Every day, we create, share, store and use information to work, teach, conduct research and collaborate. Some of that information is intended for a broad audience. Some is meant for a specific team or group. Other information, such as personal information, research data or financial information, requires greater care.
Most of us recognize these differences instinctively. We think twice before sharing a draft budget. We are careful with information about students, employees or research participants. And we routinely make decisions about who should have access to particular files, emails and conversations.
When context isn't always obvious
As our work becomes increasingly digital, however, those decisions can become more complicated.An email can be forwarded in seconds.
A document can be shared with many people in just a few clicks. Information can move between people, teams and digital spaces, sometimes long after it was originally created. And as information moves, its original context may not always be obvious.
Consider three files:
- a poster promoting a public lecture;
- a draft departmental budget;
- a document containing student or research participant information.
All three might exist in the same digital environment, but we would not necessarily share or handle them in the same way. The information itself matters, but so does our understanding of how sensitive it is and how it should be handled.
Members of the University community already make thoughtful decisions about information every day. But different people may assess the same information differently. We may rely on the context in which a document was created, our own experience or assumptions about who will see it. Those cues may make sense to us, but they don't necessarily travel with the information when it is shared with someone else.
As information moves, we may need to ask ourselves:
- Is it clear how sensitive this information is?
- Who needs access to it?
- Is it appropriate to share it more broadly?
- Will someone receiving it later understand how it should be handled?
These questions become increasingly important as information moves more easily across our digital workplace.
AI adds another dimension
As we explored in our previous article, AI-enabled tools are changing how easily we can find, summarize and work with information.
If that prompts us to think differently about who can see information, it should also prompt another question: Do we understand how sensitive that information is?
At uOttawa, Policy 117 – Information Classification and Handling recognizes that information has different levels of sensitivity and that the risks associated with its use, disclosure or loss can vary. The question is how we apply that understanding consistently in our everyday work.
From recognizing sensitivity to making it clearer
As our digital workplace evolves, we need consistent ways to make those differences clearer, both to ourselves and to the people we work with.
In our next article, we'll explore how we can make the sensitivity of information clearer in our everyday work.
