StatsCan’s flawed data pitch gets a second chance
When Statistics Canada announced it planned a pilot project, to launch next month, to get banking details of half a million Canadian households, the outrage and anger were palpable.
Many Canadians felt the national statistics agency was overreaching its mandate and threatening the already shredded privacy of regular citizens.
StatsCan was quick to defend itself, saying it planned to “anonymize” the collected data before turning it over to the federal government for purposes of public policy research and decision-making. It didn’t matter. It was a step too far for most average citizens. The fact that the agency planned to partner with banks, already viewed with suspicion by many, didn’t help.
Most people didn’t know that at the time the pilot project was announced, StatsCan was already in an agreement with credit agency TransUnion to obtain personal credit records. It had been collecting that data for more than a year. That just added insult to injury.
This week the agency did the right thing. It announced it was suspending its agreement with TransUnion and delaying the pilot project.
The Globe and Mail got a copy of the letter sent to banks by chief statistician Anil Arora which said, in part: “... Statistics Canada is not expecting any personal data from your institution in January, 2019.”
So far, StatsCan hasn’t said when or if the project might be revived. At a minimum it needs to wait until after the investigation by the federal privacy commissioner which was launched over concerns about the agency gaining unprecedented access to Canadians’ personal financial information.
Even without knowing the outcome of that investigation, a few things are obvious. This was largely an error of execution, awareness and communication. How on earth could the agency not know that blithely announcing it wanted access to such sensitive information would meet with mass resistance and hostility? How could it not foresee that, given the extent to which personal privacy is increasingly in jeopardy, Canadians are hypersensitive to new perceived threats? Somewhere within the statistics agency there should reside a savvy, astute public opinion professional whose antennae are fully extended. Had there been in this case, the alarm would have been raised before this went public. Communications could have focused on data protection measures, on how all collected material would be scrubbed of personal information before being released to the agency.
This isn’t about overly restricting data needed by StatsCan. We all know the adage “garbage in, garbage out.” We all saw the outcome of the Harper government’s ideological banning of the long-form census — officials at all levels were robbed of relevant and needed information to help them make wise policy decisions. They were, in effect, partially blinded.
StatsCan does a vital service. It collects, analyses and synthesizes empirical data about the nation and its citizens, making it possible for policy-makers to act on solid evidence. It makes sense that some level of data collection around household and personal finance needs to be part of that equation. Spending preferences, credit, debt — all are important indicators of where the country stands now and is trending toward.
But this data needs to be gathered and protected with great care, and made anonymous under the strictest conditions.
Only then can it be ethically employed.
This was largely an error of execution, awareness and communication.