You can use anonymization to put people at ease. Process mining is not about monitoring employees but about improving the process. But when people are new to process mining, seeing their names in the data can make them uncomfortable and less likely to support you in your process mining project. Removing their names and replacing them with a generic placeholder can help you build trust.
It’s very easy to do. Watch this 4-minute video to learn how to anonymize the resource names in Disco.
In the last Process Mining Café before the summer break, we had invited Daniel Kaße from VKPB in Germany to tell us more about how he addressed the concerns from data protection, the works council, and the operational manager.
We talked about why building trust in your process mining project is necessary in the first place and how you do it. We also discussed technical steps you can take, such as removing unnecessary information, anonymization, and pseudonymization.
In the end, Daniel gave us the following checklist:
Watch the recording of the café here if you have missed it. A big thanks to Daniel and to all of you for joining us!
Quick warning: There are a few cuts in the video due to some technical issues we had on the day of recording. Our apologies for that. But you’ll be able to follow our discussion without any problem.
Here are the links that we mentioned during the session:
Sign up for the camp mailing list to be notified when Daniel’s camp presentation becomes available.
One of the advantages of Disco is that it analyzes all your data entirely locally. For further details see our privacy policy here.
When talking about formalizing the agreement, we mentioned the Ethical Charter that Léonard Studer from the City of Lausanne used to put his colleagues at ease. We also talked about this in the Process Mining Café with Léonard.
Daniel went a step further and created a formal contract about the operational use of log data. He was so kind to share this document with the community, so that you can take it as a starting point for your own organization. → Download the original German ‘Vereinbarung zur betrieblichen Nutzung von Protokolldaten’ or the translated English version here.
Daniel removed the data that he did not need, such as customer names. He did this in the data preparation phase using the ETL tool KNIME → See a screenshot of his KNIME function here.
Daniel also pseudonomized some of the information that he wanted to keep. By replacing the original value of a sensitive data field like the employee name with a pseudonomized value, you remove the direct traceability but preserve organizational patterns. For example, you can still see if just one person handles a case, or if it is handed back and forth between multiple people (without knowing who these people are). Daniel used a hash function for his pseudonymization → See a screenshot of his hash function in KNIME here.
If you don’t need to store a mapping between original and pseudonomized values, you can use the built-in anonymization function of Disco. During the export, you choose what to anonymize (case IDs, resource names, attributes, timestamps) and then share or re-import the data set to work with the anonymized data. As we discussed during the café, anonymization or pseudonymization can be a method of building trust, but you also lose a certain level of analyzability. We give you a detailed overview of which analysis possibilities you lose with the different types of anonymization here.
Don’t rely too much on technical fixes, and be aware that even anonymized data might be traced back in other ways. We also discuss this in the ‘How to be a responsible process miner’ Process Mining Café with Dirk Fahland and Felix Mannhardt here.
Contact us anytime at cafe@fluxicon.com if you have questions or suggestions about the café.
Have you seen that the Process Mining Café is also available as a podcast? So, if you prefer to listen to our episodes in your favorite podcast player, you can get them all here.
Sign up for our café mailing list and the YouTube playlist, follow Fluxicon on LinkedIn, or add the café calendar to never miss a Process Mining Café in the future.
One of the presenters at this year’s Process Mining Camp, Daniel Kaße from VKPB in Germany, talked about how he addressed the concerns of various people in his organization.
These concerns are very real. Data protection teams, the works council, and process owners need to trust that you will act responsibly in your process mining project.
Because this is such an important topic, we invited Daniel to the upcoming Process Mining Café tomorrow. We’ll discuss how to build trust in your organization and explore anonymization methods you can use to obfuscate the data. Join us!
The café takes place this Wednesday, 18 June, at 15:00 CEST (Check your timezone here). As always, you don’t need to register. Point your browser to fluxicon.com/cafe when it is time.
Sign up for the café mailing list here to receive a reminder one hour before the session starts. Or add the time to your calendar if you don’t want to miss it.
Process Mining Camp took place this year on May 14-16 in Eindhoven. We had a great time! The weather was lovely, and it was a joy to dive into process mining for three whole days.
It all started with the boot camp on May 14, where new campers received an in-depth introduction to how process mining works in practice. After an initial online session the week before, they spent the whole day at the campsite learning the most essential process mining concepts and applying them hands-on.
On Thursday, May 15, a number of process miners shared their experiences in the practice talks. First, Martine Truijman & Stanley Wirjadi showed us how they analyzed the usage of the MRI scanners at Maastricht UMC+ in the Netherlands. Then, Linda Jantz from BVV Pension Management in Germany convinced us that all-day workshops are the most effective way to drive change within an organization. After lunch, Lucas Vousten from Joanknecht in the Netherlands shared his approach for process mining in assurance engagements. Shinobu Saito from NTT in Japan presented a novel way to visualize processes in a 3D environment. Then, Daniel Kaße from VKPB in Germany demonstrated how he navigated the concerns of data protection, the works council, and the process owner for his process mining project. Finally, Iris Beerepoot from Utrecht University in the Netherlands reminded us that the data that is in the logs is only a part of the truth.
In the afternoon, we continued with the discussion roundtables. In small groups, everyone talked about the challenges they face in their daily process mining practice. We built on the Process Mining Challenges that were captured during last year’s camp to see which categories were most prevalent and whether we were missing any (stay tuned for an update on the challenges soon!).
We closed the day with a nice multi-course dinner, a short walk, and a last round in one of the best brewpubs in Eindhoven.
The last day, Friday, May 16, was a full day of hands-on workshops. In the first workshop, we focused on data preparation. Creating an event log can be complex, especially if you lack context about the system, its processes, and the organization. Therefore, we broke down the data preparation into smaller, intermediate goals, each with concrete results. Each sprint included analyzing the data, transforming it into the event log, and checking the results in Disco. In the second workshop, we then continued with the analysis of the process. Like in every process mining project, we performed the analysis in two stages: discovery and targeted analysis. In the discovery stage, we focused on the explorative analysis to understand how the process works. In the targeted analysis stage, we then answered concrete questions about the process. Finally, in the last workshop, we returned to the process mining challenges and collected best practices to address them.
In the end, everyone left full of new ideas and motivation for their process mining adventures. Sign up at our mailing list here to receive the video recordings when they become available and to be the first to know about next year’s camp!
Process mining is not something that you buy but something that you do. That’s why meeting other process miners and learning from each other is so important.
At Process Mining Camp, we share our experiences for multiple days. We do this at the roundtables, workshops, and the boot camp.
One of the traditions at camp are the practice talks, where a few practitioners show in detail what they have done. Because of this level of detail, you can take away something for yourself.
Lucky for those of you who could not attend last year’s camp, we have just published the videos of the practice talks from Process Mining Camp 2024.
The last speaker was Erik Scroggs from Serco in the USA. Erik shared his experience of combining process mining with automation. With an increased use of automation techniques, this is a topic that is relevant for many companies today.
Serco has supported the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) since 2013, when the Affordable Care Act was first implemented in the United States. Erik is a software engineer working for Serco on the CMS project since it began in 2013. He has been using process mining to help senior leadership make key decisions.
With a mix of humans and RPA bots, the goal is to assign the right task to the right user at the right time. For example, robots start processing documents to take care of simpler tasks before humans come in to make calls and handle complex issues. Erik showed how he used process mining to identify inefficiencies in the workforce assignments: Due to a missing configuration in the system, humans were taking up newly sent documents in the middle of the process, while robots should have pre-processed them first.
In addition to these improvements, Erik also used process mining to identify new opportunities for automation, calculate cost vs. benefit metrics, and accurately project future production.
Tip: You can also watch this Process Mining Café, where Erik and Lloyd talk more about the combination of process mining and automation.
Here is an overview of all the practice talk videos from Process Mining Camp 2024:
The last tickets for this year’s Process Mining Camp are being sold right now, so if you’re still on the fence, now is the time.
See you at camp next week!
info@fluxicon.com.
