In 2004, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner began a program known as the Contributions Program. The idea was to set aside a part of their budget (usually around $500,000) to give to worthy not-for-profit initiatives that further privacy policy development and promote the protection of personal information in Canada.

In the 15 years since it began, a fair number of notable projects have gotten their start as a result. This past week, the OPC released the list of ideas that will receive some money for the 2019–20 cycle. There are some neat things there; the ones that popped out to me were the idea of "design jams." They are described as follows on the OPC website:

“Young Canadians Speak Out: A Qualitative Research Project on Privacy and Consent. This project will give Canadian youth the chance to consider, discuss, and design ways of obtaining consent that are clear and meaningful to them, and to share their views directly with representatives of the online platforms they use.

Design Jam on a Modernized Consent Model to Unlock Health Innovation. This design jam will explore innovative, technological ways to provide real-time meaningful consent in the health sector while protecting individual privacy.

Privacy Report Card for Parental Control Solutions. The aim of this project is to examine the security and privacy risks associated with parental control solutions that are commonly used by many Canadian parents to monitor and block content on various electronic devices.”

The entire list of this year’s winning projects can be found here.

Perhaps not too surprising, many of the projects concern the common theme of consent. Clearly, this is an issue the OPC has been dealing with for some time now (last year’s Meaningful Consent Guidelines are a case in point). I’m personally looking forward to seeing how this new research will contribute to the situation and, hopefully, come up with solutions that are more efficient and practical than what we have now — I clicked on seven different cookie banners today. Sheesh!