Peter A Clarke

The ANU Centre for Social Research and Methods has released Data trust and data privacy: a brake on the data and digital dividend?   The timing couldn’t be more appropriate given the latest large scale data breaches.

The description of the paper provides:

Data is increasingly available at scale and many of the fastest growing companies are built on data and data analytics. Governments are also increasingly using data for service delivery and to a lesser extent policy development and evaluation. Regulating and managing the increasing availability and use of data by the public, community and private sectors requires new approaches and laws.

In April 2022 the Australian Parliament passed the Data Availability and Transparency Act 2022 which allows Australian Commonwealth bodies to share data. While the legislation and associated regulation is important, so are the levels of community data trust and attitudes to data privacy.

This paper reports data on Australian’s attitudes to data trust and data privacy and how these have changed since October 2018 using data from the ANUpoll series of surveys collected in October 2018, October 2019, May 2020, August 2021 and August 2022. This provides information on how attitudes have changed during the COVID-19 period and during a period of rapid digitisation and increasing availability and use of data. The data shows that trust in key institutions with regards to data privacy increased during the early stages of COVID-19 period, and has stayed high through to mid-2022.

Australians also for the most part think governments should be sharing data with researchers (particularly in universities) and making use of data internally. However, support for such uses of data is slipping. Part of the response to these trends is to make sure that when data is used, it is done so in a way that maximises benefits to society. Collectively, the Australian research and policy community also needs to better understand who is reluctant for their data to be used, why they are reluctant, and what the possible responses and safeguards might be to make better use of such resources whilst still maintaining a social licence.

Interesting points made in the Report include:

• Many of the fastest growingcompanies either are built on harvesting large datasets or are heavily reliant on data analytics.
• The use of data by governments is also growing rapidly which has the potential to increase the
  effectiveness of evaluation performance measurement and the delivery of services.
• data is increasingly available at scale and in ways where the data has been or can be linked with other data sources.
• barriers to accessing data still exist and the quality of the data that is available is not always adequately interrogated. However there is significant scope to substantially increase the data-driven insights that can help guide the decision making of businesses, community organisations, governments at all levels, and ultimately citizens.
• it is essential that limits  be placed on the use of data by researchers,governments, and businesses.
• the passage of the Data Availability and Transparency Act4 has accelerated the development
  of infrastructure that can help make government data available to both government agencies
  and university researchers in a safe, privacy preserving way.
• the Data Availability and Transparency Act 2022 established the ‘DATA Scheme’ which allows Commonwealth bodies to share data with Accredited Users. These can be public servants using the data for policy development, research and service provisions, or researchers based at Australian universities accredited under the DATA Scheme.
• following an increase in the overall level of trust in a range of types of organisations to maintain data privacy between October 2018 and May 2020 from 4.78 to 5.70, there was a decline between May 2020 and August 2021 to 5.49. There has been virtually no change between August 2021 and August 2022 when the average value was 5.50. Trust in August 2022 is still, however, well above that in October 2018.
• there were some fluctuations in the levels of trust in the specific organisations asked about across the period. Between August 2021 and August 2022 there were small increases in trust in the Commonwealth Government and online shopping companies, but a small decline in trust in state/territory governments.13 The institution that continues to have the highest level of trust to maintain data privacy is the Australian Bureau of Statistics and the type of organisation with the lowest level of trust to maintain data privacy is social media companies.
• trust in all organisations/institutions to maintain data privacy was higher inAugust 2022 than it was pre-COVID and the difference is statistically significant for all the types of institutions/organisations asked about Trust in institutions regarding data privacy varies substantially across the population.
• there are no differences between males and females in trust in institutions regarding data privacy, but there were significant differences by age, with a lower level of trust for young Australians (particularly those aged under the age of 35) and a higher level of trust for those aged 75 years and over. Those who speak a language other than English at home had a higher level of trust.
• there were large differences by education, with those who had not completed Year 12 and those with a Certificate III/IV having a lower level of trust. Income also mattered.
• compared to the pre-COVID period, there has been an increase in the level of trust in key institutions regarding data privacy.
• there has also been a slight decrease with regards to the level of concern about key aspects of the security of personal data and information.
• only 56.6 per cent of respondents think that governments definitely or probably should ‘Provide the data to researchers in the private sector to research ways to improve outcomes for individuals and communities’ and only 57.5 per cent think that governments should ‘Provide the data to researchers in the private sector to research ways to improve the delivery and targeting of government services.’
• for the most part, Australians are most supportive of governments using data within government generically, and least supportive of combining data across a range of sources.
• less than one-quarter of Australians (23.9 per cent) agree or strongly agree that the Australian Government ‘is open and honest about how data is collected, used and shared.’
• less than one-third also agree or strongly agree that the Australian Government ‘can be trusted to use data responsibly’ (29.6 per cent), ‘could respond quickly and effectively to a data breach’ (30.3 per cent), and ‘has the ability to prevent data being hacked or leaked’ (30.8 per cent).
• this quite negative view of the “data competence” of the Australian Government is reasonably stable through time. While none of the views substantially improved, two stayed reasonably constant (ability to present hacks and can be trusted to use data responsibly).
• fewer Australians agree that governments ‘could respond quickly and effectively to a data breach’ – down from 34.0 per cent in October 2018 to 30.3 per cent in August 2022, with a halving of those who strongly agree – from 10.0 to 5.5 per cent.
• there was also a decline in the per cent of Australians who think the Australia government is ‘open and honest about how data is collected, used and shared’, decreasing from 26.8 per cent in October 2018 to 23.9 per cent in August 2022.
• there is a real tension that exists with administrative data broadly, and government created data specifically. Data can help businesses make profits and enhance the customer experience. It can also make government decisions and the delivery of services more efficient and affective. However, misuse of data, or release of data with malicious intent can have real-world impacts on these same customers and decisions.
• Australians for the most part think governments should be sharing data with researchers (particularly in universities) and making use of data internally. However, support for such uses of data is slipping. There has been a drop by half in the per cent of Australians who think governments definitely should provide ‘data to researchers to research ways to improve outcomes for individuals and communities’ since October 2018 (from 28.0 to 14.1 per cent) and an almost as large a decline in the per cent of Australians who thought that governments themselves should use data ‘within government to evaluate the effectiveness of government programs’ from (41.6 per cent to 25.5 per cent).
• one of the reasons for the reluctance to use data is that a low percentage of Australians and fewer Australians than in 2018 agreed that governments ‘could respond quickly and effectively to a data breach’ – down from 34.0 per cent in October 2019 to 30.3 per cent in August 2022, with a halving of those who strongly agree – from 10.0 to 5.5 per cent.