Arthur Borem, University of Chicago; Lisa Dusseault, Data Transfer Initiative
Data Portability is an under-rated right, but is needed for people to have agency over their data privacy – a fact recognized by emerging regulations (EU, UK). Companies hosting personal data such as photos, playlists, conversations, search history, favorites and forum messages, must satisfy these regulations.
Despite the increasing regulatory pressure, significant barriers to data portability remain, including usability barriers, interoperability problems, and lack of trust between the services that need to work together. We explain the biggest barriers and provide some recommendations by presenting relevant findings from academic research, as well as prototypes that show that best UX practice is feasible for any participant. We point to solutions for the problem of trust coordination failures, which has contributed to the low number of effective options for personal data transfer. This talk is especially relevant for privacy-conscious companies holding personal data.
Arthur Borem is a final-year PhD candidate in Computer Science at the University of Chicago. His research focuses on building usable privacy systems to empower people online with the agency and knowledge to control their data and how it is used. He has led development of privacy tools targeting end-users (e.g., Data Subject Access Request interactive interfaces) and companies/organizations (e.g., Python data portability library). As a software engineer, Arthur has built and shipped features and tools at the Data Transfer Initiative, Asana, and Lyft.
Lisa Dusseault is the CTO of the non-profit Data Transfer Initiative, supporting consumer data portability across tech platforms. With a dual career in standards and startups, she brings both idealism and pragmatism. On the startup side, Lisa was CTO of Compaas and ShareTheVisit and VPEng of Klutch. On the standards side, she co-authored CalDAV, updated WebDAV, was chair of the XMPP and IMAPExt working groups, and spent four years as Area Director shepherding new Applications area work at the IETF.
author = {Arthur Borem and Lisa Dusseault},
title = {Dismantling the Barriers to Personal Data Portability},
year = {2026},
address = {Santa Clara, CA},
publisher = {USENIX Association},
month = jun
}