Play 10 - Create how-to guides for discussing risk and developing mitigation strategies

Support play for intermediary organizations: Create how-to guides for conducting a risk evaluation.

Collecting, using, and sharing data can present legal, financial, and reputational risks, as well as the risk of #misuse by a third party. Data stewards often know of these risks, but might not have examined them collaboratively, documented them, or identified strategies to address them.

Intermediary organizations can support data stewards by creating a how-to guide for conducting risk evaluations such as this one created by SafeTag. This could detail different datasets, #dataproducts, and workflows, and determine if and how they present #risk. This discussion shouldn’t be limited to types of risks, but also include how specific social or technical approaches can mitigate the potential for risk. For example, an organization may be fearful that a particular staff member may share sensitive information with the media without knowing it. One mitigation strategy could be to host a training session for employees on how and when to interact with the media and to codify both the protocols for speaking with the media and spelling out the consequences of data misuse in an employee handbook. When we say consequences, we don’t mean to imply that risk evaluations should be fear-based or use scare tactics, but rather that they should codify processes in a proactive desire to build relational or technical protocols and workflows that will secure the data against potential misuse.

🌱 Each play stems from a takeaway from an case study, workshop, or other learning source.

Takeaway: #Risk emerges in different ways when data sharing.
Data #misuse runs the gamut from truly harmful—misaligned actors can selectively choose data points to communicate harmful or untrue narratives—to merely inconsiderate—people could use data without acknowledging the original source. The risks of sharing data can rarely be fully eliminated, but there are practices and tools that can mitigate against potential threat.

Source: Community Data Playbook (Full report)