FPF Education and Innovation Foundation
To launch the Corporate-Academic Data Stewardship Research Alliance, a private company peer-to-peer network to accelerate privacy protective sharing of administrative data between businesses and academic researchers
According to a Sloan-funded survey, Chief Privacy Officers at major corporations like Amazon, AT&T, Comcast, Facebook, and General Electric say they are willing to share private data with independent scholars under two conditions. First, they want to take risks and institute policies that are similar to their peers. Second, to the extent that shared data helps academics gain insight into important societal issues, they want to be widely recognized for the role they played. This grant funds a project by the nonprofit Future of Privacy Forum (FPF) to launch a peer-to-peer network of private sector C-suite leaders called the Corporate-Academic Data Stewardship Research Alliance. Members will collaborate in order to encourage, recognize, and honor model data-sharing arrangements between the private sector and academe. The network will hold regular phone conferences as well as quarterly in person meetings to discuss how to overcome the legal, practical, and technical barriers that hinder cooperation with independent scholars. The network will also develop and publicize a CEO-level award honoring those corporate leaders who have made pioneering data-sharing agreements with independent scholars. Grant funds will help defray operating costs of the new network for 18 months.