Skip to main content

About this server

This is the DataTags/PolicyModels server of the Institute of Quantitative Social Science at Harvard University. It serves as a hosting server for multiple policy models.

About PolicyModels

Policy Models (formerly: DataTags) is a tool for creating formal models of policies, such as proper handling for a given dataset or benefit entitlements for unemployed people. Originally intended as a way of helping researchers understand the laws and contractual agreements that govern how they can share sensitive data, it may also be used to model other legal and legal-like domains, such as certain types of public policies or scholarly protocols.

Unless otherwise noted, this server, and the organization running it, are not affiliated with the PolicyModels project; they are just only the software developed by the PolicyModels project.

Research

PolicyModels is an open source tool originally developed by the Privacy Tools for Sharing Research Data project at Harvard University. It is currently maintained by the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard University (IQSS) and by additional organizations.

The goal of this broad, multidisciplinary collaboration between the Center for Research on Computation and Society, the Institute for Quantitative Social Science, the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, and the Data Privacy Lab is to help enable the collection, analysis, and sharing of personal data for research while providing privacy for individual subjects.

More information about the development of the DataTags prototype is available from the DataTags project page. This page also list relevant academic publications.

Funding and Support

Initial Funding and Development

Subsequent Funding and Development

Code

PolicyModels tools and servers are released under industry-friendly open-source licence (APLv2/MIT).