Walter Gordon Symposium — Making Policy Count: The Social Implications of Data-Driven Decision-Making

Big data is a hot issue in business today, but issues concerning data and data collection arise in many other fields and domains. How things are counted and what gets counted in data collection affects the decisions made in health and education policy, law and crime, and business and technology.

Join us for a discussion of the ethical issues pertaining to counting, statistics and data collection. We will explore and question the relation between data and power, the legitimacy of data gathering and the interpretive process, and the outcomes on the individual being "counted."

Inaugurated in 1990 in honour of the distinguished Canadian statesman and public servant, the late Hon. Walter Gordon, the annual Walter Gordon Symposium is made possible by generously granted seed monies from the Walter and Duncan Gordon Charitable Foundation and the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto.

On the organizing committee of this year’s symposium were Junior Fellows / SPPG students Natalie Brunet and Caleb Holden; Junior Fellows Ana Komparic and Zoe Sebastien; and SPPG students Kevin Hempstead, Aniket Kumar, Clare Macdonald, Abraham Redda, and Nicole Winger. Senior Fellows Tom Axworthy and Carolyn Tuohy counselled this committee in their planning of the symposium.

Agenda

Thursday, March 22 / Isabel Bader Theatre

(Victoria University, 93 Charles St W, Toronto, ON M5S 2C7)

6:00 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. - Keynote Address: 

• Deborah Stone

Friday, March 23 / Campbell Conference Facility

(Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, 1 Devonshire Pl, Toronto, ON M5S 3K7)

9:00 a.m. - Opening Remarks: Massey College and School of Public Policy and Governance

9:15 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. - Panel 1: The Uses and Abuses of Counting in Policing and Surveillance

• Peter Sloly
• Akwasi Owusu-Bempah
• Valerie Steeves
• Rosemary Gartner (Moderator)

10:30 a.m. to 11:45 a.m. - Panel 2: Who and What Counts? Data and Decision-making in Health Policy

• Dr. Andrew Pinto
• Jennifer Gibson
• Dr. Janet Smylie
• Alison Thompson (Moderator)

11:45 a.m. to 1:15 p.m. - Lunch & Lunchtime Address

• Munir Sheikh — former Chief Statistician of Canada

1:15 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. - Panel 3: Consumers in a New Age of Business: Having a Say over Data

• Helen Kontozopoulos
• Andrew Hilts
• Isabel Pedersen
• Matthew Braga (Moderator)

2:30 p.m. to 3:45 p.m. - Panel 4: Solving for X: Selecting Data for Decisions in Education

• Martin Hicks
• Nicole Meredith
• Paul Gooch
• Ira Wells (Moderator)

4:00 p.m. - Closing Remarks

• Deborah Stone

Registration

FREE

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