How OVW uses grantee data and how to ensure victim privacy
The data security checklist is a useful resource for programs as they balance reporting requirements with victim confidentiality.
How does OVW use grantee progress report data?
From monitoring grant funds to identifying trends, promising practices, and troubling areas of ongoing or emerging need in the field, OVW uses grantee-reported data to deepen and expand the vital work of interrupting, preventing and ending violence against women. Click here to learn more about how OVW uses the data that grantees report annually and semi-annually.
Reporting data and protecting confidentiality
In this electronic age, we all have heightened data privacy needs. However, victims of domestic violence have even greater security and safety concerns. Any data collection initiative within a local domestic violence program or between several service providers must be carefully planned, implemented, and evaluated regularly; the lives of battered women depend on it. Data security includes a range of issues — from preventing unauthorized access to minimizing information collected and shared. Given the complex safety risks in this work, such databases may need to be stored on separate servers with tight security within and between different service providers, to maintain privilege and confidentiality. To use the Data Security Checklist to ensure victim privacy when you are reporting your program’s data, click here.
Safety Net: the National Safe & Strategic Technology Project provides training around the country on all forms of
technology and it’s relevance to survivors of domestic violence. Read more at www.nnedv.org.