Data Ethics

This is also a very confusing term in Data domain, a lot of people are not sure how to assure that everyone follows Ethics in their day-to-day activities while interacting with Data. Just like CDE (Critical Data Element), Data Ethics is also a principle and must be managed at organization level and followed at individual level.

Now, the big question is which data falls under the ambarella where Data Ethics must be followed. There are multiple factors involved and everyone has his/ her own level of ethics to handle based on their roles and responsibilities.

Data Ethics is also a term which if not taken care of properly, can damage a company’s image with the general public. To make sure organizations follow ethics, different regulatory bodies in different parts of the world and in different sectors give guiding principles to follow. It doesn’t stop here, if the organization doesn’t end up following all the measures asked-for by those regulatory bodies then they can be penalized with heavy amounts as penalties.

A few bodies are mentioned below. We won’t be going into detail as can be found on their respective websites.

• GDPR (European Union)
• PDPR (Malaysia)
• PIPEDA (Canada)
• Fair Processing Principles (USA)

In nutshell when organizations collect, process and store data, those should consider below points.

• Everyone should be aware of that data set.
• There should be a requirement for data.
• Only necessary data should be collected.
• Should only store and keep data which is required.
• Data Quality should be there.
• Data Security and Privacy should be in place.
• And there should be someone with full ownership