I'm very excited to now be able to share something that's been a long time in the making....
A toolkit for assessing potential impacts to people!
Toolkit FAQs
What is it?
A methodology for impact assessment which doesn't require you to have psychic powers, expert data protection knowledge or advanced technical skills
Who's it for?
Anyone doing impact assessments (such as DPIAs for GDPR compliance and FRIAs for AI Act compliance), or ethics reviews for a technology application or use of data about people
How do I use it?
Download the toolkit (buy a subscription if you're going to use it as part of any commercial activity!)
Read the User Guide
Print the cards and use them to spot hazards, understand the harms associated with them, the safety measures you'll need - and how to manage the processing so that harm prevention is maintained.
Send me feedback!
You don't have to do this part, but it's really helpful so please do
Why did I create this toolkit?
It can be really hard to know where to start with impact assessment, which is probably why it isn't often done as rigorously or diligently as it could - or should - be.
Most impact assessments I've seen tend to focus on business impacts rather than human consequences, or are limited to assessing impacts on people's specific data protection rights instead of all of their fundamental rights or welfare.
Consequence scanning has been a thing in tech ethics for a while now, but that often relies on foreknowledge of what the consequences could be and how they might occur. Unless you're the sort of person who actively researches data harms for fun or profit, how would you know what to look for?
Well, I am the sort of person (a geek!) who actively researches data harms for fun or profit, and as I did so I noticed some distinct patterns emerging....so I started keeping notes.
And if you've ever heard me speak about impact assessment, you'll know that I am not a fan of trying to put arbitrary numbers on 'likelihood' or 'impact' for outcomes which a) affect different people in different ways; b) don't have a simple linear cause -> effect pathway, and c) don't have reliable statistical data on their rate of occurrence to be able to draw conclusions from.
Instead, my toolkit is built around the conditions, operations and materials which are known to cause harmful impacts - I call these "hazards", - the harms that result, and the safety measures that would need to be taken to prevent harm being caused.
What, I can just use it for free?
Kinda - if it's for your own personal education and skills development or for public sector tasks (non-commercial use) then yes.
If you want to use it in any commercial activity, you can licence it for the bargainous price of £20/month or £240/year (the licence also gives you access to my whole post library).
What's next?
Watch this space for updates - I have a 'Data Harm Prevention Handbook' in the works, to be published as an e-book, and I am considering crowdfunding a way to issue the Toolkit as a professionally printed card deck.
Can I get some help with using the toolkit?
Sure! I can offer group training sessions or 1:1 walkthroughs of your particular use case - head on over to missinfogeek.net and use my contact form to enquire. (At some point I’ll figure out how to add a booking service for these sessions directly on here).
Enjoy!