CDT’s Comments for the Advisory Committee on Data for Evidence Building
CDT’s Equity in Civic Tech team focuses on ensuring that governments can use data to create evidence-based policy and provide services to individuals while protecting their privacy.
The team filed comments with the Advisory Committee on Data for Evidence Building to urge it to center equity, privacy, and ethics at the heart of federal data. Those principles can help ensure that the collection and use of federal data will help provide equitable government services and increase economic mobility while preserving individual and organizational privacy and autonomy.
A portion of those comments are pasted below, and you can read the full comments here.
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The Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) submits these comments to highlight steps the Advisory Committee on Data for Evidence Building should take to help bolster the equitable provision of government services, community trust in federal data, and individual and organizational privacy. Coordinated, data-driven action across interdependent agencies is essential to providing vital services. Data can help reveal inequitable access to services and data, support steps to increase economic mobility, and raise under-explored questions about the role of race and racism in the design and implementation of government programs and policies. CDT believes that comments led by the Annie E. Casey Foundation in this Docket succinctly summarize the value of the Advisory Committee’s work.
However, data use also poses risks to individual and organizational privacy and autonomy, and CDT urges the Advisory Committee to commit to principles of responsible data governance, stakeholder engagement, equity, and transparency in federal agencies’ collection and use of data.
