Research Talk by Clare Thornley

Ethical Data use in Irish public policy: the role of the Data Governance Board

The talk was delivered on 11 November 2024 by Clare Thornley, Honorary Research Associate at the Department of Information Studies, as part of the DIS research seminars series.

The Data Governance Board was established in Ireland in 2021 under the Data Sharing Act 2019 and it plays a key role in developing and guiding the Public Service Data Strategy in Ireland. This seminar will introduce the role and remit of the Data Governance Board. Its focus will be on the work of its Data Safeguarding and Transparency Committee which works to ensure that any transparency, privacy or data protection concerns that arise around the sharing or governance of data are managed in an ethical way. This includes the development of a Data Sharing Ethics Framework to assist public servants in implementing ethical standards in all aspects of data use. It is an interesting example of efforts to integrate ethical values into processes and methods and this will be discussed considering wider work in information and data ethics. The role of the Data Governance Board in shaping the next Public Service Data Strategy will also be discussed examining emerging challenges of technology such as AI as well as persistent trade-offs that need to be managed.

Clare Thornley is Board Member of the Data Governance Board, Ireland.
Clare Thornley has an MA (Hons) in Philosophy from the University of Edinburgh, an MSc in Information Management and a PhD in Information Retrieval from the University of Strathclyde. She has been an Honorary Research Associate at UCL since 2011. She started her career as an Information Officer in the UK voluntary sector at The Volunteer Centre UK before completing her PhD and moving into research. She has lectured on Information Retrieval at University College Dublin and Dublin Business School and currently teaches on the online Information Systems MSc at the University of Liverpool. As well as being a Data Governance Board member since 2021 Clare works as an independent consultant on EU and international digital skills and IT capability development projects with a focus on developing ethical standards and guidelines. Her recent publications include an EU Ethics Framework for ICT Professionals and a research paper on the use of Science Fiction to inform responsible innovation. She has also served on the Ethics Advisory Board of two EU H2020 Research Projects on AI and law enforcement.