How cities can create a trustworthy privacy model

The growth of digital government services and internet-connected devices scattered across urban landscapes is giving city officials access to ever-increasing amounts of data on their constituents. But while that data can be used to drive policy decisions, cities must first develop trust with their residents who are unfamiliar or uncomfortable with the new technologies. Denise Riedl, a Benton Fellow and the chief innovation officer in South Bend (IN), said that many local governments don’t have the resources to handle complex privacy questions on their own — making the involvement of community stakeholders even more critical to a thoughtful “internet of things” deployment. Riedl pointed to Quayside, the Toronto neighborhood being developed by Google’s Sidewalk Labs, as an example of how to properly approach the complex issue of data governance to stakeholders. Sidewalk Labs in 2018 published an extensive guide outlining how it will store and use data collected by the wired devices that’ll cover Quayside. More recently, it introduced unique signage that will explain to residents which specific types of data its devices collect. “There’s a lot of education that needs to be going on just for the folks who are making those decisions in local government,” Riedl said. “Different communities have different understandings of what the potential risks are for various [data], so actually reach out to the citizens to find out what those concerns are and ensure the solutions actually being designed into programs.”