The Nation: Lisa Owen interviews Diane Robertson
The former head of the Auckland City Mission Dame
Diane Robertson has a new challenge on her
hands.
She's
heading the Government's Data Futures Partnership, which
aims to encourage more collection and sharing of
data.
But
weighing up the benefits of data sharing with the desire for
personal privacy makes it a controversial
issue.
Lisa
Owen: Dame Diane Robertson joins me now. Good
morning.
Diane Robertson:
Good morning.
What kind of data do we need to
be collecting and sharing, do you
think?
The reality is we
are swimming in data. Whether we are collecting it through
cameras that are on the streets, whether we’re collecting
it through census, whether we’re collecting it through our
Fitbits, there is just so much data that we probably
haven’t had access to before.
And so what
would be of most benefit to us? What kind of
information?
Well,
there’s benefit from all sorts of things. We can actually
use data to get better health outcomes. We could use data
from our Fitbits to decide whether we need to have an
intervention in hospital, we can use government data to
decide what we’re going to do around families living in
poverty, and so there is just so many uses for data that
perhaps we haven’t even thought of before.
I
suppose one of the fundamental problems with this is that a
lot of people really are concerned about the collection of
their personal information, the storing of it, the transfer
of it. Do you understand that
concern?
Oh, absolutely.
One on hand, we are really concerned, and people express
concerns about people’s data being used. On the other
hand, we all sign up to Facebook and to Google and to our
telco accounts, and we allow them to have access to a huge
amount of data, and most of that data is held
overseas.
Mm. Because this level of
information that is collected can create dilemmas, so I want
to talk about a real example, which was a predictive data
tool that you’ve talked to us about that was developed to
identify abused children or children that may be abused in
the future. What happened around
that?
Well, what happened
around it was that there was a lot of work done about
whether that was ethical to use, so it was signed off in an
ethics committee. It was legally a thing that could be done.
But actually, what happened was it didn’t get social
licence. And social licence is whether people will actually
think it’s an okay use of data. And on that particular
occasion, it didn’t.
So, this was a tool
that researchers basically felt would identify kids two
years before they were abused – is that
right?
Well, two years
before other agencies knew that they were abused. So before
abuse was reported or before a child turned up in hospital.
So there was a lot of predictive things that said if a child
lives in a really low-income house, if there was a parent
who was in jail, where there had been previous interventions
from Child, Youth and Family that the younger child would be
at risk, just predicting which children were more likely to
come to the attention.
So if we could do that,
why wouldn’t we use
it?
Well, I think it’s
one of those examples of we can, but people may actually say
that’s not a use of data that we want. It might be okay
for you to say that that’s a good thing to do, but if a
lot of other people say it’s not a good thing to do, then
we have to be very cautious about how we proceed with
it.
So how do you get people on board? You
talked about social licence – that’s just people
agreeing to allow this to happen. Well, how do you get it?
How do you get social
licence?
Oh, social licence
is just situational. So you don’t go out and say I’m
going to get social licence to use all of your data for
everything I want to use it for; you go out and get social
licence for particular issues. So we will be talking to
people, saying, ‘Would you be happy for your data to be
shared by a number of health professionals?’ I mean,
that’s a really good example, is your doctor’s records
are held by your doctor. Would you be happy for other
doctors to see that, for your record to be held by a
hospital as well, so that when you go from one medical
practice to another or to a pharmacy, would you be okay
about your medical records being shared amongst them? So
we’ll be having conversations like that with New
Zealanders.
I suppose the thing is there is a
line between using data to inform policy, and critics would
argue the other end of that spectrum is social engineering.
So who decides where that line
is?
Well, I think that’s
something that New Zealanders have to decide where that is.
I think we’ve had social licence conversations in New
Zealand about many things other than data. We have social
licence conversations about abortion, about gay marriage,
about divorce, and it is where there is a general consensus
that those things are okay. I mean, we’re having a really
big social licence conversation at the moment about
euthanasia. And so the same conversations will happen about
data. I think what people don’t realise is that data
actually is a commodity that we’ve got. It’s like our
water. It’s like everything else – it’s a precious
resource that can be used for good or it could be used for
bad. I think with data, the thing that people don’t
realise is that it’s not just used once; it can be used
again and again and again for different purposes. So we need
to be very careful about how.
You talk about
the prospect that it can be used for good or bad, so how do
you stop it being used against people? Because, for example,
a school might not want to take on a child that has a bunch
of indicators that show they could potentially have poor
outcomes. And employer might not want that person. An
insurance company might not want them either, or a landlord.
So how do you stop it being used in that
way?
I think that’s one
of the things that we’re actually looking at at the moment
is we often talk about the question of privacy, about where
my data is used – what the question really is is, ‘How
is it going to be used, and is it going to disadvantage me
or is it going to exclude me?’ And that’s really the
biggest reason in the sense that the data future’s
partnership has been established is to look at those cases,
find out ways and recommend back to government ways that we
can make sure that people don’t get excluded because of
poor data or that they’re penalised because of
it.
Great to have you on the show this
morning. Thanks for joining us, Dame Diane
Robertson.
Transcript
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