Public dialogue on the use of data by the public sector in Scotland

Appendix A: Previous public engagement in Scotland

This includes workshops, citizens’ assemblies, citizens’ juries, focus groups, qualitative interviews, surveys, discrete choice experiments, game-based approaches, ethnography, public panels and consumer panels. The key insights from these public engagements fed into the design of this public dialogue and are summarised below.

Previous public engagements found general support for data sharing, across different contexts and through the different methods used to involve the public. There was also broad support for greater involvement of the public to inform government decisions and policy. Some engagement work highlighted particular conditions that should be met regarding the context and scope of data use that would increase participants’ willingness to share data, with concepts such as public benefit being used. Yet, previous engagement also revealed complexities around participant views of ‘public benefit’ and ‘public good’ in Scotland. Some case studies revealed wide-ranging ideas of public benefit, with participants unwilling to clearly define public benefit in a way that might exclude some uses of data that they considered valuable. For example, deliberative workshops conducted in 2017 on the topic of what is meant by ‘public benefit’ found that participants’ preference was for the widest possible public benefit to be felt by all, but they also acknowledged the value in research aiming to primarily benefit vulnerable groups within society.^[15]

Transparency was regarded as desirable, but the term was used and understood differently by different engaged publics. Authors of a report on a series of 2010-2011 focus groups and workshops on trust and trustworthiness in data use concluded that transparency could include: ‘informational transparency requiring disclosure of information on which decisions are based; participatory transparency, enabling public participation in decision-making processes; or, accountability transparency whereby decision-makers are held accountable’.^[16]

Early engagement work that considered data governance did not reveal any strong preferences for particular approaches towards oversight, assessment, and accountability. Later engagement work also revealed some ambiguity regarding public participation in data governance. More active public participation was often seen as desirable. However, not all public engagements revealed a desire for greater citizen control. Some engagements found, for example, that not everyone had the requisite expertise to contribute to specific decisions and that family and work commitments would prevent people from engaging.^[17]

Some insights have been gained on the complexities of mechanisms of consent and, to a lesser extent, on data quality. However, a contentious topic in data use is the involvement of the private sector, with higher trust being given to public bodies such as the NHS. As found in a 2022 deliberative workshop conducted by Ipsos Scotland on behalf of DataLoch, there was also some acceptance of private sector involvement, with conditions, such as exchanging data sharing for benefit.^[18]