As technologies advance, governments are looking for new and creative ways to leverage data to engage citizens and deliver services more efficiently. Recently, Waterloo Region selected healthy children and youth as its focus area for the Government of Canada’s 2018 Smart Cities Challenge. Waterloo Region is proposing to build Canada’s first real time children and youth dashboard, which will require data to be shared from multiple organizations in the public, private, and not-for profit sectors. In light of recent data breaches, many are skeptical of the promises of open data in addressing social and civic issues, especially when concerning children and youth. What if the data is hacked? How can data in the hands of government be trusted? How can we more effectively engage the tech sector in these kinds of civic discussions?
On May 29th, from 3pm-5pm, join like-minded peers and thought leaders in the smart cities space at an exclusive roundtable to debate these issues and more. Join representatives from the Region of Waterloo, UNICEF Canada and a local leading human-centred design consulting firm to discuss the use of technology to improve child and youth wellbeing, data sharing, privacy, human-technology interaction, and meaningful engagement and inclusion of the tech sector in civic issues.
For more information or to register for this event, please email jkolb@regionofwaterloo.ca.
