Project description

Employers have significant control over the data of their employees. To protect these, the usage of personally identifiable data of employees is forbidden by many worker's councils. This protection goes beyond what is provided in legislation such as the GDPR. This is not a perfect solution, though. On the one hand, nobody can truly verify that these rules are adhered to in practice. On the other hand, interesting use cases for data are prevented, even if employees would in principle be okay with them.

The research project “Inverse Transparency” researches a new form of data privacy to overcome this conflict. The basic idea is a simple principle: Data usage is not forbidden per se, but if data are accessed, every usage is logged in a tamper-proof way and made visible (transparent) to data sovereigns. This makes data misusage unattractive, as it can be retraced. Valuable and interesting uses for data, on the other hand, are enabled in a transparent way.

Publicity

• Data – Innovation – Privacy. Solving the Dilemma of the Digital Workplace with Inverse Transparency (German): Research report of the project with contributions from science, practice, and politics
  • „Thinking ahead on data use and data protection” (German): Interview with A. Boes, T. Hess und A. Pretschner
  • „Transparency by Design” (German): Article on the TUM contribution by Valentin Zieglmeier and Alexander Pretschner
  • Published 2022 by A. Boes, T. Hess, A. Pretschner, T. Kämpf, and E. Vogl
• Closing conference of the research project (Video / German)
  • Event on 24 May 2022 at the Software AG headquarter in Darmstadt
• Inverse Transparency in the workplace (German): Report from the practice laboratory
  • Interview with Valentin Zieglmeier (German)
  • Written in May/June 2021 by Jutta Witte on behalf of the research project
• „Good data, bad data” (German): Article about the practice laboratory at Software AG | FAZ
  • Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) on 6 February 2021
  • Article by Ina Lockhart
• „Example: Inverse Transparency”: Concept presentation | New Work Order – The Human Factor@Work
  • Trend study on behalf of IBA (industry association Büro und Arbeitswelt e.V.) and ORGATEC
  • Written 2020/21 by Birgit Gebhardt
• „Digital transparency – but employee-friendly” (German): Andreas Boes, Thomas Hess and Alexander Pretschner interviewed | Computerwoche
  • Computerwoche magazine on 31 August 2020
  • Interview by Nicola Holzapfel
• „Digital transparency on the job” (German): Andreas Boes, Thomas Hess and Alexander Pretschner interviewed | bidt
  • Interview on 17 February 2020

Publications

View the list of scientific publications on the project website.

Consortium

Funding authority