A business model for encouraging citizens to open up their personal data for anonymous statistical use

Abstract

Governments all over the world have a lot of data about their citizens. The citizens in turn have a lot of information about themselves which the government does not have. If these two data sets are consolidated and then mined by interested parties, there is a lot of valuable knowledge that can be gleaned from it. This research has looked into these issues and proposed a model which can be used by the government to encourage its citizenry to share their personal data with it and also with other interested parties, in a legal and acceptable manner for anonymous statistical use. Since it was not feasible to carry out a census to ascertain the perception in regard to the issues around personal data access and sharing, a sample of the Kenyan population was chosen to provide feedback about these issues. From the research findings, most Kenyans (62%) are ready and willing to open up their personal data details for anonymous statistical analysis to the government and other interested stakeholders in the Personal Data Ecosystem (PDE). However, they indicated that they need to give their consent for any access of their personal data. There was also correlation between gender, level of education and age and willingness to sharing of personal data with the government and other stakeholders in the Personal Data Ecosystem (PDE). We considered the Kenya scenario and the responsibility of the Government of Kenya (GoK) and its citizens and other stakeholders in the PDE in achieving this objective.