Hi !
A few weeks ago, we hosted a LinkedIn Live on how to gather the opinions of data subjects when conducting a Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA). We experienced streaming issues, but we have now published the recording.
You can watch the recording here: View Recording
We have also published reports from the gathering of data subjects' opinions on ks.no, along with a description of the method we used. You can read about it here: Gathering Data Subjects' Opinions
In this newsletter, we will review the three most important takeaways from this conversation.
Tip 1: Gather the data subject's opinion before you start assessing privacy risks
Why is it wise to gather the data subject's opinion before assessing privacy risks? We find this wise because the data subjects will provide inspiration for risk scenarios that you may not have considered.
The data subject will respond with their privacy concerns. And it's very easy for you to directly translate these into risk scenarios (i.e., situations that could involve privacy breaches) that you can use in a DPIA.
And if you are to perform a more thorough necessity assessment, the concerns of the data subjects will also be relevant.
Let's illustrate this with an example!
We conducted a DPIA on a solution that uses artificial intelligence to help teachers give feedback to students on their work. When we talked to students, they were concerned that the solution might mean that the teacher wouldn't need to read their work, that the AI would provide textual feedback without the teacher actually being involved in the assessment.
And when we assessed whether the solution was necessary to fulfill the purpose of the education law, we concluded that this particular part of the solution did not meet the necessity requirement. The privacy concerns that the data subjects told us about weighed heavily in that assessment.
The point of this example is to show how you can emphasize the data subject's opinion in other parts of a DPIA than just the risk assessment.
Tip 2: Explain the risks to the data subject in a way they can understand
When you're gathering the data subject's opinion, it's important that you are honest with the data subjects about how the processing might challenge their privacy. This means that you shouldn't just present what you're actually going to do with their personal data, you need to explain what could go wrong.
This means being honest and clear in a way that might be uncomfortable.
For the Google DPIA, this meant explaining to parents that yes, when your child uses YouTube on a school PC that has been brought home, Google collects personal data about your home network. And yes, Google does this also when your child watches YouTube from their private YouTube account.
What do you think about that? Do you see any privacy disadvantages here? Is there something you are worried about?
Tip 3: Your job is first to listen, and then to decide what to take with you moving forward
When you interview data subjects, you can't control what feedback they give you. It might be that they comment on things that aren't entirely relevant to privacy risks.
For example, students might say that they wish they could play games on their school PC, while parents might wish that their children learned cursive writing at school like in the old days.
These are examples of statements that don't really have to do with privacy. Other examples might be that the data subjects believe the system you are asking them for feedback on works in a way that it actually does not.
Our advice to you when such things come up is to let the data subjects talk. Don't correct them. We know it's hard, but you are there to listen to what they have to say, not tell them how the school owner actually has an internal control system that means they shouldn't be worried about X, Y, and Z.
And then it's your job after the interview to decide what is relevant for your DPIA – what you want to take with you, and what feedback you can set aside.
Bonus Tip: The goal is to map privacy challenges, not everything that works and is good
A choice we made very consciously when we gathered data subjects' opinions in both the DPIAs that we have worked on at SkoleSec, was that the purpose of gathering the data subjects' opinions was to map privacy challenges.
That means we were not interested in everything that the school owner as the data controller was good at or succeeded in. It's nice to get an overview of that, but we decided that what we wanted to get out of the conversation with the data subjects was which privacy concerns they had. Not what was "good" or what worked about the processing of personal data.
And that was a good pointer in the work. We didn't need to balance the picture and also gather positive feedback. We were looking for privacy risks. The cases where things could go wrong.
I wish you a wonderful, privacy-friendly week-end!
Best regards,
Ida Thorsrud
Project manager national DPIA
This newsletter was translated from Norwegian to English with assistance from ChatGPT by OpenAI. While it guided our translation, we made independent editorial choices. Any discrepancies result from this combined approach.