In the context of open government, is there a clash between privacy and transparency. I am interested to know if any research is published in this area. and if people see what I see or don't see that.
Interestingly, I went through some news article on this subject; however, I failed to find any reliable academic research.
Please observe the following link..
https://www.roboticstomorrow.com/article/2018/09/transparency-vs-privacy/12518
It is interesting that people realize that a 100% transparency would not keep 100% privacy and vise versa,,,, It is nice to see also people realize that, but is it a researched idea and do we have published paper on it
(empirical research). Thanks Dr. Khaled for the link, I liked the content
One of my articles https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/TG-12-2016-0092/full/html
discusses about transparency and effective e-Governance. This might be of some help in this context I thought.
In my opinion, regard to sensitivity of government data and information to some extent level, we can say there are interference and this relate to the degree of the sensitivity of information or data that want to be disclosed.
Emad, this question is something that I ask in my doctoral dissertation - particularly in how front line staff perform records management practices (e.g. information sharing), big data and proactive transparency (something that the Canadian federal Office of Privacy and Information has promoted). The data I collected from a questionnaire suggests that concern with protecting information that is perceived as sensitive or personal does effect the extent that individuals are willing to appropriately share records/information with their own colleagues. A big factor in this dynamic, I suggest, is trust in the integrity of the individual making the request, and the individual who has custody of the record/information. My short response here does not even get into the question of how government staff use or consider records/information stored in information systems. Great question!
Thank you for the insightful response. It is interesting what you said. Is your work published already?
Dear Dr. Emad,
Many governments claim that they are already open governments simply because they share some stats here and there on official websites. But I don't think this is what you mean in your question. Though, even if we dive deeper I don't think there is a direct contradiction between both as long as: 1) the level of details embedded in the disclosed open data is above the threshold of identifying an entity with privacy concerns (e.g. individuals' details), 2) in case sensitive data is shared as part of public open data, then this should be a) anonymized or at least pseudonymized (with caution to avoid potential ability of deanonymization by data triangulation!), b) accessible only through rigorous and well-documented access control policies. 3) the overall governance model controlling the mechanism by which open data is generated and published, and by whom, is transparent and open too.
In the first point, I don't think open government means sharing every single detail of data generated or commissioned by a governmental entity, but rather recent, continuous and transparent insights from digested information. For example, the daily reports by governments regarding new COVID-19 cases does not expose risk to breach privacy. The questions here are, how that threshold is identified and how to determine sensitive data elements from those that are not? How to trust such data and who curates it?
Regarding the second point, sensitive data (e.g. medical records) with significant level of details should undergo transformation processes and made available only to certain authorized parties. Meta-data about access to such sensitive data might need to be open too. For example, it should be known who accessed what data, for what purpose and which party granted access to it. If we talk about democracy here, perhaps certain stakeholders might be part of the authorization process to approve or deny the inclusion of their data into the required data set. The question here is, can the chain of trust (quite a complex one!) be ensured here? Blockchain proponents claim the ability to achieve that (partly or fully) by decentralizing the point of authority and ownership of data.
As for number three, achieving useful open government data repositories, yet preserving privacy, is an endeavor that is complex and should not be taken for granted. It may require serious transformation in public sector practices, hence the term transforming government (T-Gov).
Finally, I think it is crucial for governments to properly assess the actual return on investing into such endeavors. Culture plays a big role here. Governments should 1) evaluate the overall usefulness of open data vis-a-vis its citizens and its organizations (public and private) and 2) gauge the population's sensitivity towards privacy. These greatly vary by culture.
dear Dr. Karim...
Your response is a core for a paper.. What do you think?
Emad
Privacy and Transparency are inversely proportional. When Privacy increases Transparency decreases, and vice versa.