Chief Data Officers Embrace Data for Good in Troubled Times

At the inaugural summit of the Chief Data Officer Data for Good Global Summit held March 10, EDM Council President John Bottega, event chair, asked for a moment of silence as an expression of solidarity with the men, women and children of Ukraine. This poignant moment set the tone for a new event which hopes to galvanize the Chief Data Officer community and raise awareness for a range of opportunities where data can be used for social good. At a moment when the world is threatened by the largest armed conflict in Europe since World War II, and when there have been sustained attacks on the veracity of data, science, and facts in recent years, the CDO Data for Global Good Summit represented a sign of hope and encouragement.  And none too soon.  

In recent years, we have seen growing concern over ethical uses of data and data responsibility. Cathy O’Neil called out the potential dangers posed by algorithmic bias in her 2016 book, “Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy.”  More recently, Shoshana Zuboff has called out the threats of data misuse in her book, “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power.” In April 2018, Gregg Easterbrook wrote in The Wall Street Journal, “Big Data is the big bad of our moment. Companies and governments amass enormous troves of information about our online and offline activities. Recently we learned that creepy firms like Cambridge Analytica mine Big Data from websites such as Facebook.  Facebook itself seems increasingly creepy, grounded in lying to the public about what happens to the data it collects.” Just this past fall, Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen testified about the alleged continuation of these practices.  A further challenge to trust in data has arisen from data misuse, such as the selective use or misrepresentation of data to support false or distorted narratives, or the suggested existence of “alternative facts.” There have been dire warnings as well about how data collected from consumers will be applied. In his WSJ article, Easterbrook concludes, “In the future, will Big Data help physicians cure diseases or help health insurers deny claims? Make factories and products safer or accelerate layoffs? Ultimately spawn some kind of hostile Artificial Intelligence?”

It has been against this backdrop that a movement arose over the past decade to identify opportunities where data can be applied for social good. Among these initiatives has been the Data-Pop Alliance, launched in 2013 by the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, MIT Media Lab, and the Overseas Development Institute; The Bloomberg Data for Good Exchange, launched in 2015 in collaboration with Bloomberg Philanthropie to address issues ranging from public health to criminal justice reform; DataKind, a non-profit organization dedicated to applying data science for social good; and corporate initiatives such as the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth, which was founded in 2013 with a mandate “to deploy Mastercard data assets for positive social impact.” In December 2021, more than a dozen of the world’s leading employers announced the formation of the Data & Trust Alliance to ensure the adoption of criteria to mitigate data and algorithmic bias in human resources and workforce decisions. Founding members included American Express, CVS Health, Facebook, General Motors, Humana, Mastercard, and Walmart, among others.  

The objective of the Chief Data Officer Data for Good Global Summit is to build awareness and enlist broad support for data for good initiatives from the global CDO community. The initiative is sponsored by CDO Magazine and the EDM Council. Among the topics addressed at the Summit were data innovation for good, data for good in the public sector, data for improvement of environmental sustainability and ESG initiatives, and data for the betterment of mankind. Topics ranged from use of data in the Agrifood Sector through tools such as healthy start vouchers to applying data and analytics to protect women and girls from sex trafficking — a powerful session presented by Ram Kumar showing how the My Choices Foundation was using data to help reduce and eliminate this global blight.  

Another area of focus was the emergence of data ethics as a function and role within leading corporations, presented by Anna Hannem, who holds the position of Director, Data Ethics & Use at Scotiabank. Organizations are increasingly under pressure to protect customer data and ensure it is used responsibly. To that end, leading companies are taking steps to establish policies and practices to ensure transparency, ownership, responsibility, and accountability. 

As access to customer data increases, businesses must have clear, transparent standards for how they will use that data. Data ethics is growing in importance and increasingly rising to the top of the CEO agenda, as negligence may result in severe consequences such as reputational loss or business shutdown. Yet, according to the NewVantage Partners 2022 Data and AI Leadership executive survey, less than half of the companies surveyed — 44.2% — reported that their organization had developed well-established policies and practices in support of data responsibility and ethics, and  55.8% had not. Further, just 21.6% of executives responded that the industry has done enough to address data and AI ethics concerns; 78.4% of executives felt that the industry has not done enough.  As Scotiabank’s Hannem noted, the establishment of new roles with “data ethics” in the job title represents an important step forward. Capital One, a traditional data leader within the industry, is among the leading banks that have established a Data & Ethics Privacy Office with a named head for this function.

In troubling times, it is a cause for some hope that data leaders are pushing back against data misuse and coming to embrace data-for-good initiatives. As organizations turn their attention to the growing demand for ethical data use and data responsibility, those data leaders and organizations that demonstrate a commitment to using data for good will set an example for others to follow. Now more than ever, data leaders have a responsibility to step forward and use data as a force for positive change in a troubled world. It’s time to spread data democracy for social good and to tear down the walls of data autocracy, data harm, and data abuse.  

Randy Bean is the author of  “Fail Fast, Learn Faster: Lessons in Data-Driven Leadership in an Age of Disruption, Big Data, and AI.”  A contributor to the Harvard Business Review, Forbes, MIT Sloan Management Review, and The Wall Street Journal, Bean is also founder and CEO of NewVantage Partners, a strategic advisory and management consulting firm that he started in 2001. You can contact him at rbean@newvantage.com.