Location
Online
Event Website
https://hicss.hawaii.edu/
Start Date
3-1-2023 12:00 AM
End Date
7-1-2023 12:00 AM
Description
In 2022, StateU, a large public university in the United States, embarked on a project to collect and use personal pronouns in its information systems. The project lead and functional expert was StateU's Administrative Leader. As she prepared for the first project meeting, she reflected on lessons learned from a past project she led to expand the collection of student gender data to record legal sex, gender identity, and sexual orientation. That project involved navigating challenging decisions about user interface design, underlying databases, data privacy and security, and reporting, underpinned by the desire to best serve minoritized and vulnerable populations. She recalled that: "A society with more data about LGBTQ people is not automatically a society that is better for LGBTQ people". She wondered if collecting pronoun data was the right choice in the first place.
Recommended Citation
Stelmaszak, Marta and Wagner, Erica, "Teaching Case Study: Gender Data Trouble in a Student Information System" (2023). Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences 2023 (HICSS-56). 2.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/hicss-56/os/social_impact/2
Teaching Case Study: Gender Data Trouble in a Student Information System
Online
In 2022, StateU, a large public university in the United States, embarked on a project to collect and use personal pronouns in its information systems. The project lead and functional expert was StateU's Administrative Leader. As she prepared for the first project meeting, she reflected on lessons learned from a past project she led to expand the collection of student gender data to record legal sex, gender identity, and sexual orientation. That project involved navigating challenging decisions about user interface design, underlying databases, data privacy and security, and reporting, underpinned by the desire to best serve minoritized and vulnerable populations. She recalled that: "A society with more data about LGBTQ people is not automatically a society that is better for LGBTQ people". She wondered if collecting pronoun data was the right choice in the first place.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/hicss-56/os/social_impact/2