Data Literacy for Responsible Decision-Making (DATALIT)

Public description of the goals at the beginning of the project

Data literacy consists of understanding what data is and the key socio-legal-technical issues related to it. It is a basis for ethical and evidence-based decision-making. DataLit – an interdisciplinary collaboration between social science, law, and computer science – develops understandable and trustworthy practices for utilizing Finnish health, social, and welfare data. The collaborating partners include many national public data authorities and organisations.

DataLit creates tools for responsible and reliable uses of register data, including methods for creating anonymised synthetic data. It analyses the key ethical concepts – like privacy – in different technical, social, and legal contexts and explores how public authorities can employ data in socially sustainable ways. The project identifies challenges for data literacy and enhances the data literacy of citizens and decision-makers, and contributes to public debates about data governance.