Data governance and personal data use for COVID-19 in Hong Kong

Abstract

Designing effective data tools for crises such as COVID-19, where situations rapidly evolve and bring uncertainties that complicate policymaking, is crucial to protect citizens’ health and safety. Therefore, it is important to address the issues as identified by relevant stakeholders, especially citizens. One solution is to allow users to also be co-creators of knowledge by providing meaningful and salient data to data platforms. Through this interactive process, citizens could be empowered to make decisions to protect themselves and their communities, especially if their data could help to generate tailored crisis advice. With this in mind, this thesis serves to answer the question: what are the design and socio-political elements that would affect the public use and acceptability of data tools for COVID-19 advice in Hong Kong? The thesis employs online surveys and phone interviews to understand stakeholders’ behaviours and perspectives in response to the data governance issues associated with digital tools for COVID-19 and air pollution. Findings reveal that Hong Kong citizens are more accepting of data tools with high perceived accuracy, secure privacy protections, and pleasing designs. Moreover, politics has not affected Hong Kong citizens’ willingness to use official COVID-19 data tools despite unprecedentedly low levels of public trust in government, but it may have affected citizens’ willingness to share personal data with the government. Hong Kong citizens are also divided on how to navigate data governance trade-offs, as some are not willing to share as much data as they demand from others. Finally, this thesis recommends government collaboration with citizen groups and research institutions to improve COVID-19 data tools’ citizen engagement mechanisms for more salient policies and increased public trust in Hong Kong. Keywords: COVID-19, data governance, knowledge co-creation, citizen engagement

Date of Award	2021
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Supervisor	Masaru YARIME (Supervisor)