Modern public administration involves an inherent conflict between better responsiveness to citizens as clients and effective collaboration with them as partners, given the role of government as data caretakers. Service provisioning to citizens as customers requires flexibility, yet the usage of data to serve these customers has to meet with regulatory policy and good common sense on data privacy.
The changing nature of our relationship as citizens with our different levels of government is partly driven by the ability for us to interact with government digitally. Not only to give/receive information remotely, but to query, to collaborate and to be citizen information providers, such as potholes, malfunctioning traffic lights, reporting crime, and receiving updates as necessary. But one of the challenges in this evolving relationship is how the collaborating partners handle sensitive data, and how they respect each other’s requirements.
