As a part of data-driven responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, the UK public have been asked to share data in ways that have never been seen before. But the urgency of the pandemic meant that there was little time to assess the public’s willingness to engage with such COVID-19-motivated data-sharing. So, as part of the omddac project, we deployed a survey to investigate what factors of data-sharing scenarios influence willingness take part.
Our main findings are:
- which organisations have access to what data and when is important to data-sharing decision-making.
- it cannot be assumed that the urgency of a global pandemic leads to people disregarding their concerns and engaging with data-sharing initiatives.
- the decision-making behind how much detail to include in the data being shared is complicated.
And we recommend that the design of future data-sharing initiatives:
- should be transparent about which organisations have access to what data and when.
- should avoid a “one-size-fits-all” approach.
- should provide options for how much data-detail to share.
