Here’s What’s Keeping Government From Using Private Sector Data

Written By Jessica Espey*

*This piece was originally published on Apolitical. Apolitical.co is a policy platform whose mission is to make government smarter to solve the world's hardest challenges.

Source: Apolitical

Increasingly, policymakers and the general public demand both timely and quality data so we can understand how the world is developing. But despite living in an era of unprecedented technological boom and innovation, the truth is that much our data is wildly out of date. We still don’t know how many people currently live in poverty, how many women die every day in childbirth, and how many species are on the cusp of extinction.

The reasons for these vital gaps in our knowledge are well known — gross underinvestment in statistics, low capacity, and old data methods. But now, many claim there is a silver bullet. Public-private partnerships (PPPs) between governments and the data and technology giants, all supposedly sitting on a goldmine of big data just waiting to be tapped.

To some extent this is true. Google can help us spot forest fires and changing levels of surface water in real-time, Facebook can tell you how many people have electricity, Twitter can help you see changes in consumer behaviour, and telecommunications’ giant, Orange, can help you track disease spread.

But for every one of these exciting shiny examples, there is a graveyard of failed collaborations. Why do some data collaborations succeed while others fail, and what can be done to ensure more effective public-private data sharing and collaboration?

SDSN TReNDS research into these partnerships has identified three major challenges to public-private data collaborations: (1) mismatched incentives; (2) a restrictive policy environment; and (3) the legal framework of the partnership. These need urgent attention if countries are to capitalize on private data innovation and use it safely and effectively to monitor and meet sustainable development targets.

Challenge 1: Mismatched Incentives

Interview almost any public servant working in the development sector, and they’ll tell you they want and need more data.

They’ll also tell you that they’d happily get it from the private sector if it’s high-quality, carefully and securely shared, and — most importantly — free. Noticeably, any thought of what might motivate the private sector to give them this data in the first place, beyond pure philanthropy, is frequently an afterthought.

While companies more often than not are willing to provide free data to begin with, they need to see a long-term return on investment. That includes, ultimately, how their reputation and bottom-line will benefit from offering this data support. This isn’t greed, but fundamental to the long-term sustainability of the partnership; assuming their requests are reasonable and they’re not asking for a monopoly over all public service information. Both sides need to be more open-minded. For the public sector, this is about recognizing that even the most philanthropic of companies are going to want some quid pro quo and will be angling to increase their reputation, appeal to public-sector business and so on.

Increased collaboration will result in a better understanding of corporate operations and a more favourable environment for data regulation, and ultimately data protections. For the private sector, there is a compelling economic case for private data sharing, as French MP Paula Forteza writes, because “data is a non-rival good;” its value doesn’t diminish by being shared, but instead, can multiply through aggregation and innovations led by entrepreneurs and start-ups.

This is about building a successful, well-governed data-oriented economy, and about tackling sustainable development challenges to open up new markets. Google.org and Orange’s Data for Development Challenge are good examples of companies recognizing these opportunities and taking a leap far beyond corporate social responsibility. It’s time for the others to follow suit.

Challenge 2: The Policy Environment.

In many countries worldwide, restrictive statistical laws prohibit third party collaborations for official statistics. For example, Nigeria’s 2007 Statistics Act explicitly states that official statistics are those produced by the national bureau of statistics, line ministries, public authorities, state statistical agencies, and local government statistical units, making no provision for the national bureau to vet, sanction, and use data generated by third parties, even if it is of exceptionally high-quality and directly measures the outcomes they wish to track.

“While the data analysis took only two months, the process of negotiating a one-and-a-half-page agreement to enable them to do so lasted over six months”

In Tanzania, a similarly stringent act makes it illegal for independent groups to publish what the government deems “false official statistics” or to disseminate information that would result in the “distortion of facts.” As a direct result of this, an opposition politician, Zitto Kabwe, was arrested in 2017 for remarks he made about Tanzania’s economic growth, which the National Bureau of Statistics claimed were “false.”

Thanks to pressure from citizens and donors, in June 2019, the Parliament passed an amendment lifting some of the restrictions and also giving every person the right to collect and disseminate statistical information, removing criminal liability for publishing independent statistics. While of course there need to be quality assurance measures taken to ensure that the collection and dissemination of statistical information is accurate, if governments are to be able to collaborate with not only private companies, but also universities, think-tanks, NGOs, and other expert groups collecting valuable data on social and environmental well-being, these kinds of restrictive statistical laws need urgent reform.

Challenge 3: The Legal Framework of the Partnership.

This is perhaps the most important challenge identified in our research, which highlights the weeks, months, and sometimes years often lost to negotiating legal partnership agreements.

For example, TReNDS recently supported a highly successful collaboration between the Colombian think-tank CEPEI, the national statistical office and the Chamber of Commerce to share economic data for SDG monitoring. However, the process of securing the initial partnership arrangements proved very intensive and protracted.

While the data analysis took only two months, the process of negotiating a one-and-a-half-page agreement to enable them to do so lasted over six months. Similarly, Development Gateway, an NGO which promotes data-driven development solutions, regularly finds that it takes three to four months to negotiate Data Sharing Agreements (DSAs) with its partners. Likewise, it took Flowminder an entire year to negotiate a three-way data sharing agreement in Ghana between themselves, Vodafone, and Ghana Statistical Services. Delays in legal partnership agreements are often the result of a gross mismatch in legal capacity and understanding of specific data-related considerations. The flow of digital information and extreme growth in information technology is moving faster than the law can set precedents for, so many lawyers are left floundering, and nowhere more so than in low-income countries and governments. In the absence of national or supranational governing frameworks (like GDPR) it is essential to identify common elements and replicable blueprints to ease the process of setting these partnership agreements.

This has been the focus of Contracts for Data Collaboration (C4DC), an SDSN TReNDS, World Economic Forum, NYU Govlab, and University of Washington project, which began in October 2018 with the aim of understanding the legal issues that can preclude effective multi-sector data sharing. The initiative has since developed an online repository of nearly 50 redacted legal agreements and an accompanying set of guidance relating to common elements, terms, and considerations, to provide policymakers, development and humanitarian organisations, and private companies with a range of tools for them to better understand formalized data sharing practices that are underpinned by written agreements and to help level the playing field for the data collaboration novices, which we hope will ultimately foster increased public-private collaboration.

The digital and data revolution is booming, and as TReNDS adviser, Tom Orrell, writes, our digital footprints are multiplying at an extraordinary rate. The potential to monitor human behaviour, well-being, and environmental impact is greater than ever, but to do that we have to get the partnerships right. We have to lay the foundations for a more cooperative “digital ecosystem” which encourages open data and public-private collaboration for the public good, whilst respecting companies’ need to maintain the privacy of high-value data sets for long-term commercial viability.

Get this right and we could unlock the mythical goldmine of private data and put it in service of the public good. Get this wrong and the public sector will be left in the technological and data dark ages, with not even one-hundredth of the understanding of the private sector, and in substantially more need.