Session
This session will consist of 2 parts:
In the first part, we will be joined by the invited experts - academics and policy specialists - to discuss the results of our latest survey testing the understanding of and willingness to share private data with public institutions.
The survey has been conducted in late October 2020 as part of research initiated by the Polish Economic Institute to investigate the Poles’ self-interested and other-regarding motivations for sharing of personal data (e.g. medical records, energy consumption, localization).
Broad access to personal data has been recognized as an important factor in developing better public services for quite some time. The Covid-19 pandemic has amplified this need, showing the benefits of personal data sharing in contact tracing and other public health initiatives. There are other emerging concepts utilizing the development of secure and trusted data space. Still, evidence on what can motivate and/or prevent people from sharing their data is scarce.
In the second part of the session, we will therefore invite our panelists to explore ways to encourage public authorities to make effective use of data sharing and the public to reveal their data in an informed and safe manner to further the goals of public policy. A special focus will be given to mobile applications that make use of personal data.
Moderator: Ignacy Święcicki, Head of the Digital Economy Team, Polish Economic Institute
Speakers:
- Patrik Pavlovsky, Behavioral Research &Innovation Consultant at the Ministry of Investment, Regional Development and Informatization of the Slovak Republic
- Jaana Sinipuro, Project Director, IHAN - Human driven data economy, SITRA, Finland
- Paweł Śliwowski, Head of strategy team, Polish Economic Institute
- Stefaan Verhulst, Co-Founder and Chief Research and Development Officer, GovLab, New York University
Online moderator: Jacek Grzeszak, Polish Economic Institute
Report
The session stared with issues raised in two presentations of empirical data concerning people’s attitudes to data sharing, their security concerns, and actual practices of sharing data. The first presentation summarised a survey conducted by the Polish Economic Institute to investigate Poles’ self-interested and other-regarding motivations for sharing of personal data (e.g. medical records, energy consumption, localization). Surprisingly enough, data sharing preferences turned out to be similar (around 40%) irrespective of whether the benefit was public or private. An interesting result was high level of indecisiveness among Poles as to whether they would or would not share their data. Results of a similar survey conducted by Finnish Sitra among the Finns, Germans, French and Dutch showed higher level of preference for data sharing but significant differences were identified between them. Some reasons explaining these differences were discussed.
A large untapped potential to take advantage of data sharing in the public sector was also mentioned. Of particular importance might be the assessment of the impact of the pandemic on various areas of economic and social life, e.g. remote work and education, tele medicine, mental health and well-being. An important distinction was made between people’s consent to re-use of already collected data and their preference for or against collection of new data.
Another point was raised about the experience of the pandemic serving as the biggest natural experiment ever where various way of tackling the challenges are being tested. Speakers agreed that behavioural sciences are of immense importance in communicating the problems at stake with the public, in advising people how to behave, and in understanding what affects their compliance with the rules. Further development of knowledge in this area will be of great importance to policy makers in better crisis management and beyond the immediate context of the pandemic.
It will be important for high-level policy decision makers to understand that there is a variety of factors and contexts which determine people’s attitudes to data sharing. It is not merely age, education and professional experience differences that play a role. The willingness to share data depends on the level of trust people have for the public authorities and the latter is determined by clarity of information conveyed by the government to the public. Misinformation is not only a barrier in compliance but it also undermines channels of communication with the public, rendering people distrustful of their authorities. As we heard from one of our panelists, in America public libararies are the only government-funded institutions respected and trusted by most people, which is why they were chosen as location for workshops improving data literacy. Transparency of information and visibility of evidence confirming what is being communicated is of crucial importance for bringing people on board with the public policy goals.
A key challenge for policy makers in building trust in the right conduct in their use of private data is to use it ethically and only for the purpose for which the data is collected. Transparency is another key requirement in this area.
Moderator: Ignacy Święcicki, Head of the Digital Economy Team, Polish Economic Institute
Speakers:
- Patrik Pavlovsky, Behavioral Research &Innovation Consultant at the Ministry of Investment, Regional Development and Informatization of the Slovak Republic
- Jaana Sinipuro, Project Director, IHAN - Human driven data economy, SITRA, Finland
- Paweł Śliwowski, Head of strategy team, Polish Economic Institute
- Stefaan Verhulst, Co-Founder and Chief Research and Development Officer, GovLab, New York University
Both surveys discussed in the session analysed gender differences in attitudes to data sharing and practices of revealing private information to external entities. The differences were shown in the presentation of the survey results.
Our research team and the panel were gender-balanced.
European Wereables Survey conducted by SITRA (one of the two studies discussed in the first part of the discussion): https://www.sitra.fi/en/publications/european-wearables-survey/