Digital Privacy and Analytics Article

Hi Everyone,
Along the same lines as Group 10’s work on Analytics, I came across an interesting article I thought I’d share from Canadian Business. It relates to data privacy and analytics as this was brought up as one of the numerous challenges broached when using any form of analytics. From the discussion within Group 10s OER, for many of us the misuse of analytics was predominant but there were a few of us who were also concerned about privacy and ethical concerns.
I found this article interesting in that the Ontario Commissioner on Privacy, Ann Cavoukian, stated her belief that “privacy controls and innovation can coexist. “Privacy has enormous value at both the societal level and at the individual level. It forms the basis of our freedoms and allows creativity and innovation to thrive,”. She stressed the importance of not just amassing data but having “good data” which is quite important when analyzing any form of analytics.

She also states that privacy issues should be a” business issue and not a compliance issue” to help foster innovation. I wonder how this would be addressed if this becomes the case in the future, then consumer’s data privacy may then become too lax. I will post a differing viewpoint that I found above as there was another article pinpointing this exact point.

She outlines in her paper, seven foundational laws of privacy that businesses should then follow to help foster innovation. The second link is to her paper, the first is the article in Canadian Business.