A smarter way to spot data & AI harms

A practical approach to spotting data and AI harms before they scale into organisational risk.

Join Rowenna Fielding, privacy, data protection & data ethics geek for hire, as she discusses her data framework for improved data governance. Harm assessment in Data Protection Impact Assessments is notoriously difficult, often badly done, and long overdue for a rethink. Independent expert Rowenna Fielding has done exactly that, and built a practical toolkit you can use straight away. Think of it like a fire safety checklist for data projects. Instead of imagining every possible way a building could burn down, you're prompted to check for known hazards, faulty wiring, blocked exits, and to act on them. Imagine a police force writing a DPIA for a facial recognition system. Rather than asking "what is the likelihood that our facial recognition system falsely identifies someone, and will the impact on the person be high, medium or low if it does?", the framework prompts you to consider the hazard of classifying a person. Then provides mitigations and real-world cases of where that's gone wrong. Drawing on over 10 years experience at the data policy frontline, Rowenna is on a mission to mitigate harm by offering realistic solutions, and this is your opportunity to ask an experienced professional real life problems. Who is this session for? This session is for anyone writing or reviewing DPIAs, anyone responsible for data and AI projects where things could go wrong, and anyone who needs a better way to identify and articulate data-related harms, whatever your role or regulatory context. Rowenna Fielding, freelance professional privacy and data protection expert Rowenna is a freelance professional privacy and data protection nerd with over a decade of experience helping organisations stitch together law, technology and humanity as best they can manage. Having obtained a data protection qualification before the GDPR arrived and made data protection business-critical; since then, Rowenna has worked with charities, public sector organisations and commercial businesses; written many articles, given plenty of talks, and been proud to accept a couple of awards for services to geekery. Rowenna firmly believes that a strong commitment to human rights and welfare is all that stands between us at present and the future-tech dystopia of sci-fi nightmares. Chair Dr. Kay Achenbach, Head of the Data Ethics Professional course, the ODI As Senior Learning Specialist and Head of Data Ethics at the Open Data Institute, Kay delivers data literacy training to hundreds of learners each year across the public and private sector, including the UK Civil Service. She leads the delivery of Data Ethics Professionals and works directly with organisations to embed data ethics into workflows and projects. Kay has a background in geophysical research and worked for over a decade in secondary schools prior to joining the ODI.

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Date: 30 July 2026
Speaker: Rowenna Fielding
Series: Data Ethics Professional #14

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This webinar is part of the ODI’s Data Ethics Professionals programme. Explore the certified course, browse more sessions on the webinars page, or register your interest in the next cohort.