The most mentioned resources and tips were as follows:

Attending or following in person meetups and conferences: they provide a good way of understanding what the most relevant topics are, and can also help you connect with people who work in similar areas as you. A few examples are PyConDE, the local CorrelAid chapters or our Community Corner Sessons.

Following specific people or websites: these can be more general websites like The Verge or The Register or specific people, like for example the co-creator of the Django Web Framework, Simon Willison.

Reading newsletters or listening to podcasts: some examples here are Data Engineering News and “Wading through AI” series.

Implementing things yourself: this can be a new approach, a new model, running a small model locally. It will help with better understanding the news you are reading, and doing so might even be useful for your job. Moreover, depending on how much time you have for investing in this, you can then share your findings on a platform of your choice, which will be useful to other people who could be having the same problems as you.

For staying up to date with research: one can check out a tool like Scholar Inbox which provides a personalized newsletter with your topics of interest, or various journals, such as ACM.

The above examples provide some ideas on how to get started and show what our community uses to stay up to date with the latest news. What is important to remember is that keeping up with the latest AI news does not need to be overwhelming, but rather fun! Use our suggested resources or find new ones, implement things, or listen to podcasts during your workouts. Try to find whatever works for you and try to do so relatively consistently, by allocating a specific time slot for it each week.

When I saw this at the event, I thought about the important role that ground truth plays in machine learning. Without getting too philosophical, the omitted part could be used to criticise machine learning: the data we use to train models only covers part of reality, and sometimes not accurately (think of biases). Ground truth is merely a manifestation of truth; ground truth is an imperfect representation of something that the model is then asked to generalise.

On the other hand, without getting too anti-capitalist, some of the talks could have been summed up by the motto: "Money is godlike, and we want it to appear immediately". However, I am grateful that this event was organised, because as last year, the invited speakers had diverse backgrounds, covered a wide range of topics and I learned a lot.

If AI is the new electricity, where is the surge protection?

The opening session on agentic AI was held by a lightning-protection and surge-protection company from Bavaria (Dehn). Therefore it was a low hanging fruit for the speaker to use the Andrew Ng quote "AI is the new electricity". I felt like there is additional joke potential that not only draws a parallel to electricity but also between AI Hype and surge protection.

Dehm developed an internal system that automates quote generation for the sales team: a custom retrieval-augmented stack with templated PDF creation driven by a knowledge graph. They claim around a 60% reduction in turnaround time. The speaker's framing was: We need Operating systems for agents versus isolated tools.

In the next talk on digital transformation, there was a slide with a presumably AI-generated image that caught my attention: a mechanically impossible rigid scale, with the potential of AI on one side and its risks on the other. While it's possible that I simply don't understand mechanics well enough, this is too ironic an example of hallucination risks and generative AI's lack of real-world understanding to leave out. The talk's better moments argued that productive AI value emerges from the interplay of data, domain knowledge, and generative models, not from any of the three alone.

What renewable energy and lightweight ML models have in common

The talk by FORRS opened with a finding that is both unfashionable and correct: lightweight ML with well-selected features can outperform complex architectures in predicting BESS (battery energy storage system) market dynamics. In the end, feature selection matters more than model choice. A striking fact I hadn't known: fossil energy providers sometimes offer power at negative prices, simply to undercut renewables on the market, much like complex neural models try to brute-force their way to results through raw compute and dataset size.

A researcher from Universität Hamburg picked up exactly where FORRS left off, in a talk called "The right model for the right time". If no single model works across all regimes in the energy pricing market, identify the regimes first, then route each to a specialist.

EnBW, an energy provider, gave the most politically interesting talk of the day. It was less about data science itself, and more about AI regulation, though it can be read as a broader argument about regulation in general. Their position, as I understood it: regulation is too complex, creates too much overhead, and would benefit from simplification. Good regulation has to account for the implementation level. Done well, it creates a level playing field, prevents a race to the bottom, and is itself a quality signal.

Where it got a little naive, in my view, is the claim that regulation is unnecessary in some cases because industry shares the same values as government and society and would therefore do the right thing without needing to document it. This is somewhat undermined by their earlier point about needing a level playing field precisely because of capitalistic pressures. If we all share the same values, why do we need laws at all?

Glass Floors and other important issues

A weird but somehow cool talk: ASB Glassfloor on the interactive glass sports floor. Glass floors have elastic properties that hardwood floors don't and the floor itself becomes a digital display that can display lines for different types of sports. I was reminded of Ubers "That's a bus"-moment, when I heard the latter, because that's something you can also do with cones, tape or chalk. But on top of that you can play dynamic training routines and you get sensors embedded in the floor that collect data for training analytics. Most importantly though, the floor becomes a new display for advertisements.

A researcher from the Charité brought the issue of rare diseases to our attention. With rare diseases comes a methodological problem: highly imbalanced class distributions and small sample sizes. This means that there is a high false positive rate for rare diseases and in consequence that symptoms are not a reliable cue for diagnosis. The Screen4Care initiative is lobbying for genetic newborn screening to shorten the path from symptom to diagnosis. Additionally they strive to improve data flow between hospitals through establishing a common data format, so data is sufficiently standardized for research and development of predictive algorithms.

GMDS (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Medizinische Informatik, Biometrie und Epidemiologie e.V.) and GI (Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V.) followed with a similar talk about how precision medicine requires a solid data basis. Their approach to increase available data is to promote the format of minimal standardized basic dataset. This dataset should be made available to allow translational research.

Steadforce held a talk with the interesting title: "From models to decisions: Data Science in sensitive medical contexts". The speaker shared the observation that data scientists often just optimize models, but that the impact of the model happens elsewhere. Another parallel to the Goethe quote in the beginning: it was said that ground truth is fuzzy and that models learn systems, not a disorder itself. I had to think about this well known example of a prediction algorithm that at first seemed to perform well in detecting tumors on images, but then it turned out to mostly have learned whether there was a ruler for measuring the tumor in the image.

The line that stuck with me: "Responsibility starts when predictions become decisions". A ML practitioner is not only responsible for improving metrics of model optimization, but monitoring also needs to cover output, performance, and governance. This requires observation of decisions, to evaluate impact, and to design for adaptation.

Metaverse on steroids

A researcher from TUM opened the final cluster of talks with a report on an impressive project: The Global Building Atlas, which has mapped 663 million building footprints worldwide. Earth Observation techniques made this possible, drawing on open satellite data from SENTINEL-2. The speaker noted that open satellite data often lacks the labeling needed to make it truly useful, and that their building atlas is laying a foundation for further research. For instance, one can now calculate how much energy we could produce by installing solar panels on every building in the world: 1.1 to 3.3 times the global energy demand. The speaker also raised a broader concern: while Earth observation reveals a great deal about the issues we face, these insights are too often not translated into policy.

The researcher also reported on the foundation models they are building. Foundation earth observation models allow the adaptation of a model to downstream tasks such as land-use classification or flood detection. A crazy model the speaker mentioned is DOFA-CLIP, which basically semantically indexes earth. This means that any patch of the planet, observed by radar, optical, multispectral, or hyperspectral sensors, can be embedded into a shared space alongside natural language. Instead of querying satellite archives by coordinates, dates, and sensor type, you can simply ask: "find solar farms under construction in Southern Europe," or "where is deforestation expanding into protected areas?"

A researcher from GFZ Helmholtz-Zentrum für Geoforschung started with the question whether we could have predicted the "Year without Summer" with today's means and what would be needed to create a digital twin of earth for running simulations of such events. Some of the technical challenges: missing data and harmonising data from many sources. Long story short, building a digital twin of earth is incredibly difficult, but people are working on it, for example within the Destination Earth Project.

And then another researcher from LMU closed the day with a talk titled: High Quality Data for Training and Alignment of AI Models. The alignment problem was framed as a survey research task that has well understood issues. Data annotation can show biases known from that area. For example, the longer a data worker labels hateful content, the more they get used to it and tend to underestimate severity. Also, data workers have a certain background not representative for society overall.

Alignment is also related to survey research in a different way. More and more often, LLM generations are used as data for survey research. How models are aligned obviously impacts the feasibility of that. The speaker mentioned a paper on voting outcome prediction: since LLMs are trained on huge amounts of text reflecting human attitudes, opinions, and political discourse, maybe they've absorbed enough about "what kind of person votes how" that they can stand in for real survey respondents. But no, GPT-3.5 could not accurately predict German voting behavior.

If last year's GDSD left me thinking civil society needs to watch how business actors translate AI hype into actual value, this year sharpened the thought. The most useful talks for a civil-society lens were the ones where someone had picked the right tool for a specific problem rather than the hyped one, and where tools were assessed in the context of their actual use. Open data continues to prove its worth, and data standardisation remains an important issue.

The program and some of the talk materials can be accessed here.

Reasons for self-hosting include that it simply is cheaper. For example, OpenProject would cost around $212 per month as a SaaS offer, while running it on a VPS, we pay below 10€. While this requires set-up and maintenance time, the tools we discuss below simplify self-hosting immensely while ensuring some best practices are adhered to.

The foundation of our self-hosting is provided by Hetzner in the form of very reasonably priced virtual private servers (VPS), S3-compatible object storage and DNS management. Additionally, we utilize their server backup functionality for a primary backup layer in case everything goes wrong.

Infrastructure as code for reproducibility

Another cool thing about Hetzner is that they maintain an OpenTofu Provider. OpenTofu, a fork of Terraform, is an infrastructure as code (IaC) tool that allows you to automate the provisioning of your infrastructure by defining it declaratively.

Our CorrelAid Infrastructure as Code (i.e. CAIAC) repository is where we add new VPS and subdomains. Each VPS is provisioned with cloud-init scripts, added to our Netbird Virtual Private Network, and configured with uptime checks via UptimeRobot. For both Netbird and UptimeRobot, their free plans are sufficient. Using a VPN allows us to keep SSH ports closed and do fine-grained access management.

Coolify for easier self-hosting

A typical challenge of self-hosting is maintaining and keeping an overview over servers and services deployed on them. It's like loading a kayak with multiple unlabeled dry bags: everything's in there somewhere, but good luck finding your repair kit to patch a leak when you're on the water. Having an overview over your kayak's inventory is critical!

That’s why our CAIAC becomes really cool when we let Coolify manage the provisioned VPS. Coolify is a self-hosting platform that lets you deploy and manage applications through a browser-based UI. Under the hood, it uses Docker but abstracts away much of the complexity while still offering enough customization options for our needs. Naturally, Coolify itself is self-hosted by us as well.

Coolify includes handy features such as rolling updates for continuous deployment (required for our website), automated backup of databases, notifications when servers become unreachable, HTTPS automation and server patching, to name only a few.

We have extended Coolify's functionality with two custom tools: an update checker that notifies us when newer Docker images are available, and a dynamic infrastructure overview, including projected pricing, that pulls data from the remote OpenTofu state file as well as Coolify's and Netbird's APIs.

Beyond the tooling, we also maintain a set of self-hosting standards that guide us when spinning up new projects. These cover access control (at least two people with admin rights per service), secrets management (never hardcoding tokens and instead use Infisical and Bitwarden), shell history hygiene to prevent credential leaks, and a strict policy of always testing backup restores after setting them up. Each service also gets its own Slack channel for maintenance announcements and coordination.

Self-hosting isn't free in terms of time and attention, and our cool CAIAC has been through some rough waters, but for CorrelAid, the cost savings, control, and learning have been well worth it.

If you would like to discuss self-hosting, or need guidance on whether self-hosting is a good choice for your Non-Profit, feel free to contact us.

Disclosure: CorrelAid is supported by Hetzner through credits for their cloud.

After CorrelCon, we asked each other: What was your highlight? And no one had THE answer. Because there were simply too many special moments, big and small, that weekend. And since this blog could theoretically go on forever, but attention spans are not quite so infinite, here are a few selected impressions that particularly stuck in our minds:

✨ 3 days of Data4Good: workshops, discussions, and small talks on the side

On Saturday and Sunday, everything revolved around data science, tech, and engagement – with diverse sessions and lively discussions:

Data4Good projects in focus

We gained exciting insights into both recently completed and current projects, from dashboard development for Offener Kanal Merseburg, to LLM-based text analysis for the Babylotse project, to automated evaluations for the mentoring organization Sindbad. It became clear that good scoping, transparent communication with NPOs, and expectation management are key to project success.

Hands-on Tech and Tools

In several sessions, participants explored DuckDB, Python dependency management with uv, and data validation in Python. The session on Svelte and Marimo showed how data can be prepared for the web in a barrier-free, high-performance, and accessible way, and inspired participants to try out new things right away. At the same time, the workshop on UX for data scientists highlighted the importance of taking the time to understand the challenge and sketch out the idea before starting development.

Data Literacy and Open Data

With the “Datenatlas Zivilgesellschaft“, the Bertelsmann Foundation presented its new metadata portal for open data from the non-profit sector, including a demo and discussion on opportunities, obstacles, and further development. The Ethical Book Club provided a space for critical exchange on AI, regulation, and social responsibility. Together, we discussed the risks of generative AI, power structures, and how public welfare-oriented engagement can counteract purely profit-oriented developments.

✨ We have a fantastic community!

Obviously, we already knew that, but seeing how warmly everyone greeted each other on Friday evening (regardless of whether they had been with us since the beginning or had only joined CorrelAid a week ago) and how difficult it was to interrupt conversations for a quick hello proved once again that we have a great community!  Whether at breakfast in the youth hostel, on walks by the lake, or over coffee together at Villa Rheinburg, there was plenty of time for personal conversations, reunions with old acquaintances, and getting to know new faces. Some participants met for the first time outside of Slack, while others celebrated their personal 10-year CorrelAid anniversary.

✨ 12 hours of conference not enough: anniversary evening on Saturday

Saturday evening was all about “10 years of CorrelAid”: with a champagne reception, improv theater, a look back at the association's history, and a panel discussion on the topic of "Idea. Iteration. Impact." Even after a long conference day, the discussions and celebrations continued – the reserved seats weren't even enough...

✨ CorrelAid can be puzzled

On Friday evening, small groups worked on puzzles. The goal: an overview of all current Data4Good projects, the CorrelAidX logo with our local groups, and much more. And along the way, we realized once again: involvement with CorrelAid has so many different facets that you always learn new things!

🗣️ Voices from the community

“CorrelAid is such a great environment because there are so many cool people. It sometimes feels a bit like a big get-together among friends.” – Hendrik

💚 Thank you!

This CorrelCon would not have been possible without...

• the session leaders who shared their knowledge and sparked discussions,
• the fantastic organizing team, who spent weeks planning, organizing, and coordinating,
• the exciting city tour of Konstanz and the data walk of Smart Green City Konstanz,
• the financial support from KNIME and GEBIT, who made a weekend of this magnitude possible,
• and of course: all of you, who bring CorrelAid to life with your participation and commitment!

🚀 What's next?

After the last 10 years, we are looking forward to the next 10 years: with new drive for the local groups, new formats such as CorrelLAB, and many more exciting projects, we want to continue making data and data science accessible to civil society in the future.

We look forward to everything that lies ahead!

🎬 View the film of the event
📖 Read more here
📸 Browse the photo gallery

Sad you missed the last Datendialog? Don’t worry! The next event will take place on 12.+13.09 in Gütersloh—and you can now register to join us! It’s your chance to work on exciting real-world data challenges and make an impact alongside passionate volunteers.

👉 Join the next Datendialog!

Some presentations were not relevant to civil society, such as a presentation on revenue management at SIXT about what to show customers during the selection process when renting a car. The diversity of this event was demonstrated when such talks were followed by a talk modeling extreme weather events in the wake of climate change. This was accomplished with the SMILE (Single-Model Initial-condition Large Ensemble) approach, which combines multiple simulations with different initial conditions to account for the chaotic nature of climate systems. A deep learning model was trained using high-resolution climate data, allowing a better understanding of the patterns of extreme weather events that are now occurring more frequently. Although we were reminded of the urgency of tackling climate change, the only mention of deep learning's high energy consumption was in this presentation.

Why sharing is caring, but not necessarily daring

In a session that also focused on solutions to climate change, we learned about Federated Machine Learning (FML) and its applications in renewable energy production and medical research. FML is a decentralized approach to training machine learning models, where data remains local, and only model updates—such as weights—are shared with a central global model. This ensures data privacy and security while enabling collaborative learning across multiple systems.

For example, local instances could include wind turbines, where FML can optimize parameters like orientation to maximize energy output, or hospitals, where patient data can be analyzed to improve diagnostics and treatments without exposing sensitive information. It was suggested that modern hospitals should establish dedicated data science departments to fully leverage the potential of such technologies.

Initiatives like the German Portal for Medical Research Data are improving the availability, resolution, and quality of health data. This can drive progress in data-intensive approaches, such as speeding up the diagnosis of rare diseases, advancing precision medicine, and enabling genome-wide association studies (GWAS). GWAS are observational studies designed to identify associations between genetic variants and diseases, which provides opportunities to develop targeted treatments.

The potential of data in medicine shows that sharing data is important. In an interesting talk about data protection laws in Germany and the EU, data was compared to property, which also comes with obligations to society according to the German constitution. Data protection laws were likened to traffic regulations: just as a digitalized society cannot function without data sharing, it also cannot function without proper regulations to ensure privacy and security.

A talk about advances in Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) provided a different perspective on publicly available data, mainly on social media. The speaker highlighted how generative AI enables the transformation of unstructured data—such as text, images, and videos—into actionable insights that can support law enforcement efforts. However, I would add that these same capabilities can also be exploited by malicious actors. On a more positive note, a different speaker recounted the story of the Panama Papers, a leaked data source containing large amounts of text that required hundreds of journalists to analyze in 2016. Today, LLMs could considerably speed that up this analysis.

In a talk by a conflict researcher, it was demonstrated that leveraging publicly available data does not always require the use of generative AI. Since commercial satellite imagery is often too expensive for research and civil society organizations, the researchers in this project turned to publicly available satellite imagery provided by the European Space Agency. Using this data, they developed a model capable of reliably detecting explosion-related building destruction. The model's effectiveness was validated using the 2020 explosion in the port of Beirut as a case study. This tool can also be applied to independently assess the impacts of conflicts, such as the destruction caused by Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

How to use generative AI to generate value

The buzzword of the event was undoubtedly AI, primarily associated with generative models. Image generation was highlighted as a versatile tool, applied in both industrial and fashion contexts. In the fashion industry, for example, image generation can be guided by clothing features, such as color, that have been identified as successful. A significant focus was also placed on language models, with multiple mentions of custom chatbots based on Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), designed to assist employees in various tasks.

Finetuning open language models, such as the LLaMA models by Meta, has become a common practice, allowing these models to be tailored for specific tasks or domains, thereby improving their performance and relevance in specialized applications. For certain specialized use cases, smaller language models can also be employed effectively. Another key topic was quantization, a technique that reduces the computational and memory demands of language models, making them more efficient and accessible without a significant loss in accuracy. Additionally, data curation, particularly through the generation of synthetic data, emerged as a promising approach to enhance model performance and address challenges posed by limited or incomplete datasets. However, despite the ability of models to learn even from limited data, one speaker advocated for maintaining traditional machine learning practices, such as train/test splits.

Language models are increasingly being integrated into agentic systems, which involve multiple specialized models working collaboratively or equipping models with external tools that have compatible interfaces. The concept of "Large Action Models" was introduced, combining symbolic reasoning with language models to improve their ability to execute complex, multi-step tasks.

In conclusion, the German Data Science Days 2025 offered an interesting glimpse into the diverse applications and implications of AI and data science across industries and research. While the event was largely shaped by the ongoing hype around AI, it also provided valuable lessons on how companies derive real value from AI applications and tackle the challenges these technologies present. It is essential however to translate business logic into solutions that actually drive positive change. Furthermore, as somewhat freed from business logic, civil society has a responsibility to reflect on potential negative impacts of new technologies, especially if other societal actors do not live up to their responsibilities. To end on a hopeful note, the conference reaffirmed that data is one powerful tool to enable society to tackle many problems.

The program and some of the talk materials can be accessed here.

5 exciting Data4Good projects...

... were implemented by CorrelAid volunteers in 2024 through their work together with various civil society organizations! And the first two projects for 2025 are already in the pipeline.

We have jointly developed data solutions for these challenges:

• Automated reporting for evaluation data from Chancenwerk's educational work
• Hypothesis-based testing of assumptions for the further development of the Caritas Training Academy's digital offerings
• Text data analysis with LLMs for the survey of families with babies in Frankfurt for Babylotse
• AI-supported categorization of open-ended interview responses for In Safe Hands e.V.
• Interactive maps: Visualization of climate-relevant changes on local waters with Klima*kollektiv.

We would like to thank all the volunteers who were and are involved in the projects, everyone who applied and our project coordination team for project scoping and team selection.

(Overview of the model from the project with In safe hands e.V.)

Learning and growing with data: Over 79 participants in our educational courses

In 2024, interest in our two educational courses was high, as was the motivation of the participants!

• Our “R Learning” course took place in two sessions with a total of 37 participants.
• Our new “Data Literacy” course got off to a successful start - in two sessions with a total of 42 participants. With this new course, we are offering an introduction to basic data skills without any programming requirements.

A huge thank you to our volunteer tutors who have made this growth possible and congratulations to everyone who has successfully completed one of our courses!

The next round of courses will start soon: you can sign up for “Data Literacy” here and “Learning R” here.

CorrelAid and Civic Data Lab

We also had an eventful 12 months in the Civic Data Lab project, which is funded by the BMFSFJ and implemented together with the German Informatics Society, the German Caritas Association and us.

Our highlights:

• The motivated and constantly growing community and event formats, such as the Espresso Talks and the online workshop “Gemeinsam machen”, which promote exchange between civil society actors. As well as the CDL Barcamp, but more on that in a moment.
• Lots of exciting data consultation hours: Several times a week, we offer advice on data culture, management, tools, funding and networking in the Civic Data Lab.
• The implementation of data projects for the common good, such as the Demokratieföderrechner, Leerstandsmelder, Kommuki, Demokratie Wegweiser, all.txt, output monitoring with Ten Sing Germany and prototype development for CiviCRM.

We are very pleased that the Civic Data Lab will continue to be funded in 2025. If you are not yet familiar with the project, please visit our website or register in our community. Or listen to our latest podcast episode - where Nevena, Leo and Isabel talk to Jasmin about the work in the Civic Data Lab.

Two Datendialoge with the Bertelsmann Stiftung

Eight participants from our network took part in the Focus Data Dialogue in Berlin in March and contributed many new ideas for the work of the Bertelsmann Stiftung's projects with their data. The 4th Data Dialogue focused on data from the Wegweiser Kommune data portal.

The 5th Data Dialogue took place in Hamburg in June 2024 and brought together over 60 participants from the Data4Good network. A civil society project was also included for the first time. In collaboration with the Bertelsmann Data Science Lab and CorrelAid, solutions were developed for three important data challenges:

• FörderFunke: an app to simplify access to government benefits, supported by CorrelAid volunteers.
• eupinions: Support for the visualization of extensive survey data.
• Wegweiser Kommune: Integration of population density layers for pharmacy distance measurements.

The evening ended with a successful networking event and inspiring discussions - thank you to everyone involved! Watch the video summary of the event here: https://lnkd.in/egdbUEqr

Want to be there next time? The 6th Data Dialogue will take place in Berlin on March 14 and 15, 2025. You are welcome to register now!

One week Data Science Scholarship with IOMIDS

In collaboration with the Institute of Machine Intelligence & Data Science, we once again offered the Data Science Scholarship in April to promote training in data science and AI for volunteer purposes. The scholarship included full coverage of course fees for IOMIDS' Data Science Bootcamp. In our blog, our volunteer Max tells us what he took away from the bootcamp.

Core Team Retreat: brainstorming and impact reflection

In April 2024, we met again in Kassel for the Core Team Retreat to brainstorm, plan, discuss and enjoy some analog team time together. During the retreat, we worked intensively on the question What is our impact? The first attempt to focus on our impact led to lots of ideas, but also a slight feeling of “getting bogged down”.

In the impact sprint from May to July, we therefore tackled this important topic in a more structured way. With the help of advice from Johannes from Finding Futures, we further concretized our work and broke it down into three areas of impact:

• Participation of marginalized groups in data science.
• Empowering NPOs to use data critically and purposefully.
• Enabling effective engagement, both for volunteers and for NPOs.

An important step to focus our goals more clearly!

Exchange around the “campfire” at the Civic Data Lab Barcamp

One of the highlights of the year was definitely the Civic Data Lab Barcamp, which took place live in Berlin in May and brought together almost 80 committed participants from Germany and Austria. In an open format - from spontaneously registered sessions to planned talks - we discussed topics ranging from practical implementation issues to societal visions.

Some of the highlights:

🔦 Code of Conduct AI

🥾 Linked open data

🎒 LLMs, SLMs, RAG

🌱 AI Washing

An inspiring day that leaves you wanting more! We are already looking forward to the second edition in 2025!

CorrelAid on tour

For our Data4Good mission, our volunteers and team members also traveled all over Germany in 2024. Here is a (certainly incomplete) overview of our stops:

• Digital Social Summit in January Berlin: Together with our colleagues from the Civic Data Lab, we hosted a workshop on the topic: “Between Excel and AI: finding effective and feasible data projects”
• 100xDigital Community Convention of the German Foundation for Engagement and Volunteering in Essen in February: Here, too, we were on site with the Civic Data Lab team to exchange ideas and network.
• At the Open Data Day in Münster in March, CorrelAider Luke Bölling gave a presentation on the potential of open data for sustainable urban development.
• The DATA festival in March was a good opportunity to continue the discussion about the benefits of data and AI for effective solutions in civil society. Leo contributed to this with a presentation on “Leveraging data and AI for social impact”
• In May, we attended the German Foundation Day of the Association of German Foundations, Europe's largest foundation congress, in Hanover - a great opportunity to exchange ideas and network with exciting people and their projects. Thanks to the German Foundation for Engagement and Volunteering, we had the opportunity to present our TransformD project, the Data Literacy course.
• We were a network partner of the University:Future Festival - Tales of Tomorrow, where the question of the future of digital academic education was discussed.
• At the Digital Summit in Frankfurt, we presented the Civic Data Lab together with the Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V. (German Informatics Society). As a representative of civil society, it was particularly important to us to bring in the perspectives and needs of civil society, especially those civil society organizations with fewer resources.
• At the Women in Data Science Conference in Munich in October, we also had the opportunity to highlight the possibilities of data science for good causes with a presentation (thanks Ann-Kristin!)

Thank you for the many inspiring conversations all over Germany!

150 participants at the Hack and Harvest Hackathon Konstanz

Think. Hack. Innovate - this was the motto under which we organized the Hack and Harvest Hackathon in June together with cyberLAGO e.V., farm - Gründung & Innovation, the City of Constance and UFG e.V. Over 150 participants contributed their ideas and technical skills to numerous projects. Two days of intensive brainstorming and coding led to inspiring solutions and new partnerships. A big thank you to everyone who took part!

The planning for the next Hack and Harvest Hackathon has already started - so stay tuned!

Team growth and a big step towards professionalization

In May, Lena takes over community management, collaboration with the Bertelsmann Stiftung and tasks in the Civic Data Lab as a parental leave replacement for Isabel. Samuel and Jonas join the education team as working students and support the implementation of the R Lernen courses.

Thanks to aqtivator funding, CorrelAid is growing even further in summer 2024: Antje starts as a data literacy officer, focusing on revising and implementing the “Data Literacy” course. And we will be able to employ a management team for the first time: Johanna becomes CorrelAid's first office manager and takes charge of modernizing our financial processes and accounting, working closely with our CFO Marco. Our new managing directors, Ann-Kristin and Zoé, will work closely with the board, acquire new funding and represent CorrelAid in dealings with foundations. An important step for the further professionalization of CorrelAid e.V.!

Community time at CorrelCon 2024 in Munich

CorrelCon took place in October - CorrelAid's annual community conference and definitely one of our highlights! ✨

Three days full of intensive workshops on tech, coding and data science, where knowledge was shared and skills were developed. But it was about much more: the exchange within the community, the networking and the creative impulses - including some funny dinoprompts 🦖 - made the event really special. It was great to meet so many committed people - thank you to everyone who attended and contributed to this great weekend!

A special thank you, of course, to the organizing team: Thank you for making CorrelCon possible again this year, Sören, Rahel, Regina, Lena and Nevena! 💚

Finally, a special thanks to Mindfuel for supporting CorrelCon. Your contribution strengthens our mission and enables us to make events like this even more enriching!

The birth of the Datendinos

Over dinner in Constance, Zoé, the current managing director of CorrelAid, and association member Sören came up with a special idea: inspired by a friend's dinosaur sticker booklet, they came up with the idea of using data dinosaurs as mascots to communicate complex data topics.

Thanks to AI technology, the idea quickly became reality: a simple “Data Dinosaur” prompt generated three cute dinosaurs with diagrams, which first enriched CorrelAid's life as digital stickers and later even as a limited edition sticker.

The creativity of the community seems to know no bounds and the data dinosaurs can now be found everywhere in the CorrelAid universe: on small wooden dinosaur name tags at CorrelCon, in community workshops and presentations, as Slack emojis, and so on and so forth. We are excited to see which cute data dinosaurs will see the light of day and where we will encounter them in the future!

CorrelCompact makes it easier to enter the world of data

The new workshop series “CorrelCompact” has been launched! The format complements our educational courses “R Learning” and “Understanding and Using Data”, but is also intended as an introduction to the world of data for anyone interested and involved in civil society. In addition to a short input on topics such as Kickstart in AI, data quality, data storytelling or discrimination through data, the focus is on the exchange between committed people, regardless of whether they are full-time or voluntary workers.

Have you seen it yet? In our [collection of educational materials](CorrelCompact makes it easier to enter the world of data The new workshop series “CorrelCompact” has been launched! The format complements our educational courses “R Learning” and “Understanding and Using Data”, but is also intended as an introduction to the world of data for anyone interested and involved in civil society. In addition to a short input on topics such as Kickstart in AI, data quality, data storytelling or discrimination through data, the focus is on the exchange between committed people, regardless of whether they are full-time or voluntary workers. Have you seen it yet? In our collection of educational materials, you will find the content of the CorrelCompact workshops, materials from our other educational formats and other resources. ), you will find the content of the CorrelCompact workshops, materials from our other educational formats and other resources.

The data incubator: comprehensive training and project support for NPOs

Over the course of the year, we have invested a lot of time and thought in the development of the data incubator. Data incubator? Behind this is a concept that meaningfully interlinks the three pillars of CorrelAid - projects, education and community - and can thus provide civil society organizations with even more comprehensive and targeted support. How exactly does this work?

📚 The data incubator starts with three modular courses for non-profit organizations and volunteer data scientists, with special consideration given to the different levels of knowledge and experience of the course participants.

🎯 The courses form the basis for the subsequent project phase with the participating organizations and volunteers, which lasts around six months. Throughout the entire time in the data incubator, we continuously create opportunities for exchange and networking. We are already looking forward to the kick-off and the many exciting organizations and data projects that we can support on their data journey with the Data Incubator!

Proposals and demands for policymakers

💡 Together with 30 civil society organizations under the leadership of D64 - Center for Digital Progress, we are developing a Code of Conduct for the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in civil society. The aim of the project is to support civil society organizations in critically reflecting on the use of AI and strengthening core values such as freedom, justice and solidarity.

📝 A white paper has already been published on the area of tension “Freedom and AI”.

🤝 Together with other civil society organizations, we have started work on the second white paper, which will be published in the spring. - This time with a focus on justice. In September, when the German government's new “security package” threatened to restrict the right to asylum and introduce mass biometric surveillance, we joined 26 other organizations in supporting D64's demands to all members of the German Bundestag: Defend human rights, stop biometric facial recognition!

Team change in the mentoring program

Jasmin Classen and Nicolas Fröhlich have been in charge of the mentoring program for many years - a big thank you for their great work! Now there are new faces here too: Polina Mosolova and Marcus Wurster are the new volunteer team, with additional support from Linda Peitz and David Kollmann. We wish you lots of fun and success as the new coordinators of the mentoring program.

Not yet familiar with the mentoring program? Here, mentors and mentees have the unique opportunity to discuss a wide range of topics. Be it about the next career step, an upcoming decision or simply about technological or data-related topics. Sounds interesting? Have a look here!

New ethics committee and new board for the Data4Good mission

This year's CorrelAid General Assembly on December 10, 2024 brought a number of changes. In addition to the election of a new board and a new ethics committee, a new bylaws committee was set up to revise the bylaws before the 2025 general meeting. Changes to the membership fees were also decided: Active membership now costs €60/year, reduced €30/year, and the minimum contribution for supporting members is €10/month (€120/year). From 2025, there will also be a paid chair of the Executive Board instead of a management board for the first time.

Another highlight: September 2025 will see the launch of the Data Incubator, our new flagship project that combines educational courses and Data4Good projects.

We would like to thank the previous board members Sebastian Zezulka, Rahel Becker, Marco Lax, Roven Goerke, Sarah Risse, Rahkakavee Baskaran and Ann-Kristin Vester for their fantastic work and great commitment - you were a great team! The newly elected board consists of Ann-Kristin Vester, Zoé Wolter, Sylvi Rzepka, Philipp Bosch, Sarah Risse, Sören Etler and Andreas Neumann - we are looking forward to the coming year with you! Thank you also to Manuel Neumann for continuing to take responsibility for the cash audit!

We would also like to say a big thank you to the previous members of the Ethics Committee, Lada Rudnitckaia, André Lange, Mario Truss, Polina Mosolova and Regina Siegers - your work and advice was an important pillar for the work of CorrelAid!

Our newly elected Ethics Committee consists of Polina Mosolova, Katharina Kloppenborg, Benjamin Fries and Pia Baronetzkly. Thank you for taking on this important task!

Save the Dates! A first look ahead to 2025

It will be a very special year for us, because the 10th anniversary of CorrelAid is coming up! We would like to celebrate this from July 4 to 6, 2025 at CorrelCon 2025 in Constance on Lake Constance, where CorrelAid originated.

2025 will also be filled with events related to Data4Good, we will of course inform you about all upcoming events in the coming weeks and months, we look forward to seeing many of you there! So please check our calendar of events from time to time.

Here is a small preview:

• Feb 14-16- Core Team Retreat in FFM
• March 14 and 15: 6th Datendialog with the Bertelsmann Stiftung in Berlin
• July 04 to 06: CorrelCon 2025 + 10th anniversary
• September 2025: The data incubator starts!
• September 12 and 13, 2025: 7th Datendialog with the Bertelsmann Stiftung

Last but not least: A small request

Since we have simply grown so much, we want to expand our structures. And this incurs costs for infrastructure, administration and so on. Please support us with a small donation on betterplace. Also as a standing order. Thank you very much!

The event kicked off at the Eine-Welt-Haus in Munich on Friday evening with a review of the past year. The management and board gave an impressive presentation of what CorrelAid has achieved over the past year - an inspiring introduction that increased anticipation for the upcoming tenth anniversary next year. The evening also featured a special anecdote: the sweet story of how the “Datendino”, CorrelAid's mascot, came to be. In spring, Sören and Zoé had the idea of creating a little dinosaur with a bar chart on its back as a symbol for CorrelAid - which has accompanied the association ever since and makes the often serious world of data a little more emotional. The cute mascot was represented at CorrelCon in the form of lovingly designed wooden name badges.

After a relaxed evening with pizza and lively conversations, during which long-standing members and new faces got to know each other, Saturday morning started for some participants with an inspiring yoga session - thanks to Padma for the perfect start to the day. The day then continued at the location with an exciting workshop day, which offered a wide range of sessions and topics. Especially nice: there was something for everyone! Beginners could get an introduction to Git and data visualization with Excel or learn more about engagement opportunities at CorrelAid. Advanced participants discussed best practices in project management for Data4Good projects, exchanged views on ethical issues and responsible AI or delved deeper into exploratory data analysis.

Warming rays of sunshine and a mild October day allowed for relaxed breaks on the sunny terrace between sessions. The day ended appropriately in a Munich brewery - with freshly tapped Hellen, of course. Here, too, the Datendino didn't let go of us: we worked hard together to create new dinosaur creations with various GenAI tools. For example, we created flying dinosaurs with decision trees and neural networks in their wings, and a triceratops with a circle diagram as a neck shield. But also special dinosaurs for individual local.chapters of CorrelAid: with lederhosen for Munich or at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. There were many more ideas, but the implementation with various GenAI tools was not always easy.

Sunday marked the end of CorrelCon and began with an introduction to Python and a particularly exciting session on text classification based on the SDGs. After a productive morning, the participants made their way home with many new impressions, valuable contacts, great memories and, of course, numerous new Datendino creations.

A huge thank you goes to the entire organizing team that made CorrelCon possible again this year - Sören, Rahel, Regina, Lena and Nevena💚. Finally, a special thanks to Mindfuel for their support. Your contribution strengthens our mission and enables us to make events like this even more enriching!💚

We are already looking forward to the next CorrelCon and to continuing the inspiring journey of the CorrelAid community!

In safe hands e.V. offers BUNTER BALL, a sports education prevention program for children of primary school age. The aim is not only to strengthen the children's motor development, but also to improve their emotional and social skills. Standardized interviews are conducted with the participating children before and after each school year in order to verify this effect and make the results measurable. The supporting volunteers record the children's answers in the original wording wherever possible.

In this project, the sections of the interviews dealing with the children's socially competent behavior and emotion regulation strategies were evaluated.
The answers recorded in the original wording must be assigned to various categories from the free text for further evaluation. Previously, this process was carried out manually by trained staff. This became increasingly time-consuming as the number of participants increased, making the evaluation more difficult to carry out. The aim was therefore to simplify and at least partially automate this process.

There are 6 questions in each of the two categories (socially competent behavior and emotion regulation). Children are given an example situation and asked what they would recommend a person in this situation to do:

Imagine the girl is scared because there is lightning and thunder in the night. What would you advise this girl to do to make her less afraid?

Examples of answers here would be: “think of something nice” or ”turn on the light”
In these responses, the child shows what is known as an adaptive emotion regulation strategy - it knows how to deal well with the emotion - and receives two points for this in the evaluation. Behavior in which the child devalues itself or reacts aggressively is referred to as maladaptive emotion regulation strategies and coded with 0 points. One point is awarded for other strategies.

Once the project has been implemented, this assignment will be partially automated. Our tool is not intended to replace people in the evaluation process, but to support them. The aim is to save time on simple assignments so that more time remains for processing difficult cases.

The tool supports coding in two steps:

1. finding similar statements that have already been coded
   The system searches a table of already coded examples for similar statements and their coding to ensure that the same or similar statements always receive the same score.
   So-called word vectors or embeddings are used for this assignment, so that the same words do not necessarily have to be used to determine a similarity: For example, for the statement “think of something nice”, the system finds the sentence “concentrate on nice things” in the training data and for the example “turn on the light”, “turn on the light” can also be found.
2. automatic coding suggestions
   A coding suggestion is also calculated. A simple bag-of-words approach is used here. This is a machine learning approach in which the words occurring in a sentence are counted. Each word can be assigned a weighting for a specific category. The word “light” or “ears” indicates an encoding with two points. While the word combination “don't know” or “nothing” indicates 0 points. Many statements that indicate the involvement of other people and contain the words “mom”, “mother” or “parents”, for example, are coded with one point.
   This is a very simple approach, which is particularly characterized by its explainability. It is very easy to understand why the system suggests a certain coding for a statement.

If these two approaches differ from each other and do not provide the same result, the corresponding entry is provided with a warning. A message is also displayed if the system is not sure about the automatic coding, i.e. the confidence value is low. These marked entries can then be checked manually and the coding adjusted if necessary.

What happens next?
The system is currently being used in a first run for coding new responses. The tool was published as a web app for the employees of In safe hands e.V. and is only accessible to an authorized group of people. Of course, there are already many ideas for further developing and improving the tool.

On the one hand, the suggestions can be continually improved through continuous training with data from new surveys. Improving the machine learning algorithms and language models used can also contribute to this. It was important to us that all calculations can take place on our own server and that the data does not have to be sent to an interface from OpenAI or Google, for example. However, the large language models (LLMs) will certainly also develop significantly over the next year and enable simple execution on our own servers without a great deal of computing power.

Another possibility for further development is the further evaluation and visualization of the data. Up to now, our tool has only supported the coding of responses. The data is then provided as an export in an Excel spreadsheet. In the next step, it could also be used to visualize and evaluate the results.

The project has shown that even simple machine learning methods can offer great added value. The evaluation is now much faster and much easier than the manual coding in Excel spreadsheets used to be.

As CorrelAid volunteers, we also learned a lot about strengthening social and emotional skills through sport and were able to pass on our knowledge about data and artificial intelligence. Over a period of six months, this has resulted in a tangible project that does not chase the AI hype, but leads to a real improvement in work processes.

💡 You find the project exciting and would also like to carry out a Data4Good project in your non-profit organization. You can find all the information you need on https://www.correlaid.org/en/using-data/projects/

In 2023, 57 CorrelAid volunteers were or are active in 14 projects with 7 partner organisations. Three projects were completed in 2023. From data visualisation, impact measurement and open source to natural language processing: you have advanced Data4Good and made the potential of data and data analysis for a good cause a little more accessible!

Organisations we have worked with: Citizens For Europe, Laureus Sport for Good Foundation Germany, Offener Kanal Merseburg - Querfurt e.V., In safe hands e.V., Datenguide, Greenpeace Central and Eastern Europe.

We would like to thank

• the representatives of the partner organisations for their excellent cooperation in the projects
• all volunteers who were active in projects for their time and commitment
• the volunteers who applied but were unable to get a place

You are great! <3

Two rounds of R learning

In two rounds of our data course "R Learning by and for civil society", 19 participants each learned about the statistical programming language R and how to use data in a practical way to ensure the quality of their programmes, steer them and legitimise them externally. We were supported by the German Foundation for Commitment and Volunteering. A big thank you especially to the volunteer tutors who made our data course possible in the first place!

CorrelTalk and book club

The CorrelTalk podcast team has recorded two episodes for you again this year! How does openparliament.tv promote transparency and trust? How does data support child protection in sport? There are answers to these and many more questions in the podcast, listen in and look forward to new episodes in the coming year!

Our book club, which takes place online every fortnight, read a large number of books in 2023. These include AI Superpowers - China, Silicon Valley and the New World Order by Kai-Fu Lee and Atlas of AI - Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence by Kate Crawford. The book club is looking forward to new members in the new year! If you are interested, please contact us by email at bookclub@correlaid.org.

CorrelAid in the media and publications

CorrelAid was also represented in the media this year. Frie spoke on the Radio CityLab Berlin podcast about data and data analysis, open data and open source and the resulting impact on civil society. Current CorrelAid data projects were shared and presented.

The Civic Data Lab was also discussed and presented in detail in the Süddeutsche Zeitung dossier on the digital revolution. The focus was on how data is used to create added social value and how the project is implemented.

Numerous workshops

Whether for other foundations and non-profits, in our Open Online Data Meetup, in our local chapters, e.g. with the "Weekly Visualisations" series in Austria, the lectures and workshops of the LC Konstanz for the city of Konstanz and neuland21, or with the Inside Data Bodensee event series with cyberLAGO e.V., our workshops and our educational work are almost everywhere. We are already looking forward to many more in the new year!

New website and digitalisation

Over the course of the year, we worked intensively on the relaunch of the website with a new design and improved CMS. The project database and educational resources can now be accessed via the website, as can the event calendar, podcast and blog. In addition, various administrative processes have been digitised throughout the year, such as the membership application.

Girls' Day: Your entry into data science

On Girls' Day, women from various fields reported on their path to their studies, employment, setting up a company, freelance work and their doctoral thesis at university. In small groups, our volunteers answered the many questions from young girls.

Retreat Weimar

In March, our volunteers from all over Europe met for a retreat in Weimar. Three days were dedicated to the future of CorrelAid - but also, of course, to simply enjoying time together in one place!

100xDigital Community Convention

In March, we attended the conference on digitalisation in volunteering, the 100xDigital - Community Convention 2023, organised by the German Foundation for Engagement and Volunteering. The focus was on topics such as data competence, strategy, security, data collection and data analysis in addition to digitalisation for organisations that have had little contact with it to date.

Needs analysis

The needs analysis, which was carried out by Neuland and funded by aqtivator gGmbH and the Schöpflin Foundation, was finalised in March. The concept of the data incubator, for which aqtivator is seeking funding, was evaluated.

We were able to gain the following insights:
Basic data skills are often lacking among civil society actors, an organisation's level of data maturity is crucial for an offer, institutional change and a holistic approach in organisations is essential.

re:publica

On 6 June, CorrelAid was represented at this year's re:publica with the MeetUp "Data for #CASH - Data for Good?". In an exchange format, we were able to familiarise participants with the work of CorrelAid. We reported on Data4Good projects, "R Learning" and the public discourse around open data and made new contacts with non-profit organisations.

Data dialogue in cooperation with the Bertelsmann Stiftung in June

The second data dialogue in cooperation with the Bertelsmann Stiftung was a success with 35 participants from the CorrelAid community and three of the foundation's research groups. The data enthusiasts from the CorrelAid community met to develop solutions to the data challenges of three Bertelsmann project teams. The teams worked on improving quality measurement in early childhood education, developing and operationalising indicators for sustainability in municipalities and opening up open data to map municipal infrastructure using the example of pharmacies.

Open data in civil society - CorrelAid Open Data

As a small organisation, we may not have as much data to publish to begin with. However, as an organisation that champions the potential of data for civil society, we also want to lead by example. That's why we've made the metadata of some of our Data4Good projects (21 out of 96) publicly available!

Ethics committee

The CorrelAid Ethics Committee has published a questionnaire and an accompanying document. These are intended to help with the evaluation of Data4Good project ideas. There were also changes to the Code of Ethics and Code of Conduct, which were adopted at the General Assembly at the end of the year. Many thanks to the Ethics Committee for their great work and advice for the projects in 2023!

4 years of the mentoring programme

Every year, we successfully connect around 60 to 100 data enthusiasts from our network as mentors and mentees. We are entering our 4th year of the CorrelAid mentoring programme!

Launch of the fundraising campaign

Our fundraising campaign to increase our own funds was launched in October. The planning was done by the board, office and volunteers (Camille and Patrizia 🙌). The current target is 5,000 to 10,000 euros.

CorrelCon

In November, we invited the CorrelAid community to Magdeburg for a weekend full of talks, workshops and community care. We had a fantastic time together. First time in person in a long time.

Kickoff CDL

The Civic Data Lab (CDL) started its implementation phase. The Civic Data Lab supports organised and non-organised civil society actors in better achieving public welfare goals through the use of data. At CorrelAid, we at the Civic Data Lab are primarily responsible for setting up and managing a community of practice and supporting the data projects that are implemented together with civil society actors.

transform_d-summit

Funded by the German Foundation for Engagement and Volunteering (DSEE), CorrelAid will design, create and implement a new, entry-level data literacy course as part of the transform_d programme by the end of 2024. In the new course, we want to deepen and strengthen the ability to handle data and create a basic course that will benefit people and organisations with little experience in particular.

Data dialogue with the Bertelsmann Stiftung in December

In December, four different teams from the Bertelsmann Stiftung presented their project ideas in Munich. We then came together in smaller groups and discussed conceptual and technical solutions to the problems and challenges.

This involved the following topics: White List hospital search, SDG indicators from the Centre for Sustainable Communities, family and education: thinking politics from the child's perspective and the introduction of a chatbot for the Bertelsmann Stiftung.

At the transform_d Summit of the German Foundation for Engagement and Volunteering (DSEE), the focus was on climate change, digitalisation and social cohesion, with various speakers sharing their experiences and inspirations. In this context, Zoé and Frie presented the concept of the new, entry-level data literacy course. CorrelAid will design, create and run a new course on data literacy by the end of 2024. Our team has expanded for the new course and, in addition to Zoé, Ann-Kristin and Emma are now also responsible.

Why are we at CorrelAid creating a new data literacy course?

With the course "“R Lernen – Der Datenkurs von und für die Zivilgesellschaft”, we have already created a course offering with which we support people and organizations working for charitable purposes. By teaching skills for using data and working with the statistics programme R, we enable participants to plan and implement their own data projects. In the new course, we want to deepen and strengthen the ability to work with data and create a basic course that will benefit people and organizations with little experience in this field so far.

What are the aims of the new data skills course?

• Basic understanding of data analysis and statistics
• Recognising the potential of data analysis in your own organization, identifying obstacles and finding solutions
• Imparting knowledge about data protection, sources, processes and formats
• Ability to evaluate the potential of data
• Develop an understanding of data visualizations and interpret them critically
• Ability to use data for their own work, e.g. surveys, reports, automation, data storytelling, visualisations, decision-making
• Identify, plan and implement a data project in civil society

Community

Through the course, we intend to educate and build a community for the topic of data in civil society. Given the emphasis on economic interests in the digital transformation, strong civil society voices are needed. These voices should be able to help shape discourse and focus on how digital change can be shaped for the common good.

New information on the programme and content as well as on course registration and the start of the course will follow soon in our newsletter and here on our website. We are very happy to start the implementation phase and are looking forward to the first round of the data literacy course!

It goes without saying that most of the CorrelAid projects and activities align with the general ethical values: nonprofits usually work for public and social good, and helping nonprofits with their data indirectly supports their goals. So why create a dedicated ethics commission?

Data4Good projects evaluation

When dealing with data, the devil is in the details. Inappropriate use of sensitive data or machine learning models can be harmful even when applied with good intentions. At the same time, it is difficult, especially for non-data-experts, to know all the pitfalls of dealing with data. Therefore, one of the tasks of the ethics commission is to evaluate the questionable Data4Good projects for potential risks with regard to ethical values, data privacy, as well as general CorrelAid values and principles.

Over the past two years, we evaluated five projects that raised questions about anonymizing data, the possibility of using available data for project purposes, unexpected negative effects of the project opposite to the project goals, handling sensitive data such as medical data, etc. Based on our evaluation, we provided recommendations on whether to start a new project or continue an existing collaboration and, if yes, on points to keep in mind during the project.

To facilitate such reviews, we came up with a questionnaire and a companion document that aims to help project initiators to analyze their concerns as well as potential issues they might not have been aware of. While the questionnaire checks whether the project might encounter issues, the companion document helps to understand what potential issues can be. And of course, the ethics commission is always available for a discussion of the concerns not covered in the questionnaire and the companion document.

Now that CorrelAid has set up the Data Privacy team dedicated to data privacy issues, the ethics commission can focus even more on ethical issues. However, both teams will stay in a close collaboration.

Code of Conduct and Code of Ethics maintenance

Another important task of the ethics commission is to maintain and update two important documents defining CorrelAid’s core values –  the Code of Conduct and the Code of Ethics. During the last year, the ethics commission carried out a major revision of these documents. Following the inclusive and democratic nature of CorrelAid, the ethics commission encouraged not only other CorrelAid teams but the whole CorrelAid network to propose their suggestions and objections. After the final careful review, the revised documents will be voted upon by the General Assembly.

Almost two years of Ethics commission

The ethics commission has been in place for almost two years now. During this time, we evaluated several Data4Good projects and other requests, revised the Code of Conduct and the Code of Ethics, visited several CorrelAid events, collaborated with other CorrelAid teams like the CommUnity team and Data Privacy team, got to know amazing people in the network, learnt a lot about data privacy and ethics, and established processes and an infrastructure that can be reused by future ethics commission.

Join the Ethics commission

Speaking of the future ethics commission! The ethics commission members are elected for one year and can be reelected once for another term. In December 2023, CorrelAid will elect the new ethics commission members and is actively looking for the candidates already now.

Do you believe data science should be applied responsibly? Are you interested in learning more about data privacy, data and AI ethics? Do you want to support CorrelAid in its goal to comply with general ethical values and maintain its Code of Ethics and Code of Conduct? Are you interested in how CorrelAid works from inside and are ready to commit 2-6 hours per month? Then consider joining the ethics commission! Contact us via ethics@correlaid.org or via the #ask-the-ethics-committee Slack channel. We‘re happy to tell you more and show you how we work.