Human Data Bites Back
By Michelle Dennedy, Co-Founder and CEO
Software is eating the world. Every hardware provider since the 80’s has announced this truism. The venture community embraced the investment thesis that software is eating the world with Marc Andreesen leading the charge.
Computing is cheap; code is easy and repeatable; automation, inevitable for efficiency and profit. Software is eating the world.
But here’s the thing. Where there’s a what, there’s a why and where there’s a why and a what, there is, inevitably, a who. Humans are building systems, writing and re-writing code, creating the perfect storm where data can be collected, processed, combined and aimed…at humans, about humans and for humans.
So, while software is eating the world; human data bites back. It has been my experience that data bites back viciously where privacy is not built in.
We’re human and we know what we want – and we know what we don’t want. We’re tired of being told we can have any color car we want, so long as that color is black. We do not want stalkers following us around in person or in our online personas. We want organizations to prioritize and invest in privacy because we want our data to provide us with valuable, safe opportunities and experiences.
Just as food safety practices allow us to enjoy the experience of eating and trust that the food won’t make us sick, effective privacy protections can help us more fully enjoy the promise of our own data while not creating risk and fear or harm. Even in B2B environments, customers and employees expect to see the value of what we do with their data, and they also want to be able to prove what we are not doing with it.
Organizations and their leadership have fiduciary responsibilities for the human stories that we tell and that others tell based on our digital footpaths. Before they collect, observe or buy data, these organizations must be fit for the purpose, built to respect their fiduciary obligations, and demonstrate trustworthiness. These capabilities create value far beyond avoiding compliance costs. Building in capabilities that intake data that suits a purpose, that shares the communicated observation or insights to serve a shared goal create the possibility for human collaboration and trust. These capabilities can join to create systems that are built to relate to a vast array of services, commercial and cultural interests; in other words, systems that respect human data are far more valuable than hungry software without them.
Understanding and building to respect the humanity behind data is what makes this such an exciting time for both privacy and data professionals. It also introduces a lot of challenges because humans are complex and often non-binary in our preferences. We change and grow over time and so do our preferences and desire to engage with the systems that are built for quality and value. The opportunities for those who create context and nimble systems are endless.
Guiding an organization through effective data and privacy governance is as much about people as it is about systems and code – all parts of these systems must work together and mutually reinforce the fiduciary obligations to share where desired, protect where vulnerable and even to become anonymous where the crowd view matters. We call leveraging these critical skill sets and tools to solve or manage privacy and data protection challenges, privacy engineering – and it’s starting to attract attention from the business.
As a result, privacy and data professionals advancing in their careers will have the opportunity to earn influence over business, but they’ll need to secure predictable resources with metrics and the ability to answer:
How can we prove whether a privacy engineered system is successfully building privacy into its environment?
Are business objectives met with the right type, scale, and amount of data?
Can that business live up to its fiduciary responsibilities?
That’s why I’m building PrivacyCode with my co-founder Kristy Edwards. We know what metrics privacy and data professionals need in order to earn the trust of business leaders and expand their credibility across the organization. We know, because we have been there ourselves, building these systems by hand for companies one at a time. We want to toss the torch forward, so we are building the builders’ tool to design and measure and integrate privacy into every system.
