Data for Policy 2015 – Policy-making in the Big Data Era: Opportunities and Challenges

The inaugural conference of the community was launched with the theme “Policy-making in the Big Data Era: Opportunities and Challenges”. An open call for contributions was circulated inviting all discussions around i) what information and evidence would/should look like in the digital age; ii) existing and new mechanisms and methodologies to transfer cutting edge scientific knowledge to the policy domains; iii) issues of data collection, storage, processing and access; iv) cumulative learning in digital environments along with their potentials and challenges in policy context; and v) the interaction of domain expertise with digital processing technologies, also dealing with imperfect/uncertain data and the psychology and behaviour of decision. The conference was at the forefront of discussion of security and privacy issues, as well as the ethical and legal concerns in this space. The conference attracted 177 delegates from top UK universities, government departments and private and non-profit institutions and also attracted an international audience. A collection of papers from the conference was later published in a special issue of Policy & Internet.