In less than 20 years, we have grown accustomed to sharing individual data, expecting individual data to be collected, and expecting immediate digital online experiences, whether they be information-seeking, buying, banking, entertainment, health, or just managing our individual lives and professions.
The rapid growth of the Internet of Things and everything “smart,” where the role of data is now integrated directly with the “physical” expectation, began less than 10 years ago. Leaders in the public and private sectors now talk about the use of sensors in public pools to respond to possible drownings, drones to manage hiking trails, sensors to detect failing trees and app-managed transportation trends with electric scooters and bikes. We are all aware of “smart health,” which is helping us personalize and manage our health, and smart buildings and homes that respond to our commands and our behaviors. Driverless vehicles are starting to move us around the city, and automation is taking on more and more tasks.
Perhaps with less general public awareness, smart manufacturing is using data to create better products, improve how products are managed and reduce the energy and materials used. It is doing so more safely and with less impact on the environment. In all of these functions, data is collected and then, in the form of algorithms, is being used to make decisions, drive experiences and take physical actions.
Using data is more about knowing what data you have, where it is, where it comes from and what to expect. We all like our online shopping experience, but it feels creepy when we find out what information is being stored without recourse. It is even worse when there is yet another large security breach and we realize just how much information is being stored. We’re now aware that we can be manipulated by bots, algorithms and advertisements on social media. We welcome the ratings on services but we are also seeing ourselves, our behaviors and our institutions being “rated” subtly, for example with online apps, games and quizzes designed to collect data, and explicitly by firms that collect data for the purposes of building products that compare and rate. We are growing to depend on our cars to have more and more useful safety features that actually manipulate the car, and we depend and expect our food products and consumer goods to be safe and to perform to specification.
A little dive into the data technology really brings out why we all need to have some data science savvy. There are no useful data analysis or pattern algorithms yet that have been successfully developed from bad data. It is also well known that an algorithm can give you a completely wrong answer when used outside the range of good data used to build it. You need the right data for the right objective; for example, you will never be able to build a viable diagnostic algorithm if you don’t have data when things go wrong. It is very difficult to understand what an algorithm may have learned to reach a conclusion, and one has to pay attention to how an algorithm unlearns so it can stay up to date with changing situations.
Cybersecurity is not just about technology — it is knowing your data.
We can all agree that people need to be wise digital consumers and users, which includes knowing when and how to ask questions about how data is being used, being able to recognize when data is being misused, and knowing how to speak up. But, because data is ubiquitous and data practices have run rampant, it’s difficult to know where to begin.
UCLA has become a leader with the policies and data practices with which to manage and avoid the negative impacts of data that we have all experienced and helping to demonstrate the need for people to be the architects of their own data. Whether personal, commercial or public, we all need to understand how to use data from and on behalf of others. But we have not solved this vast problem yet.
UCLA is also among those universities leading the research and teaching and driving the positive impacts of advanced Internet of Things, “smart” data technologies and the resurgence of artificial intelligence and machine learning. But the workforce to support these new opportunities is far from ready. As more and more universities, companies and governments rely on data to solve today’s and tomorrow’s problems, it raises the question: “What workforce will manage it all?” We need both new and retooled talent and jobs to meet the needs of this new world.
In response, UCLA has developed and nurtured a coordinated group of internal and external partnerships that have placed the university at the center of building programs and designing content necessary to create awareness and cultivate new skills. As importantly, UCLA is building a collaborative and a balanced education/commercial/government voice about living and working in a rapidly growing data-centric world. The UCLA IS Associates is a university-led partnership with the IT leadership of nearly 45 companies in the Southern California area. UCLA is also home (and Los Angeles is headquarters) to the national Clean Energy Smart Manufacturing Innovation Institute sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy, which emphasizes the use of data in manufacturing, bringing educational institutions, commercial companies and government offices together across the country. UCLA and the Smart Manufacturing Institute have partnered with the Youth Policy Institute of LA to build educational and professional opportunities in tech for disadvantaged youth and families.
UCLA Bruintech is an internal coalition of IT managers and frontline technologists across UCLA departments who combine efforts to run tech awareness and training programs for UCLA faculty, students and staff. The Institute for Digital Research and Education brings researchers and graduate students together on advanced data and computational research. Instructional designers are now being hired and trained in the roles of data for online education, including ensuring access for students with disabilities and adhering to and communicating guidelines for educational practices on the use of data collected. Important programs balance technology and practice. Women in Technology, Young Tech Professionals, training pathways and economic development with tech, and tech for disadvantaged youth have all been emphasized. At UCLA there is a core set of ethics about the use of data established by the Data Privacy and Protection Board, building on ethical privacy and data practices developed nationally.
We are only at just the tip of the iceberg with data, information and algorithms, which are already pervasive and affecting everyone. “Pervasiveness” is in fact where data and algorithms draw their power and opportunity. In this sense, data has become the “new oil” and algorithms have become the “new oil wells” for individual, public and private business, government, infrastructure, environment and social opportunity. The access to and the democratization of data, technology, knowledge and innovation are leading to new opportunities — opportunities that can arise from building expertise and proficiency on the use of data and knowing how to tap into an infinite array of public and private partnership possibilities created through the exchange of data.
These opportunities come as double-edged swords, with the possibility of profound negative impacts. Pervasiveness needed to come first. Impacts are already way beyond transformational and life-changing. We now need to learn how to harness the power and value of data in the right ways and protect it from the wrong ways.
Everyone needs be data users and data architects.
At UCLA, Jim Davis is vice provost of IT and chief academic technology officer with accountability for universitywide planning and strategic investment in research and educational technologies, mobility applications, privacy/security, and internal and external community partnerships. Davis heads the UCLA Office of Information Technology, which oversees CESMII, UCLA’s Institute for Digital Research and Education (IDRE) and UCLA IS Associates. He co-founded the Smart Manufacturing Leadership Coalition (SMLC) and has led UCLA’s leadership role in forming DOE’s Clean Energy Smart Manufacturing Innovation Institute (CESMII), the 9th Manufacturing USA Institute and the 3rd DOE institute to be awarded. Davis has led the Institute’s business and technology approach, road map, Smart Manufacturing platform architecture and cybersecurity strategy.
Davida Johnson is the managing director for the UCLA Office of Information Technology (OIT). She oversees community partnership programs and initiatives internal and external to UCLA that focus on driving initiatives for tech awareness and knowledge sharing, talent pipeline development, and promoting ideation and innovation among the UCLA and Southern California tech communities. Johnson also has oversight over the OIT support offices that provide services to 70-plus staff members through human resources, organizational development, communications and finance. Having earned a joint Bachelor’s of Science degree from M.I.T. in Humanities (Creative Writing) and Computer Science Engineering, Johnson's diverse background helps to bridge the gap and communicate with both technical and nontechnical people, a necessary attribute in her current role at UCLA. She is an avid supporter of women in technology and leads the UCLA Women in Technology initiative, which she co-launched in 2015.
