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ESRs presenting their research at ACM FAccT

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ESRs Maciej Zuziak, Onntje Hinrichs and Aizhan Abdrassulova collaborative work got accepted for this years’ ACM conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (ACM FAccT) that was held in Chicago from 12-15th of June 2023. Maciej Zuziak presented their article on “Data Collaboratives with the Use of Decentralised Learning – an Interdisciplinary Perspective on Data Governance” during a paper session dedicated to Privacy.

In their collaboration, the ESRs combined their different research interests in law and machine learning, which enabled them to develop an interdisciplinary perspective on challenges posed by different approaches to data governance. The predominant part of the current discussion in EU data policy is centered around the challenging task of creating a data governance framework where data is ‘as open as possible and as closed as necessary’. In their article, the ESRs further elaborate on the concept of data collaboratives powered by decentralised learning techniques as a possible remedy to the shortcomings of existing data governance schemes.

Data collaboratives have been described as new emerging forms of partnerships where privately held data is made accessible for analysis and where collaboration between participants is facilitated to unlock the public good potential of previously siloed data. [1] They thus fit well the EU policy shift that has taken place over the past years. Whilst for decades, the introduction of exclusive property rights was discussed as a potential tool to empower data subjects with regard to ‘their’ data and to facilitate the emergence of data markets, this changed with the 2020 European Data Strategy. Now, the potential of the data economy should be unlocked by facilitating data access and sharing. The authors presented their concept of data collaboratives powered by decentralised learning techniques, which can be used as a tool to reach the goals of the current EU data strategy: facilitate access to data while protecting privacy and intellectual property interests which individuals and companies might have with regard to ‘their’ data. The collaboration between the ESRs thus reflected the idea behind the LeADS project that solutions to existing tensions in the data economy require an interdisciplinary perspective from both law and data science.

The paper can be accessed in the Digital ACM library via this link.

 

[1] 2020. Wanted: Data Stewards – (Re-) Defining the Roles and Responsibilities of Data Stewards for an Age of Data Collaboration

 

The beginning of the LeADS era

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On January 1st 2021 LeADS (Legality Attentive Data Scientists) started its journey. A Consortium of 7 prominent European universities and research centres along with 6 important industrial partners and 2 Supervisory Authorities is exploring ways to create a new generation of LEgality Attentive Data Scientists while investigating the interplay between and across many sciences.

LeADS envisages a research and training programme that will blend ground-breaking applied research and pragmatic problem-solving from the involved industries, regulators, and policy makers. The skills produced by LeADS and tested by the ESR will be able to tackle the confusion created by the blurred borders between personal and commercial information and between personality and property rights typical of the big data environment. Both processes constitute a silent revolution—developed by new digital business models, industrial standards, and customs—that is already embedded in soft law instruments (such as stakeholders’ agreements) and emerging in case law and legislation (Regulation EU 2016/679 and the e-privacy directive to begin with), while data scientists are mostly unaware of them. They cut across the emergence of the Digital Transformation, and call for a more comprehensive and innovative regulatory framework. Against this background, LeADS is animated by the idea that in the digital economy data protection holds the keys for both protecting fundamental rights and fostering the kind of competition that will sustain the growth and “completion” of the “Digital Single Market” and the competitive ability of European businesses outside the EU. Under LeADS, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and other EU rules will dictate the transnational standard for the global data economy while training researchers able to drive the process and set an example

The data economy or better way the data society we increasingly live is our explorative target under many angles (from the technological to the legal and ethics one). This new generation is needed to better answer to the challenges of the data economy and the unfolding of the digital transformation scoping. Our Early Stage Researchers (ESRs) will come from many experiences and backgrounds (law, computer science, economics, statistics, management, engineering, policy studies, and mathematics,..).

ESRs will find an enthusiastic transnational, interdisciplinary team of teams tackling the relevant issues from their many angles. Their research will be supported by these research teams in setting the theoretical framework and the practical implementation template of a common language.

LeADS research plan, although already envisages 15 specific topics to be interdisciplinary investigated, remain open-ended.

It is natural in the fields we have selected for which we identified crossover concepts in need of a common understanding of concepts useful for future researchers, policy makers, software developers, lawyers and market actors.

LeADS research strives to create, share cross disciplinary languages and integrate the respective background domain knowledge of its participants in one shared idiolect that it wants to share with a wider audience.

It is LeADS understanding that regulatory issues in data science and AI development and deployment are often perceived (and sometimes are) hurdles to innovation, markets and above all research. Our unwritten goal is to contribute to turn regulatory and ethical constraints which are needed in opportunities for better developments.

LADS aims at nurturing a data science capable of maintaining its innovative solutions within the borders of law – by design and by default – and of helping expand the legal frontiers in line with innovation needs, preventing the enactments of legal rules technologically unattainable.

By Giovanni Comandé