Artificial Intelligence-Government Resources

Challenge: The Boston Women’s Workforce Council (BWWC) sought to assess the compliance of Boston-area
employers to the Equal Pay Act by computing the Boston-area gender and race wage gaps. The assessment required
employers to share privacy-sensitive payroll data.
Approach: A traditional approach would have required Boston-area employers to release sensitive information about
employees to a trusted entity for statistical analysis. Instead, the BWWC used secure multiparty computation. Bostonarea employers were able to provide the salary information of their employees in a privacy-preserving way so that
accurate wage statistics were computed even though underlying salary information was never disclosed.
Impact: Sixty-nine employers participated in the 2016 BWWC wage gap report, contributing wage information on
113,000 employees. By 2021, 134 employers contributed information on 156,000 employees' wages. This adoption of
secure multiparty computation has allowed the BWWC to determine whether the gender wage gap is closing in Boston
and track the progress each year.