Deborah Hurley

Brown University

Deborah Hurley is the Principal of the consulting firm she founded in 1996, which advises governments, international organizations, companies, civil society, and foundations on advanced science and technology policy. She is also a Fellow of the Institute for Quantitative Social Science, Harvard University; an Adjunct Professor of the Practice of Computer Science, Brown University; and Senior ICT Expert, Pacific Region Infrastructure Facility, Sydney, Australia. She directed the Harvard University Information Infrastructure Project. At the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), in Paris, France, she identified emerging legal, economic, social and technological issues related to information and communications technologies, biotechnology, environmental and energy technologies, nanotechnology, technology policy, and other advanced technology fields. Hurley was responsible for drafting, negotiation and adoption of the OECD Guidelines for the Security of Information Systems. She also initiated the OECD activities on cryptography technologies and policy in the early 1990s. Hurley organized annual meetings on protection of personal data and privacy, including reviews of the OECD Guidelines for the Protection of Privacy and Transborder Flows of Personal Data, privacy enhancing technologies, protection of medical data, and rule-making related to privacy, such as legislation and its implementation and enforcement at regional, national and sub-national levels, private sector codes of conduct, and standards. Prior to joining the OECD, she practiced computer and intellectual property law in the United States.

Hurley has served on many boards and committees, including for the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), U.S. Department of State, American Association for the Advancement of Science, and National Academy of Sciences Research Council. She carried out a Fulbright study of intellectual property protection and technology transfer in Korea. She is the author of Pole Star: Human Rights in the Information Society, “Information Policy and Governance” in Governance in a Globalizing World, “Taking the Long Way Home: The Human Right of Privacy,” in Privacy in the Modern Age: The Search for Solutions, and other publications. Hurley received the Namur Award of the International Federation for Information Processing in recognition of outstanding contributions, with international impact, to awareness of social implications of information technology.

Hurley’s videos are used in the following Choices Program curriculum units:
The U.S. Role in a Changing World
Responding to Terrorism: Challenges for Democracy
Russia’s Transformation: Challenges for U.S. Policy
China on the World Stage: Weighing the U.S. Response