A balance of trust in the use of government administrative data

Abstract

Government departments and agencies around the world routinely collect administrative data produced by citizen interaction with the state. The UK government increasingly frames data as an ‘asset’. The potential in administrative data can be exploited by sharing and linking across datasets, but when the rhetoric of the benefits of data sharing is bound up in commercial exploitation, trustworthy motivations for sharing data come into question. Such questions are framed around two apparently conflicting public goods. The public good in re-using data to increase government efficiency and to enhance research is set against the public good in protecting privacy. Privacy is a collective as well as an individual benefit, enabling the public to participate confidently in citizen-state interactions. Balancing these public goods is challenging given rapidly evolving technology and data science. The analysis presented here draws on research undertaken by the authors as part of the Administrative Data Research Centre in England. Between 2014 and 2017, four case studies were conducted on government administrative data across education, transport, energy and health. The purpose of the research was to examine stakeholder perspectives in relation to administrative data sharing and re-use. The themes of trust, risk and consent were chosen to articulate the research questions and analysis: this article focuses on the findings related to trust. It explores the notion of trust in the collection, analysis, linkage and re-use of routinely collected government administrative data in England. It seeks to demonstrate that securing public trust in data initiatives is dependent on a broader balance of trust between a network of actors involved in data sharing and use.