Data protection in children's best interests: what's at stake?

How can children’s best interests be addressed through data protection? The Digital Futures Commission works towards embedding children’s best interests in the design of the digital world, in which data and their usage are of paramount importance. Of importance to our work is the Age-Appropriate Design Code (the Code), the first of its kind in the world to take into account the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC)

Innovating in children’s best interests for a ‘fair’ digital world

The Digital Futures Commission aims to make children’s best interests a primary consideration in the design of the digital environment. We keep a lookout for good practices and guidelines to help digital innovators embed children’s best interests in their products and services. The Age Appropriate Design Code (the Code) is the first statutory Code of Practice for children’s data protection. Matching the Code’s child rights focus are UNICEF’s Manifesto on Good Data Governance for Children and Policy Guidance on AI for children. Common to all three is the concept of ‘fairness.’ In this blog, Ayça Atabey discusses what is meant by fairness in today’s digital world and why it matters

Transparency: an overlooked tool that empowers children

Transparency is key to designing an online world where children’s needs and their best interests are the priority. It empowers children because only when children know about their rights, can they act on them

Fairness by design: addressing children’s expectations through children’s best interests

How can children’s expectations be addressed through embedding ‘fairness’ and children’s best interests when designing value-sensitive and child-rights respecting digital technologies? What role does data protection law play in this

Balancing interests in EdTech: when is the lawful basis of "legitimate interests" justified?

As of September 2, 2021, all organisations that provide online services that are likely to be accessed by children must comply with the Age-Appropriate Design Code (the Code). One of the key points the Code provides concerns choosing an appropriate lawful basis for data processing activities. Organisations must have a valid lawful basis to process personal data. Establishing the lawfulness of the processing is a starting point before assessing whether other rules under the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) apply. This means organisations can’t start processing personal data without having an appropriate lawful basis

When are commercial practices exploitative? Ensuring child rights prevail in a digital world

Almost every digital interaction is an exchange. Often this is underpinned by an invisible transaction in which the currency is data rather than cash. How do we distinguish between benign commercial practices and commercial exploitation in the digital environment? From a child rights perspective, why do we need to draw the line

Our consultation response to DCMS’s policy paper on ‘a pro-innovation approach to regulating AI’

In the UK government’s recently published policy paper, ‘Establishing a pro-innovation approach to regulating AI’, the government proposes a pro-innovation framework, underpinned by a set of cross-sectoral principles tailored to the specific characteristics of artificial intelligence (AI). Responding with our Media@LSE hats on, we advocated a child rights approach that highlights 7 key points

Can data-driven education be responsible, lawful and rights-respecting?

The volume and types of data, as well as the purposes of data processing in educational contexts, have expanded well beyond the initial purposes of evaluating schools’ performance, education planning and funding allocation, especially with the increased EdTech use in schools. Processing children’s education data promises a broad range of benefits that could advance children’s best interests provided that data are processed in a responsible, rights-respecting way that is proportionate to the risks and benefits. How can this be done, while also mitigating problems that can arise from such processing? And what level of agency should children, their parents and schools have in determining the scope and purposes of data processing in education

Addressing the problems and realising the benefits of processing children’s education data: report on an expert roundtable

The Digital Futures Commission (DFC) held an expert roundtable discussion on 13 October 2021 online to discuss current governance and practice in processing children’s education data. It sought to identify the purposes of processing education data that advance children’s best interests, the problems that can arise from such uses of education data, and the practical steps needed for mitigating these problems so as to open up more benefits for children