1. Sensible-Data Design Challenge
http://ecitizen.mit.edu/sensible-data
Participatory Engagement Session

2. Challenge: How to create a system that allows
management of data flows within
computational social science studies
– Can support multiple studies by multiple
researchers, re-using common user
management, informed consent
management, personal data access
management, and dashboard reporting
– Can support multiple users in multiple
studies, providing continuous view of data being
collected and see and manage informed consent
and particular data authorizations

3. Value, Importance, and Relevance
• Privacy Aware approaches are needed but not
enforced or mandated by external authority –
rather just bare minimum is used now
• Need a simple approach that is
usable, inexpensive, efficient and effective
• What Funf does for data collection FROM phone
is needed for DATA management FOR users
(researchers and participants)
• The “Study” use case can extrapolate to several
broader scenarios (but we keep it focused for
now)

4. Computational Social Science Studies
• CSS experiments and studies are often based on data
collected with an unprecedented resolution and scale.
Using raw computational power combined with
theoretical models, such rich datasets can be mined to
infer underlying patterns, providing insights into
human nature. As data collection has become
ubiquitous, people’s lives are recorded with increasing
accuracy, and sensitive information about individuals
flood the databases. For that reason, the need for
solutions to ensure the privacy the individuals
generating data, has grown alongside the data
collection efforts

5. Example of Study Platform

6. Background/Assumptions
• University hosted system for 2013 summer
research studies
• Non-bio medical or protected health records
• Separation between data collection and the
Sensible-data platform
• Seeking a more scalable in size & time than
current code-base and more standards-based

7. Conceptual Wireframes
1. Researcher creates study
3. Participant’s study details
2. Participant’s overview

8. Known Resources & Options
• CouchDB
• DTU-CAS / Athena-Kerberos
• Trust Framework
• MongoDB
• OpenPDS
• Facebook, Google, & FUNF Clients
• OAuth2 now, Examining OIDC & UMA

9. Requirements
• 1. User Account (enroll/register)
• 2. Authentication
• 3. Informed Consent Management (Study
Join)
• 4. Dashboard With Consent and Authorization
Terms (3rd party grants)
• 5. Data Flow via Pipes Gauges & Reporting

10. Diagrams

11. How to Share Your Idea
• Design Challenge Participation Through URL
• http://ecitizen.mit.edu/sensible-data
• Form to join challenge and submit idea
• Agree to contribute idea under creative commons
and the code we write will be MIT code using
open source license (MIT license is planned
unless other indicated)
• Question Session: April 5th, 2013
• Deadline to Propose Ideas: April 12th, 2013

12. Join the Challenge
• Register and Stay Up to Date at:
• http://ecitizen.mit.edu/sensible-data