at] thegovlab.org. To join the RD4C conversation and be alerted to future releases, subscribe at this link.

This week, as part of the Responsible Data for Children initiative (RD4C), the GovLab and UNICEF launched a new case study series to provide insights on promising practice as well as barriers to realizing responsible data for children. Drawing upon field-based research and established good practice, RD4C aims to highlight and support responsible handling of data for and about children; identify challenges and develop practical tools to assist practitioners in evaluating and addressing them; and encourage a broader discussion on actionable principles, insights, and approaches for responsible data management. RD4C launched in October 2019 with the release of the RD4C Synthesis Report, Selected Readings, and the RD4C Principles: Purpose-Driven, People-Centric, Participatory, Protective of Children’s Rights, Proportional, Professionally Accountable, and Prevention of Harms Across the Data Lifecycle. The RD4C Case Studies analyze data systems deployed in diverse country environments, with a focus on their alignment with the RD4C Principles. This week’s release includes case studies arising from field missions to Romania, Kenya, and Afghanistan in 2019. The data systems examined are: Romania’s The Aurora Project The Aurora Project is a child protection platform developed by UNICEF Romania in collaboration with NGO and government partners. The system enables social workers and community health care providers to diagnose and monitor vulnerabilities experienced by children and their families. Through the administration of a child protection questionnaire, the system supports the determination of a minimum package of services needed by children and their families. It also enables child protection evaluation and planning work at the national level. The Aurora Project reflects many of the RD4C Principles through its collection of data for clear and well- defined purposes and the various training and guidance materials provided to users. UNICEF Romania and counterparts in the Romanian Government are still working to address challenges related to sensitive group data and the potential for disproportionate data collection and retention. Childline Kenya Childline Kenya is a helpline offering services for children subjected to violence or neglect. Since it began operations in 2006, trained counselors have responded to calls, logged major components for reporting purposes, and redirected callers to relevant services. The organization emphasizes training and the rights of children while ensuring its data collection is proportional and purpose-driven. Given the sensitivity of its work, it faces some difficulties with duplicative and complex data. Afghanistan’s Nutrition Online Database Afghanistan’s Nutrition Online Database is a web-based information system providing access to aggregated nutrition data to inform planning and service delivery at the national, provincial, and zonal level. The Public Nutrition Department (PND) within the Afghanistan Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) leads database management, with UNICEF Afghanistan acting as the lead technical developer and providing ongoing technical support. The system exists because missed use of potentially valuable data is a common challenge across the children’s data ecosystem Afghanistan. The Nutrition Online Database tries to spur the use of existing and newly developed nutrition data streams that otherwise might not inform potentially life saving nutrition planning and service delivery. It is the product of a participatory development process with key stakeholders across sectors and actors within beneficiary communities. PND, UNICEF Afghanistan, and other stakeholders support professionally accountable data use through training efforts and working groups but remain challenged by the fragmentation of nutrition systems, mandates, formats, and indicators. These factors could contribute to challenges in tracking decision-making processes affecting data responsibility across the nutrition data ecosystem. To learn more about Responsible Data for Children, visit rd4c.org or contact rd4c [at] thegovlab.org. To join the RD4C conversation and be alerted to future releases, subscribe at this link.

Reposted from The Conversation Around the world, humanitarian and development organizations working with children are increasingly reliant on a wide range of technologies used to improve the efficacy of service delivery and how to respond to, for instance, pandemics and other dynamic threats. Child rights organizations are using or exploring the use of a variety of data-driven technologies to bolster services provided to children, 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 systems includes potentially sensitive data, such as personally identifiable information (PII) and demographically identifiable information (DII) – data points that enable the identification, classification, and tracking of individuals, groups, or multiple groups of individuals by demographically defining factors. Given this increasingly datafied environment, and the emerging challenges involved in upholding the Convention on the Rights of the Child in our data age, there is a clear need to develop and disseminate responsible approaches for handling data for and about children. Last year, The GovLab and UNICEF initiated the Responsible Data for Children initiative (RD4C) to support actors around the world in avoiding unintended negative consequences on data subjects and beneficiaries and, in turn, ensuring the effective use and positive impact of data. Growing opportunities, and risks Collecting, storing, preparing, sharing, analyzing, and using data about children create unique opportunities and risks. These opportunities and risks are distinct from those involved in the datafication of the general public or other vulnerable groups. To achieve responsible data for children, the public sector, data-holding businesses, and civil society organizations delivering services for children need to better understand the distinct risks and opportunities of an increasingly connected and quantified environment for children. Without question, the increased use of data poses unique risks for and responsibilities to children. While practitioners may have well-intended purposes to leverage data for and about children, the data systems used are often designed with (consenting) adults in mind without a focus on the unique needs and vulnerabilities of children. This can lead to the collection of inaccurate and unreliable data as well as the inappropriate and potentially harmful use of data for and about children. Trends and realities Research undertaken in the context of the RD4C initiative uncovered the following trends and realities. These issues make clear why we need a dedicated data responsibility approach for children. Today’s children are the first generation growing up at a time of rapid datafication where almost all aspects of their lives, both on and off-line, are turned into data points. An entire generation of young people is being datafied – often starting even 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. The potential uses of such large volumes of data and the impact on children’s lives are unpredictable, and could potentially be used against them. Children typically do not have full agency to make decisions about their participation in programs or services which may generate and record personal data. Children may also lack the understanding to assess a decision’s purported risks and benefits. Privacy terms and conditions are often barely understood by educated adults, let alone children. As a result, there is a higher duty of care for children’s data. Disaggregating data according to socio-demographic characteristics can improve service delivery and assist with policy development. However, it also creates risks for group privacy. Children can be identified, exposing them to possible harms. Disaggregated data for groups such as child-headed households and children experiencing gender-based violence can put vulnerable communities and children at risk. Data about children’s location itself can be risky, especially if they have some additional vulnerability that could expose them to harm. Mishandling data can cause children to lose trust in institutions that deliver essential services including vaccines, medicine, and nutrition supplies. For organizations dealing with child well-being, these retreats can have severe consequences. Distrust can cause families and children to refuse health, education, child protection and other public services. Such privacy protective behavior can impact children throughout the course of their lifetime, and potentially exacerbate existing inequities and vulnerabilities. As volumes of collected and stored data increase, obligations and protections traditionally put in place for children may be difficult or impossible to uphold. The interests of children are not always prioritized when organizations define their legitimate interest to access or share personal information of children. The immediate benefit of a service provided does not always justify the risk or harm that might be caused by it in the future. Data analysis may be undertaken by people who do not have expertise in the area of child rights, as opposed to traditional research where practitioners are specifically educated in child subject research. Similarly, service providers collecting children’s data are not always specially trained to handle it, as international standards recommend. Recent events around the world reveal the promise and pitfalls of algorithmic decision-making. While it can expedite certain processes, algorithms and their inferences can possess biases that can have adverse effects on people, for example those seeking medical care and attempting to secure jobs. The danger posed by algorithmic bias is especially pronounced for children and other vulnerable populations. These groups often lack the awareness or resources necessary to respond to instances of bias or to rectify any misconceptions or inaccuracies in their data. Many of the children served by child welfare organizations have suffered trauma. Whether physical, social, emotional in nature, repeatedly making children register for services or provide confidential personal information can amount to revictimization – re-exposing them to traumas or instigating unwarranted feelings of shame and guilt. These trends and realities make clear the need for new approaches for maximizing the value of data to improve children’s lives, while mitigating the risks posed by our increasingly datafied society. The full-length Responsible Data for Children Synthesis Report and other resources are available on Responsible Data for Children website, RD4C.org. The authors would like to thank Stuart Campo, Senior Fellow at The GovLab, for his important contributions to the RD4C initiative.

In late 2019, The GovLab and UNICEF launched Responsible Data for Children (RD4C), an initiative providing guidance, tools, and leadership to support the responsible handling of data for and about children. We shared the first outputs from the initiative in November, including an annotated collection of Selected Readings on RD4C, a report synthesizing lessons learned from field-based research and our review of the literature, and the RD4C Principles. Across the RD4C initiative, we seek to enable governments, communities, development actors, and others to put the best interests of children and a child rights approach at the center of their data activities. In this piece, we highlight 10 key takeaways from the Selected Readings on RD4C. Our review of the literature focused on policies, technical guidance, and other relevant documentation driving activity in the space. The review was ecosystem-wide, considering not only global policies uniquely focused on children’s data, but also documentation with any relevant guidance or lessons learned. For example, the review looked at documentation on a specific topical domain (e.g. guidance on handling data about refugee children) or policies guiding more general development or humanitarian action that featured some reflection on data handling. The ten takeaways included below reflect the key areas of focus as well as the emerging narratives that are present in today’s writings on the subject. This overview and summary is neither fully comprehensive of the many topics associated with children and data, nor should it be read as an endorsement of all the arguments and recommendations posed in the literature. For each takeaway, we link to and summarize how relevant works discuss the issue. Takeaways from the Literature on RD4C 1. Data can be a powerful resource to protect and improve children’s lives. UNICEF’s Data for Children Strategic Framework begins by arguing “smart demand, supply, and use of data drives better results for children.” UNICEF’s Ethical Considerations When Using Social Media for Evidence Generation makes a similar point. It finds value in social media data for amplifying humanitarian organizations’ ability to increase their situational awareness, bolster real-time monitoring capacities, and crowdsource relevant insights. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) Data Responsibility Guidelines state data is a critical component of humanitarian response and suggests the management of digital data relating to crisis contexts, affected people, and humanitarian response operations allows the humanitarian community to respond in a more effective and efficient manner. Other potential benefits of data for children represented in the literature include mitigating risks of children dropping out of school and enabling family reunification, among other topics. Additionally, Global Kids Online, an international research project funded by UNICEF and WePROTECT Global Alliance, created a series of method guidesaddressing the fact that digital media environments increasingly mediate a host of activities and experiences important to children’s cognitive, emotional, and social well-being. 2. Data about children requires an additional duty of care in comparison to data about adults, and responsible data approaches must accordingly adhere to higher standards and security measures — in part because of potential long-term and unknown consequences of data’s use. The Technical Working Group on Data Collection on Violence Against Childrenstudied over 80 documents on ethical issues around data and children and found that Privacy and Confidentiality represented a top concern across a variety of framework and guideline types. A similar point is repeated in UNICEF’s Ethical Research Involving Children in Humanitarian Settings documentation. In this piece, UNICEF’s writers argue the collection and use of children’s data occurs in contexts with complex and inequitable power relations. These power asymmetries should be considered when pursuing the beneficial use of children’s data. In the same piece, the authors note children in humanitarian settings are subject to additional vulnerabilities beyond those that are ordinally occurring for children. Namely, challenges arising from structures for children’s support and development breaking down in such settings. World Vision International’s Data Protection, Privacy, and Security for Humanitarian & Development Programs acknowledges the complexities of data protection in humanitarian contexts, but also argues it is “incumbent on this sector to strive toward the highest level of integrity, ethics, and technical ability” to ensure the responsible handling of data on children given their higher degree of vulnerability. UNICEF’s Children and the Data Cycle: Rights and Ethics in a Big Data Worldposits the voices of the world’s children and those who advocate on their behalf are absent in an era of increasing dependence on data science and big data. Due to the potential for severe, long-lasting and differential impacts on children, the document argues child rights need to be integrated into the agenda on ethics and data science. Furthermore, as described in Child Privacy in the Age of Web 2.0 and 3.0, questions and challenges still remain regarding the applicability of concepts and provisions, like GDPR’s “right to be forgotten,” to children and their data, adding additional complexity. More than just a concern for digital activities, the ongoing accumulation of data about children throughout their lifetime can create a variety of unforeseen risks and challenges. 3. Responsible data approaches for children should encompass 1) measures to determine and communicate the potential value of data for those beneficiaries; 2) actions to ensure data protection and a legal basis for data activities; and 3) efforts to ensure that the potential value outweighs identified risks. In UNOCHA’s Building Data Responsibility into Humanitarian Action, data responsibility goes beyond the aims of data protection and privacy. It encompasses principles, policies, and tools aimed at unlocking the value of data in humanitarian contexts while mitigating risks and avoiding harms. The UN Global Pulse’s Privacy and Data Protection Principles embraces similar ideas, such as a) Purpose Compatibility and Risk and Harm Assessment; and b) Risk Mitigation, as central concerns for its responsible use of data. These principles underline the importance of understanding value as well as risks of data for humanitarian and development work. UNICEF’s Children and the Data Cycle: Rights and Ethics in a Big Data Worldraises concerns on privacy and loss of control of personal data over data’s lifespan. It also highlights the problem of direct or inadvertent discrimination and profiling, scope creep, and technological dependency, and provides approaches to address ethical issues in the child data cycle. Regarding metadata, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and Privacy’s International’s “Doing No Harm” in the Digital Era identifies robust risk assessment and mitigation strategies that humanitarian organizations must develop to ensure that their use of new technologies does not result in any harm. The Framework for Data Sharing in Practice, from UNOCHA and Protection Information Management (PIM), highlights a Joint Benefit and Risk Assessment to systematically and collaboratively assess data sharing’s value and risks and modify actions accordingly. 4. Digital and connected identifiers can be useful for providing personalized services, but can also create additional, significant risks to children and their families. Data-driven digital identities are seen as game-changers across contexts but especially for children and other vulnerable groups. As described in UNICEF’s State of the World’s Children 2017 report, “as more and more children go online around the world, [digital technology] is increasingly changing childhood.” These sentiments are repeated in other documents. In its Privacy Impact Assessment of Cash Based Interventions, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) highlights the issues of profiling and social sorting as risks in the increased generation, sharing, and use of beneficiaries’ identity information. Responsible Data’s Development Book echoes these concerns, explaining that while data in the wrong hands can put individuals at risk, even data in the “right” hands can lead to discrimination or exclusion. Categorization or documentation of individuals can have unintended consequences even when actors are not acting maliciously. For adults, biometric identifiers are driving increasing parts of the responsible data literature. A working paperfrom the International Labour Office guides social protection practitioners seeking to create efficiency benefits from highly sensitive biometric identifiers while mitigating risks. The Center for Global Development, meanwhile, produced guiding documents on biometric identity information collection. These materialsadvocate for upfront privacy impact assessments to identify potential sensitivities related to data use. These researchers also outlined principles on inclusion, robust and responsive design, and accountable governance of identifiers and provide good-practice examples from countries at the forefront of ID management. Even in 2010, the Columbia Human Rights Law Review published a note highlighting the risks of collecting biometric data from refugees. More recently, ICRC noted that when biometric data collection is linked to services, such as those provided to refugees, consent cannot be viewed as free and fair. UNICEF is taking a considered approach to the use of biometrics. Its report, “Faces, Fingerprints and Feet: Guidance on assessing the value of including biometric technologies in UNICEF-supported programmes,” provides decision-makers with key questions and criteria to ensure critical assessment and due diligence on benefits and risks of investments in biometrics. 5. Children and their needs and interests should be at the center of any data collection intervention. Human-centered design is a common element of many responsible data strategies. The Engine Room, a research center, published the Handbook of the Modern Development Specialist, which focuses especially on the issue of human-centric data practices as key to responsible data use in development. With relevance for famine relief in general, not just relating to children, Oxfam’s Responsible Program Data Policy premises itself on the idea that responsible data practices at their core must safeguard people’s rights and ensure dignity throughout the data collection and use process. The Interagency Guidelines for Case Management & Child Protection recommend users prioritize the best interests of the child. In reference to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, it makes clear that the best interests of the child should be “the basis of all decisions and actions taken.” Responsible Data’s Development Book notes the increasing reliance on quantification in development work may be motivated by funders, governments, financial incentives, or research goals. However, it argues a critical approach to avoid the use of “data for data’s sake.” Regarding social media, just one small part of the data ecosystem, UNICEF’s Ethical Considerations When Using Social Media for Evidence Generation states it is no longer sufficient for users of data and technologies to leave ethical reflection to subject-matter experts. Rather, child advocates who use social media data need to be brought into the conversation and to understand and reflect on the ethical implications of the use and potential outcomes of adopting these technologies and the data they generate. 6. Broadly applicable frameworks and guidelines can help to establish good practices, but recognition of regional context and norms are often key when seeking to ensure the responsibility of data approaches involving children. UNICEF’s Data for Children Strategic Framework’s five principles include “different data are appropriate for different uses and contexts.” Similarly, a resolution on Privacy and International Humanitarian Action agreed at an international conference of data protection and privacy commissioners committed members to consider the specific needs of international humanitarian actors operating in different contexts and with different externalities at play. In other words, a one-size-fits-all approach is not realistic. Responsible Data’s Development Book suggests a number of questions and issues to consider, but notes a project’s context determines the challenges its sponsors will face. While defining “sensitive personal data,” Privacy International’s Guide for Policy Engagement on Data Protection states there is no exhaustive list of what constitutes sensitive personal data and recommends special consideration for categories such as financial data, society security, and data relating to children. Privacy International also argues that national and local contexts should also be considered; for example, caste information is treated as highly sensitive personal data in India. Global Kids Online’s report Addressing Diversities and Inequalities calls attention to how the conceptualizations of social actors and their locations may be rich in international contexts where there has been prior research on a variety of aspects. However, these conceptualizations, when applied in other contexts, can lead to overly broad characterizations and even stereotyping. It can imply, for instance, there is an “average 12-year-old.” Still, it is also clear certain responsible data standards and principles are non-negotiable even if certain good practices depend on the context. 7. The participation of and consultation with children and their caregivers around the collection and use of children’s data is an important component of data responsibility. A paper in Conflict and Health, for example, highlights the need to consult with beneficiaries and data subjects. The authors make clear this engagement can be a complex undertaking that is highly dependent on context, especially in humanitarian settings. Additionally, The Signal Code from the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative echoes this argument, including “the right to data agency” as one of its five human rights associated with humanitarian information activities. Similar views are found in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) Privacy Guidelines, which includes individual participation in its eight Basic Principles of National Application. Global Kids Online’s method guide suggests children should be actively involved in the research process when research pertains to children’s opportunities. It also argues for deploying participatory and child-centered approaches to enable policy-makers and practitioners to design initiatives that respond to children’s needs. Finally, USAID’s Considerations for Using Data Responsibly at USAID states its team must respect the agency of its data subjects in all humanitarian efforts. Ensuring children and their caregivers can exert meaningful agency over children’s data is, however, a significant challenge, as unforeseen data linkages and re-uses can emerge over time. 8. The consent of data subjects and their caregivers is important, but obtaining meaningful consent is a complex and, at times, impossible undertaking when dealing with children, especially in fragile humanitarian settings. The Global Protection Cluster, European Commission, and USAID Interagency Guidelines for Case Management & Child Protection encourages actors to seek informed consent and/or informed assent, demonstrating both the importance of consent and the challenge of obtaining it in certain situations. The ICRC Handbook on Data Protection in Humanitarian Action also highlights the importance of consulting children in decisions that affect them but notes humanitarian actors must take “particular care” to ensure children understand the risks and purported benefits of the collection and use of their data, otherwise the consent they provide will not be meaningful. Indeed, a subsequent article in Humanitarian Law & Policy describes how ICRC does not operate under the belief “consent provides a legally valid basis for data processing in many emergency situations.” Meanwhile, UNICEF’s Children and the Data Cycle: Rights and Ethics in a Big Data World explains approaches adopted to ensure the realization of the rights of adolescent should differ from those adopted for younger children. Consent policies, UNICEF argues, ought to recognize children’s development, including their increasing competencies, analytical capacities and agency. In another report, Child Privacy in the Age of Web 2.0 and 3.0, UNICEF outlines national, regional, and international consent provisions, noting the adoption of some norms aimed at protecting children’s privacy and their personal information pre-date the advent of the Internet. 9. Responsibilities around the ethical use of children’s data are ill-defined and distributed. Greater cooperation and improved partnerships could be a means for addressing these challenges. The need for and challenge of determining a locus of accountability in the event of data-related harms is prevalent across strategies and policies reviewed but with little commonality in proposed approaches. The UN Privacy Policy Group’s Principles on Personal Data Protection and Privacy, consistent with many other efforts included here, in part intends to “harmonize standards for the protection of personal data,” highlighting the current fragmentation of policies, expectations, and responsibilities. Improved collaboration could help to address these challenges. Mapping and Comparing Responsible Data Approaches, developed by the Centre for Innovation and The GovLab, highlights the need for leadership and inter-agency coordination around data responsibility to drive good practice and improve coordination and cooperation. The Global Food Security Cluster and UN OCHA Field Guide to Data Sharing also makes clear that effectively leveraging data in humanitarian contexts is a joint effort, requiring good practices and collaboration across organizations, as well as across sectors. The Principles for Digital Development also culminate with the push for organizations leveraging technology to provide services to children to be more collaborative. Finally, a joint report prepared for UNICEF, UNHCR, and the ICRC also points to the value of data sharing in enhancing “coordination and collaboration across agencies” tasked with providing services to vulnerable children. 10 Low quality and/or unrepresentative data could negatively impact the responsible use of data. A focus on accuracy is essential if data will be used to inform decision-making affecting children. Though not specifically focused on children’s data, the European Union (through GDPR), the International Organization for Migration, and UNHCR, respectively, all consider data accuracy as central principles for responsible data handling. In line with the Principle on Data Accuracy, UNOCHA’s Data Responsibility Guidelines include determining accuracy and integrity of data as a necessary step when collecting and receiving data. The Center for Democracy & Technology, a technology nonprofit advocacy and research center, reviewed 18 data use frameworks and recognized the Data Quality Principle, which states personal data should be relevant to the purposes for which it is used, and, to the extent necessary for those purposes, should be accurate, complete, and kept up-to-date as a consistent and foundational principle. A lack of comparable data can also create issues. The Global Agenda for Children’s Rights in the Digital Age, for example, notes the challenges involved in using data to benefit children’s lives resulting from the lack of comparable baseline data related to policies and programs, as well as issues of transferability regarding solutions developed in the Global North and their applicability in the Global South. Global Kids Online’s Addressing Diversities and Inequalities method guide also notes research questions transferred (e.g. from the global North to the global South, or from wealthy neighborhoods to impoverished ones) without providing attention to local and international inequalities can generate contaminated knowledge. Our Selected Readings on RD4C will continue to grow and evolve over time. Please do share any materials that you feel should be included in our reading list. With your help, we will seek to maintain a useful and current curation of important literature in the field. Please send your suggestions to [email protected].