Balancing Business Intelligence and User Privacy in Web Application Development

User privacy is a core value for libraries, and in Minnesota (as in many other states) is protected by statute. Making sound, justifiable decisions about resource allocation requires detailed information about user behavior. At the University of Minnesota Libraries, we are increasingly leveraging enterprise data to aggregate usage information in ways that protect the privacy of individuals while still allowing us to gather valuable insights about usage of our tools by various campus populations. I will describe how my team has built applications designed from the ground up to gather and analyze usage data while protecting user privacy.

OUTCOMES: Identify and consider potentially sensitive user data that falls outside the traditional HIPAA and FERPA types while gaining an understanding of a reporting technique for usage without recording personally identifiable data; explore the challenges of developing software with privacy in mind