Collaborative Research: Workshop to Develop a Roadmap for Greater Public Use of Privacy-Sensitive Government Data

最近的事件表明了更好地共享数据的价值；新冠肺炎的快速变化以及协调应对的困难就是一个明显的例子。与此同时，公众对隐私的担忧与日俱增，这使得收集可靠数据变得更加困难。广泛的用户改进对政府数据的使用，有可能改善从地方到国家和全球各级的研究和日常业务。政府数据还可以促进创新，为基于大规模数据分析的小公司提供机会，这些分析越来越多地留给有能力收集自己的数据的大型组织(通常是以引起隐私担忧的方式)。我们正在举办一个为期两天的研讨会，以确定挑战并探索机制(技术、法律和程序)，以使更多地使用政府机构持有的隐私敏感数据。隐私技术在过去十年中经历了巨大的进步。完全同态加密、差异隐私、联合和分裂学习等突破，以及安全多方计算的进步，都极有希望在维护个人隐私的同时，使数据能够更广泛地公开使用。虽然已经取得了一些成功，但在许多应用程序中，技术提供的内容、用户的数据需求以及确保隐私的政策和程序之间存在着巨大的差距。这包括最佳做法以及限制数据有效利用的研究和政策挑战。本研讨会探讨了这些问题，突出了基于用户对政府数据的实际需求的新的研究挑战。这包括对应对现实世界挑战的基础技术的研究，以及对政策和商业模式的研究，以使技术的使用能够为隐私敏感数据提供适当水平的共享和保护。结果将是一份报告，确定数据用户未得到满足的需求，限制政府数据更广泛使用的问题，以及显示出弥合这些差距的希望的技术和政策。这将作为研究投资的路线图，以应对这些挑战。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Recent events have shown the value of better data sharing; the rapidity of change in COVID-19 and the difficulty of coordinating response is a clear example. At the same time, public concern over privacy is increasing, making it more difficult to collect reliable data. Improved use of government data by a wide range of users has potential to improve research as well as day-to-day operations at a variety of levels, from local to national and global. Government data can also foster innovation, providing opportunities for small companies based on large-scale data analysis that are increasingly reserved for large organizations capable of gathering their own data (often in ways that raise privacy concerns.) We are running a 2-day workshop to identify challenges and explore mechanisms (technical, legal, and procedural) to enable greater use of privacy-sensitive data held by government agencies.Privacy technology has experienced great advances over the past decade. Breakthroughs such as fully homomorphic encryption, differential privacy, federated and split learning, and advances in secure multiparty computation have great promise to enable broader public use of data, while maintaining individual privacy. While there have been some successes, there are many applications where there is a significant gap between what technology offers, data needs of users, and policies and procedures to ensure privacy. This includes best practices as well as research and policy challenges that limit effective use of data. This workshop explore these concerns, highlighting new research challenges based on actual user needs for government data. This covers research in underlying technologies that address real-world challenges, as well as research in policy and business models to enable use of technology in ways that provide appropriate levels of sharing and protection for privacy-sensitive data. The outcome will be a report identifying unmet needs of data users, issues limiting broader use of government data, and technologies and policies that show promise of bridging these gaps. This will serve as a roadmap for research investment to address these challenges.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.