AMA - Data Openness and Covid

[giorgia.lodi]

@atelli

I think one of the main problems about the resistance against governments and health authorities collecting this data via the apps is that the duration of data aggregation is unclear, so is the temporality of the pandemic. This might only be the start of an era where such digital certifications, facilitated by AI tech, will be issued with less and less concern for privacy of individuals. We already know how the pandemic is creating extra vulnerabilities for people on the move, border regimes, the class-based inequalities etc. There is now the strong debate about the vaccination certificates and whether these should be only in paper form or also a digitized version that talks to the tracking app data. Many concerns regarding travel rights, right to not be vaccinated…The reason for data openness not being there yet is also due to the bleak approach regarding EU policies as well as national policies on this. The whole thing includes multi-layered approach surrounded by many actors; even the health authorities and their relation to state governments as well as EU governance is a problematic issue in the macro level. The micro and meso levels require more nuances and include insider wars at the moment.

I probably touched some of these issues in previous answers. The Italian app was developed, as far as I know, with privacy in mind since the beginning of its design. Therefore, some of the aspects you are mentioning are there considered. Some of its data can probably be useful to trace outbreaks. Obviously with more personal data authorities can better trace the pandemic, but I do not think in our country this happens and happened. However, as I said above, probably we need to invest more on privacy preserving in the more general “how to deal with data” Said in another way we need to invest more in the data culture that pass through these issues too. Techniques for privacy preserving are available at the state of the art. Aggregations are possible, even if some aggregations that we see for COVID data are bad! I really do not see the point, from a technical perspective. However, what I’ve witnessed is the fear to open some data because of what you say and also the willingness of not taking responsibilities (I do not want any responsibility, better closing everything - that typically brings people for illegally forcing the systems!). Anyway, as for the vaccinations certificate I have some issues, that are not definitely technical. I think in 2021t they could be definitely digital taking care of all aspects of privacy and security. My issues is more related to the social dimension. It is important how to use it in order not create additional gaps among people

@alberto all the data coming from our Istituto Superiore di Sanità, other data of Ministry of Health regarding COVID, datasets of the outbreaks in schools, and outside the COVID domain, for instance the data regarding the quality of waters (do you know that our Ministry of Health has a nice website with waters and their parameters regarding the quality and the website is under the CC-BY-NC-ND license?). And I can continue with many requests we have done since years for: company registry data, Postal code data, law data (despite our legislation says laws are in public domain), cadastrial data, some public transport data. Therefore, many in the context of COVID and other domains too.

[giorgia.lodi]

@alberto

@giorgia.lodi

To be in dati.gov.it institutions should properly include metadata following the European standard. It is not sufficient to publish it in github In this sense Italian civil protection has github but also metadata that can be harvested by dati.gov.it

Yes… and the Civil Protection Agency knows this. But whoever made the open dataset of the app, seems to not know this, or not care. This makes me think that it was the app developer rather than a government agency. There is no sense of ownership of the app data by the government, no “this is my app, these are my data, and, by God, they are going to go on my open data portal”. And by the way, yesterday on Twitter I learned this:

The formula GARBAGE IN GARBAGE OUT applies always! In any case, I knew that the app was under the government control too. But for instance the Ministry of Health is still not compliant with DCAT-AP_IT (the Italian extension of the European standard) after 5 years since the release of the specs. I mean, probably they also know they have to do that, but what happens if they don’t?? Nothing! And that’s why we are still here speaking about that. Probably they still need to understand the added value of acting according to standards for instance. Italian Civil Protection is a nice exception in the COVID context. But , in general, we can do definitely better than what we have. Also, as community, we need to raise the “bar” on data quality and on correct and modern implementation of the rules that guarantee our rights

[giorgia.lodi]

@MariaEuler

Many people share personal data for inconsequential services or comfort all the time, but it seems that for something like contract tracing for the virus or in general anything that is not an app people choose for their own comfort there is a lot more scrutiny used.

Do you think that it is important to always take these opportunities to have those conversations about privacy etc. or do you think that sometimes necessary data-sharing is inhibited by it becoming an exercise in the discussion around privacy that people avoid in so many relevant parts of their lives where the data-sharing would be far less necessary but is done for more nonchalant?

We discussed the German App for covid-tracing a bit more here: Germany Introduces Corona Virus Tracing-App: Why aren't people more sceptical?

In my work in the PA sector for both open data and shared data, the main obstacle that I heard most was “eh but there is a problem of privacy! We cannot share data or disclose data as open data because of that”. There are fears that I can understand but many times privacy is used as an excuse for not doing because, it it happens something, I do not want responsibilities. We need to keep on talking about this, raise the awareness in all communities, even and especially among civil servants; we need people with the right skills that can bring practical solutions. The Italian app of contact tracing was developed at the end with privacy by design. It is technically possible but we need to invest more on this, in the revision of the processes I was previously mentioning and in letting people know that their rights can be preserved while innovating the society!

[alberto]

@giorgia.lodi

But for instance the Ministry of Health is still not compliant with DCAT-AP_IT (the Italian extension of the European standard) after 5 years since the release of the specs. I mean, probably they also know they have to do that, but what happens if they don’t?? Nothing!

Good grief. I did not know that.

[alberto]

Hey @Asjad, the German Statistics Institute replied to me. They claim that their data on mortality are indeed conferred to Eurostat:

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cache/metadata/en/demomwk_esms.htm

However:

In April 2020, Eurostat set up an exceptional data collection on total weekly deaths. Data are transmitted by the national statistical institutes on voluntary basis, depending on data availability at national level.